Teneo Network

Teneo Network is a private, members-only conservative leadership organization founded in 2008 by Evan Baehr and Josh Hawley, the latter then a corporate lawyer and future U.S. senator from Missouri. Leonard Leo, the longtime executive vice president of the Federalist Society and the principal architect of the conservative Supreme Court supermajority, joined the network as chairman in 2021. The organization's stated purpose, as described in internal materials obtained by ProPublica in March 2023, is to recruit, connect, and deploy influential conservatives across American law, finance, media, academia, and culture to, in Leo's framing, "crush liberal dominance" in each of those sectors. Teneo Network is a distinct entity from Teneo Holdings, the unrelated global CEO-advisory and public-relations firm, and the two should not be conflated.¹

Founding by Baehr and Hawley

Evan Baehr and Josh Hawley founded Teneo Network in 2008, when both were in their late twenties and early thirties and moving through the conservative legal and policy networks. Baehr is a tech entrepreneur and veteran of conservative causes who had worked at the Heritage Foundation and in venture-backed political technology. Hawley was a corporate litigator at the Gibson Dunn firm who had clerked for Chief Justice John Roberts on the Supreme Court and who would later become Attorney General of Missouri (2017-2019) and U.S. senator from Missouri (2019-present).¹

The 2008 founding predates both men's subsequent prominence and predates the formal involvement of Leonard Leo. ProPublica reported that the original concept was developed within the conservative legal-network orbit in which both founders moved, and the early membership drew on the Federalist Society chapters and the clerkship networks that feed the conservative legal movement. The founders' goal, as expressed in the internal documents ProPublica obtained, was to build a "Federalist Society for everything," extending the model of a members-only ideological network that had succeeded in the legal sector across the rest of American institutional life.¹

Leonard Leo's Chairmanship

Leonard Leo joined Teneo Network as chairman in 2021, bringing the financial and organizational infrastructure he had built through the Federalist Society, the Judicial Crisis Network (now the Concord Fund), and his broader dark-money operation. Leo's tenure as chairman coincided with a substantial expansion of the network's ambition: internal materials obtained by ProPublica described the goal of building networks of conservatives positioned to "roll back" liberal influence in Wall Street firms, media organizations, entertainment companies, and universities.¹²

Leo came to the Teneo chairmanship from his role as the principal financier and organizer of the conservative judicial-selection project. Through the Judicial Crisis Network and a network of linked 501(c)(4) dark-money vehicles, Leo directed approximately one billion dollars into the project that produced the Supreme Court confirmations of Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett during the first Trump administration. The Teneo chairmanship extended that operational model from the courts into the broader institutional landscape.¹²

The "Crush Liberal Dominance" Program

The internal Teneo materials ProPublica published in March 2023 laid out the network's program in direct terms. Teneo events, captured on video obtained by ProPublica, featured Leo and other principals describing the goal of placing conservatives in positions of influence across corporate America, entertainment, media, and finance, with the explicit aim of reversing the liberal dominance the network diagnosed in those sectors. The framing was that the conservative movement had succeeded in the courts through the Federalist Society model and should now apply the same model, with the same disciplined long-horizon investment, to the rest of American institutional life.¹

NPR reported in November 2024 that Leo had publicly confirmed the program in an interview, describing the intent to disrupt liberal dominance across sectors. The Esquire, Salon, and WNYC On the Media coverage extended the ProPublica reporting into analysis of how the dark-money infrastructure funded the broader institutional project. The Bradley Impact Fund, a conservative philanthropic vehicle, hosted a Teneo conversation describing the network as "a national, members-only leadership organization that exists to recruit, connect, and deploy the most talented and influential conservatives."²³⁴⁵

The Thiel Adjacency

The Teneo-Peter Thiel connection runs through Evan Baehr's orbit rather than through Thiel's formal cofounding role. ProPublica reported that the Teneo concept was developed in part through Baehr's exposure to the Thiel network, and the conservative legal-and-policy infrastructure Teneo was built to extend overlaps with the donor and operative networks that also support the Thiel political projects (the Protect Ohio Values funding of JD Vance, the Per Aspera Policy dark-money vehicle). Josh Hawley's own trajectory from Teneo cofounder to elected office tracks the pattern the JD Vance page documents for the broader Thiel-network recruitment of political entrants.¹⁶

Thiel is not listed in the ProPublica record as a Teneo cofounder, contrary to some secondary reporting that has described him in that role. The connection is documented at the level of overlapping donor and operative networks, shared ideological framing around the rollback of liberal institutional dominance, and the shared infrastructure of dark-money vehicles that fund both the Teneo program and the Thiel political projects.¹