Hernando de Soto is President of the Instituto Libertad y Democracia (ILD), headquartered in Lima, Peru. Together with his ILD colleagues, de Soto is currently focused on designing and implementing capital formation programs to empower the poor in Africa, Asia, Latin America, the Middle East, and former Soviet countries. De Soto has written two influential books about economic and political development: The Other Path and The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else, both of which became international bestsellers and are available in more than 20 languages.
He has served as an economist for the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), as President of the Executive Committee of the Copper Exporting Countries Organization (CIPEC), as CEO of Universal Engineering Corporation (Continental Europe’s largest consulting engineering firm), as a principal of the Swiss Bank Corporation Consultant Group, and as a governor of Peru’s Central Reserve Bank. The ILD is considered by The Economist as one of the two most important think tanks in the world. Time magazine chose de Soto as one of the five leading Latin American innovators of the century in its special May 1999 issue “Leaders for the New Millennium,” and included him among the 100 most influential people in the world in 2004.
