Speaker Biographies

Hernando de Soto

President, Institute for Liberty and Democracy

Hernando de Soto, president of the Institute for Liberty and Democracy (ILD), headquartered in Lima, Peru, has been honored by Time magazine, Forbes magazine, The Economist, and the German development magazine Entwicklung und Zusammenarbeit. Fortune placed de Soto’s The Mystery of Capital on its list of the “75 Smartest Books We Know.”

De Soto is a member of the United Nation’s World Commission on the Global Dimension of Globalization, International Labor Organization, and the United Nations Development Program’s Task Force to Examine Private Resources for Development. He also serves on the Expert Group on Development Issues, established by the Swedish government, and the Research Advisory Council of the Global Markets Institute at Goldman Sachs.

As their principal activity, de Soto and the ILD are designing and implementing capital formation programs to empower the poor in Asia, Latin America, the Middle East, Africa, and former Soviet nations.

De Soto was born in Arequipa, Peru, and did his postgraduate work at the Institut Universitaire de Hautes Etudes Internationales in Geneva, Switzerland. He has served as an economist for the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, president of the executive committee of the Copper Exporting Countries Organization, managing director of Universal Engineering Corporation, a principal of the Swiss Bank Corporation Consultant Group, and a governor of Peru’s Central Reserve Bank.

In Peru, de Soto was President Alberto Fujimori’s personal representative and principal advisor until de Soto resigned two months before the coup d’état. De Soto and ILD were largely responsible for modernizing and stabilizing Peru’s economic system.

De Soto has written two books about economic and political development: The Other Path, published in the mid-1980s, and The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else, published in late 2000. Both books have been bestsellers and have been translated into some 20 languages.

Among the prizes de Soto has received are The Freedom Prize (Switzerland), and The Fisher Prize (United Kingdom). In 2002, he received the Goldwater Award (USA), the Adam Smith Award from the Association of Private Enterprise Education (USA), and the CARE Canada Award for Outstanding Development Thinking (Canada). In 2003, he was named the Downey Fellow at Yale University, and he was inducted into the Democracy Hall of Fame International at the National Graduate University. In 2004, de Soto was awarded the Templeton Freedom Prize (USA) and the Milton Friedman Prize for Advancing Liberty (USA), as well as the Royal Decoration of the Most Admirable Order of the Direkgunabhorn, 5th Class (Thailand). In 2005, he was awarded an Honorary Degree of Doctor of Letters from the University of Buckingham (United Kingdom); named the Most Outstanding of 2004 for Economic Development at Home and Abroad by the Peruvian National Assembly of Rectors; given the 2004 Peruvian Institute of Business Administration Award; presented the Americas Award (USA); received the Deutsche Stiftung Eigentum Prize; and was recognized for his outstanding accomplishments with the Academy of Achievement’s Golden Plate Award (USA).