Austin Berg is the executive director of the Chicago Policy Center and vice president of marketing for the Illinois Policy Institute. He is also co-founder of Iron Light, a public affairs agency.

He and his work have been featured in the Economist, Washington Post and Wall Street Journal. He is the winner of two Peter Lisagor Awards from the Chicago Headline Club for his photojournalism work, and was honored as one of Chicago’s “20 in their 20s” by Crain’s Chicago Business. Iron Light has been named to the Inc. 5000 list of fastest-growing private companies in the U.S. for three consecutive years, and was named “Public Affairs Firm of the Year” by Campaigns & Elections in 2025.

Austin is the co-author of “The New Chicago Way: Lessons from Other Big Cities,” published by Southern Illinois University Press. And writes the weekly Substack newsletter The Last Ward, which was cited by Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism as a critical part of Chicago’s media ecosystem.

He is a graduate of Tufts University, and lives in Lincoln Square.