Timothy Head, B.A. '98, M.S.W. '04, J.D. '08

As the son of two legacies, Timothy Head may have been destined to attend Baylor, but he earnestly looked at several other universities. His father was a three-year starter for Baylor’s baseball team in the late 1960s and later worked in athletics development.

Head and his family left Waco and moved to Atlanta, Georgia, where he graduated high school. He looked at the University of Georgia, Vanderbilt University, Ivy League schools and various faith-based schools on the East Coast. None, however, felt like home quite like Baylor.

“I visited a lot of those places, and I normally would like three out of four things,” Head says. “I’d like the academics but not the spirituality; or, I would love the spirituality and the academics, but the campus itself wasn’t great or they didn’t have a specific area of study. Baylor kept being the one that would check all my boxes.”

Head arrived at Baylor expecting to attend seminary thereafter en route to becoming a pastor and biblical counselor. He instead worked on staff at Antioch Community Church and did mission work in Asia, the Middle East and Europe.

“I found myself thinking about systems that were affecting thousands or millions of people: water, hunger, electricity, vaccines, these kinds of things,” Head says. “I came to see those as needing a public policy intervention.”

After completing his master’s degree and attending Baylor Law, Head entered the public policy world as an advisor to Texas state representative Bryan Hughes. Head later was chief of staff to state representative James White, and he spent two years as district director for U.S. Rep. Bill Flores.

Since 2015, Head has served as executive director of the Faith and Freedom Coalition (FFC), a social conservative political advocacy nonprofit organization based in Atlanta. The organization is committed to educating, equipping and mobilizing people of faith and like-minded individuals to be effective citizens and to influence public policy at all levels of government.

Head has been integral in helping create six legislative bills that passed in the last several years, including the passage of landmark federal prison reform commonly known as the First Step Act. He also worked on the Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act and the Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act. Head sees such bills as addressing those systems that affect countless people.

“It’s an opportunity to connect with individual citizens and also with churches and help them better understand meaningful ways public policy effects our lives, whether we know it or not,” Head says. “It’s a fascinating organization and a fascinating role.”

Head says it is difficult to enumerate the ways Baylor shaped and informed him personally and professionally. From getting married in graduate school to balancing law school as a father and husband, Head learned time management, how to excel in rigorous situations and all the things that come with a high-pressure, fast-paced career.

“It’s interwoven into the fabric of everything I do now,” he says. “Those disciplines were grafted into me in my time at Baylor.”