Adam Andrzejewski

Adam Andrzejewski isn’t your average watchdog—this guy’s basically made it his life’s mission to yank open the curtains on government spending. After cashing out of his first big gig, HomePages Directories (which, no big deal, pulled in $20 million back in the day), he jumped straight into OpenTheBooks. That’s where things get wild. Adam’s crew has built the country’s largest private stash of public-sector spending data. We’re talking every cent they can possibly get their hands on, blasted online for the world to see, almost in real time. OpenTheBooks doesn’t just dump data and bounce. They go full detective mode, digging through spending records, and sometimes their work actually leads to grand juries, real court cases, congressional hearings—the whole circus. Hell, even the president’s budget cited their findings. Adam himself has done the rounds everywhere you can imagine: BBC, CNN, Good Morning America, you name it. He’s gone toe-to-toe with politicians, and at one point, digging into Dr. Fauci’s wallet even got him booted from Forbes. (Guess shining a light gets you burned sometimes.) He’s hit the speaking circuit at places like Harvard and Columbia, and his presentation, “The Depth of the Swamp,” blew up on YouTube—millions of views. Besides all that, Adam’s a marathon junkie, family guy in Illinois, lector at his church, and still finds time to crank out columns for Real Clear Policy. Bottom line? The man’s on a mission to make sure nobody’s blowing your tax dollars in the dark.