“Freedom is so important,” Helen Krieble says passionately—her voice catching as she muses on a lifetime spent in the fight—“because we’re losing it.”

Inspired by the Founding Fathers and their timeless design for freedom, Helen Krieble’s life has been dedicated to protecting and upholding this precious framework. “This country was founded on self-reliance and it’s important American citizens understand their responsibility to uphold freedom. Everyday there’s another encroachment on our liberty. It’s under the radar with new laws and new rules.”

Helen believes one of the greatest obstacles to freedom is the fundamental failure in education today. She feels Americans neither understand nor value their citizenship, and their growing dependency on government is devastating and detrimental to the freedom framework.

Helen becomes tearful when she imagines a world where American exceptionalism is lost. “There is nothing more valuable for the quality of human existence than the exceptionalism of the founding documents and the need to keep them alive.”

Raised in Connecticut, Helen is a renowned art historian and former assistant professor of art history at Hartford College for Women. Outside the academy, she served as CEO of three major art galleries and was Curator of Education at the Wadsworth Atheneum. Until recently, she also owned and operated the Colorado Horse Park, an international equestrian and events center.

Helen credits her parents for her involvement today in public policy. Her father, Robert Krieble, was a chemist who co-founded the Loctite Corporation in 1953 with his father, Vernon K. Krieble, also a chemist. Robert Krieble served on the board of The Heritage Foundation alongside SPN’s founder Thomas Roe.

Philanthropy has been a part of her life since age 30, when she became active with her family’s Krieble Foundation. By 1985, along with the rest of the Krieble family, she helped found the Vernon K. Krieble Foundation (VKK), a private foundation dedicated to funding public policy projects, serving as its inaugural president.

As if artist, leader, philanthropist, and equestrian weren’t enough, Helen can also add public policy expert to her list of credentials. As a business owner, she struggled finding workers for her horse park and was motivated to create a private sector solution to immigration reform. She’s become a noted leader in the national debate on immigration policy and the architect and author of The Red Card Solution. Prior to turning her attention to immigration policy, Helen spent years advocating on behalf of strategic missile defense reform. Today, she focuses most of her energy on developing her innovative “Lens of Liberty” campaign—a program designed to grow freedom through better awareness of the responsibilities of American citizenship through neighborhood grassroots coalitions.

Throughout all of this work she’s developed a deep admiration for those individuals who have the courage to stand up against invasive government and say “no.” That’s her definition of an unsung hero: those countless individuals who disrupt the status quo and go up against the behemoth of government while often sacrificing so much both personally and financially.

That’s why Helen and the Vernon K. Krieble Foundation launched a partnership with SPN to honor an Unsung Hero each year at SPN’s Annual Meeting with an opportunity to tell his or her story, as well as an award of $25,000. It’s become one of the most inspirational events at SPN’s Annual Meeting. She appreciates how SPN leverages its thriving interstate network of leaders and organizations in all fifty states to identify everyday citizens who are making a potent impact. It’s Helen’s vision that one day, inspired by the national award, each state may honor their own unsung hero so even more leaders can be inspired to action.

Helen acknowledges the important role SPN plays in the freedom movement. She recognizes the power behind state-based freedom centers and their ability to mobilize a network to launch ideas into action. “SPN doesn’t just talk the talk, but they do what they say they are going to do,” says Helen. She describes SPN as the shepherd and connector of the free-market, state-focused think tanks. “The reputation of SPN in every one of its endeavors—it’s not just empty rhetoric. It’s working through: How can we help you? How can we get this done? How can we highlight this to double the impact?”

In her lifelong dedication to protecting and upholding the freedom framework, Helen is proud to stand alongside SPN and work to inspire more leaders to action.

Helen has done more to fuel the freedom movement than most people will ever know. From missile defense to immigration to citizenship, she’s often at the forefront of these policy battles with her principled ammunition. By her own definition, we see Helen Krieble as an unsung hero.