Dr. Heather Wilson became president of the South Dakota School of Mines in 2013.  

Wilson served New Mexico in the US Congress from 1998 to 2009, where she was a senior member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee and was the chair of the House Subcommittee on Technical and Tactical Intelligence.  

Before being elected to Congress, Wilson was the cabinet secretary of New Mexico’s Children, Youth, and Families Department, where she was chief executive of the state agency responsible for foster care, adoption, early childhood education, children’s mental health, and the juvenile justice system. In the private sector, Wilson served as a senior advisor to large defense and scientific companies including the Nevada Test Site, Battelle, Sandia, Los Alamos, and Oak Ridge National Laboratories as well as several large defense firms. The company she founded in 1991, Keystone International, Inc., continues to do work with the defense industry.

Wilson earned her bachelor of science degree from the US Air Force Academy in the third class to include women. She completed her master’s and doctoral degrees as a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University in England. After service in Europe as an Air Force officer during the cold war, Wilson served on the National Security Council Staff at the White House under President George H.W. Bush during the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Warsaw Pact.

Wilson is married to Jay Hone, an attorney and retired Air Force Colonel. They have three children, Scott, Joshua and Caitlin Hone.