Welcome Panel

Hernando de Soto is currently President of the Institute for Liberty and Democracy (ILD), an internationally-recognized think tank headquartered in Lima, Peru committed to helping governments in developing countries implement property and business rights reforms that provide the legal tools and institutions required for all citizens to participate in the formal national and global economy and to pull themselves —and their countries— out of poverty.

Named one of the 25 most important thinkers of our time by Handelsblatt newspaper and one of the leading innovators in the world by Time and Forbes magazines, more than 20,000 readers of Prospect and Foreign Policy ranked him as one of the world’s top 13 “public intellectuals”.

He has served as President of the Executive Committee of the Copper Exporting Countries Organization, as CEO of Universal Engineering Corporation, as a principal of the Swiss Bank Corporation Consultant Group, and as a governor of Peru’s Central Reserve Bank.

He has advised heads of state in several countries on property reform programs, and is the author of The Other Path, in the mid 1980s, and his seminal work The Mystery of Capital.