Speakers

Alberto Benegas Lynch is Latin America’s foremost liberal, among other recognized positions, he has been twice Member of the Board of Mont Pelerin Society, is member of the Academic Advisory Council of the Institute of Economic Affairs de Cato Institute and of Ludwig von Mises Institute, He is President of the Freedom and Progress Foundation (Fundación Libertad y Progreso) in Argentina. He is and author of 17 books and 6 more in collaboration with other authors.

Thomas A. Berry is the director of the Cato Institute’s Robert A. Levy Center for Constitutional Studies and editor-in-chief of the Cato Supreme Court Review. Before joining Cato, he served as an attorney at the Pacific Legal Foundation and clerked for Judge E. Grady Jolly of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. He holds a J.D. from Stanford Law School and a B.A. in liberal arts from St. John’s College, Santa Fe.

Panamanian Entrepreneur, he is the President of the board at Singular WM, he has been advisor to president Jose Raul Mulino, president of the Panamanian Association of Business Executives (APEDE). Founder and president of the Fundación Libertad de Panamá, director of the Red Liberal de América Latina (RELIAL) member of the Executive Committee of the Cruzada Civilista Nacional, the civic-trade union movement that encouraged the overthrow of the military dictatorship in Panama in 1989.

He has a degree in Business Administration and Economics from the Instituto Tecnológico de Monterrey, Mexico and MBA from Columbia University in New York.

Scott Bullock is the President of the Institute for Justice. He served as a senior attorney and litigated a wide variety of constitutional challenges in federal and state courts. Bullock’s articles and views on constitutional litigation have appeared in a wide variety of media. He received his law degree from the University of Pittsburgh and his B.A. in economics and philosophy from Grove City College.

Gabriela Calderón de Burgos is a Fellow in Latin American Studies, editor of ElCato.org, and columnist for El Universo(Ecuador). She graduated in 2004 with a degree in Political Science with a concentration in International Relations from York College of Pennsylvania and in 2007 she obtained her master’s degree in International Trade and Politics from George Mason University. Since January 2006 she has written for El Universo (Ecuador) and her articles have been reproduced in other newspapers in Latin America and Spain such as El Tiempo (Colombia), La Prensa Gráfica (El Salvador), Libertad Digital (Spain), El Deber (Bolivia), El Universal (Venezuela), La Nación (Argentina), El Diario de Hoy (El Salvador), among others. She is the author of the book Entre el instinto y la razón (Cato Institute / Paradiso Editores, 2014) and the author of the chapter on Ecuador in the book El estallido del populismo (Editorial Planeta, 2017).

Gabriel Calzada is a prominent Spanish economist, founder and director of the Instituto Juan de Mariana, promoter and founding partner of the Centro de Estudios Superiores Manuel Ayau in Madrid, former president of the Universidad Francisco Marroquín, current president of the Universidad de las Hespérides. 

Ángel Carrión-Tavárez is Director of Research and Policy at the Puerto Rico Institute for Economic Liberty. He is an editor, educator, and multidisciplinary researcher. He has a B.A. in Social Sciences from the University of Puerto Rico, an M.A. in Humanities from California State University, and a Ph.D. in Integration and Economic and Territorial Development from Universidad de León (Spain). He was founder and editor of the economic and public-policy magazine, Panorama 21 (published in English, Spanish, and Portuguese); managing editor of the business weekly, Caribbean Business; and editor-in-chief and president of the Board of the peer-reviewed journal, Fórum Empresarial.

Arturo Damm Arnal is an economist, philosopher, journalist and university professor. Throughout his academic career he has disseminated liberal economic principles through articles, more than 20 books and conferences, and has been part of the economic debate in Mexico and Latin America. In addition, he has been a contributor to various media outlets and a lecturer at universities, combining his academic work with journalistic dissemination.

Claudia de Buen holds a Degree in Law from the Autonomous Metropolitan University; a Master’s Degree in Family Law from the Institute of Legal Sciences of Higher Studies. She is Specialist in International Financial and Commercial Law, Specialist in Amparo, Specialist in Commercial Law from the Panamerican University. She is a Certified Private Mediator by the Center for Alternative Justice of the Superior Court of Justice of Mexico City and the State of Mexico. She has been a partner at Bufete De Buen, S. C., since 1978.She was president of the Barra Mexicana, Colegio de Abogados, A.C.; General Counsel of the Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana.

Jim Epstein is the Executive Editor of Reason TV and Reason’s podcasts. His work has appeared in the New York Post, New York Daily News, and The Daily Beast. He was a producer at WNET, the PBS flagship station in New York City, earning five New York Emmys and three CINE Golden Eagle Awards. He has covered Brazil’s libertarian movement, D.C.’s taxi medallion system (leading to his arrest), and the impact of a $15 minimum wage on NYC car washes, earning a Southern California Journalism Award.

Enrique Ghersi is a lawyer specialized in economic analysis of law and criminal law. He is director of Estudio Ghersi Abogados and has been a professor at Universidad de Lima, Universidad Francisco Marroquín and other higher education institutions. He is a member of the Mont Pelerin Society and the Royal Economic Society and holds an honorary doctorate in Social Sciences from Universidad Francisco Marroquín.

Mike Gonzalez is the Angeles T. Arredondo E Pluribus Unum Senior Fellow at The Heritage Foundation. He writes on critical race theory, identity politics, diversity, multiculturalism, assimilation and nationalism, and foreign policy in general. He spent close to 20 years as a journalist, 15 of them reporting from Europe, Asia and Latin America. He left journalism to join the administration of President George W. Bush, where he was a speechwriter for Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Christopher Cox before moving on to the State Department’s European Bureau.

Marcel Granier is a Venezuelan lawyer, businessman, journalist, and defender of freedom of expression. He was president of Radio Caracas Televisión until its closure and takeover by the government of Hugo Chávez and is currently president and chief executive officer of 1BC companies.

Daniel Hannan is the President of the Free Trade Institute. He serves as International Secretary of the Conservative Party. As well, he is a teacher at the University of Buckingham and the University of Francisco Marroquín. He has written nine books, including the New York Times bestseller Inventing Freedom: How the English-Speaking Peoples Made the Modern World. He sat as a Conservative MEP for 21 years and was a founder of Vote Leave. He is a regular columnist for, among others, The Sunday Telegraph, The Washington Examiner, and The Daily Mail.

Thomas W. Hazlett is Professor of Law & Economics at George Mason University, where he also serves as Director of the Information Economy Project. Prof. Hazlett has published his research in, for instance, the Journal of Law & Economics, the Columbia Law Review, and the Journal of Financial Economics. Prof. Hazlett’s special expertise is in government regulation of telecommunications markets and the information sector. He served as Chief Economist of the Federal Communications Commission.

Dr. Holcombe is DeVoe Moore Professor of Economics at Florida State University, he is also Senior Fellow at the James Madison Institute, Senior Fellow at the Independent Institute, and is a Research Fellow at the Law & Economics Center at George Mason University. 

He is vice president of the Mont Pelerin Society, serving from 2024-2026, and is past president of the Public Choice Society and the Society for the Development of Austrian Economics. Dr. Holcombe is the author of twenty books and more than 200 articles published in academic and professional journals.  His books include Political Capitalism: How Economic and Political Power Is Made and Maintained (2018) and Following Their Leaders: Political Preferences and Public Policy (2023).

Bettina Horst was Senior Fellow at Atlas Economic Research Foundation in Washington DC, member of the Regional Council of the Metropolitan Region in Chile, Head of the Monetary Area of the Studies Department of the Central Bank in Chile. She was distinguished by El Mercurio and Mujeres Empresarias as one of the 100 Women Leaders of her country in 2019, 2021 and 2023. During 2023 she was a member of the Commission of Experts for the elaboration of a proposal for a new Constitution. She is currently Executive Director of Libertad y Desarrollo and Advisor to the High Public Management system. She was president of the Liberal Network of Latin America.

Daniel Lacalle is an expert in economics and investments. Bestselling author and international advisor. He holds a PhD in Economics and teaches Global Economics and Finance, and is Chief Economist at Tressis Sociedad de Valores.  He is actively involved in academia, leads the Instituto Mises Hispano and contributes to various organizations. Currently, he also plays an important role as Vice Chairman of ORFIN’s Advisory Board.

Ricardo López Murphy is an Argentine economist, politician and congressman. He was Minister of Defense, Minister of Economy and Minister of Infrastructure and Housing of Argentina. He is currently president of the Fundación Cívico Republicana and former president of the Red Liberal de América Latina (Liberal Network of Latin America). He holds a degree in Economics from the Universidad La Plata and a Master of Arts in Economics from the University of Chicago. He has developed a prestigious academic career for 25 years.

Deirdre Nansen McCloskey is a distinguished scholar and Isaiah Berlin Chair in Liberal Thought at the Cato Institute. She is also a distinguished professor emerita of economics and of history and professor emerita of English and of communication at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

She has written 24 books and some 400 academic and popular articles on economic theory, economic history, philosophy, rhetoric, statistical theory, feminism, ethics, and law.

Jeffrey Miron is a Senior Lecturer and Director of Undergraduate Studies in the Department of Economics at Harvard University, as well as Vice President of Research at the Cato Institute. His field of expertise is the economics of libertarianism; he has advocated for many libertarian policies, including legalizing all drugs and allowing failing banks to go bankrupt.

Fernando Monterroso is professor of economics at Universidad Francisco Marroquín. Named “2016 Robert Nozick Award” given by the Board of Trustees of the same university to award academic excellence in the faculty. He has held various executive and managerial positions in banking and commerce in Guatemala. He was Rector of the Universidad Francisco Marroquín during the period 1988-2003 and author of “Lógica de la Cooperación Social”.

María Murillo is a lawyer from the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú. She has taught the Real Rights course at Universidad de Lima and Universidad Mayor de San Marcos. She has studied urban entitlements at the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy at Harvard University. She is an expert in Family and Inheritance Law and in matters related to Contract Law regarding Property Rights and Inheritance. She has participated as a keynote speaker in national and international conferences on property reorganization and property law in Mexico, Rio de Janeiro, Buenos Aires, Cali (USAID), Washington (USAID), London (Mont Pelerin Society).

Eduardo Nolla holds a degree in Political Science and Sociology and a PhD in Political Science from the Complutense University of Madrid. He has been a postdoctoral fellow at Yale University and Professor of Political Theory at the same institution. He is recognized as one of the leading international experts on the work of Alexis de Tocqueville. He has published in several languages and has been distinguished with several national and international awards.

Mario Noya (Madrid, Spain, 1976) is a journalist. He has been linked for 20 years to Libertad Digital (Spain), where he was staff writer of International, head of Opinion, editor-in-chief of La Ilustración Liberal and co-host of LD Libros (esRadio) -and now he is a contributor to Es la Noche de Dieter (esRadio)-; and for the last two years he has been the editor-in-chief of voz.us, an online newspaper aimed at the U.S. Hispanic community but with a pan-Hispanic outreach. He has been co-founder and editor-in-chief of elmed.io, a Spanish digital magazine specializing in the Middle East, and is a member of the civic association Pie en Pared (Spain).

Alexandre Padilla is a Professor, the Chair of the Economics Deparment, and the Director of the Exploring Economic Freedom Project at Metropolitan State University of Denver. He has a BS, MA, and Doctorate in Economics from l’université d’Aix-Marseille. His current research involves studying how insider trading is perceived among academics and nonacademics. Other research interests include studying self-governance mechanisms in nontraditional industries and economic policy related to immigration.

Max Rangeley is the Editor of The Cobden Centre. He is the CEO of ReboundTAG Ltd, which produces microchip luggage tags and has been showcased by Lufthansa and featured on BBC World among other media outlets. Max has a Master’s in economics, following this he was given a scholarship to do a PhD at the London School of Economics, but decided instead to go straight into business.

Roberto Salinas León is the director of the Atlas Network’s Center for Latin America. He is president of the Alamos Alliance, a renowned economic colloquium that is held annually in Álamos, Sonora. He was a representative of The Economist Conferences in Mexico, from 1997 to 2010.

Pedro Schwartz is a Spanish politician, economist, jurist and former president of the Mont Pelerin Society. A distinguished personality in the classical liberal cicles, he has received several awards and distinctions among which stand out the Honorable Officers of the British Empire, the King Juan Carlos I Prize in Economics and the King Jaime I Prize in Economics, full member of the Royal Academy of Moral and Political Sciences, José Ortega y Gasset Essay and Humanities Prize for his work “En busca de Montesquieu”, “La democracia en peligro”. He has written more than 20 books focused on economic liberalism.

George Selgin is professor of economics at the Terry College of Business, University of Georgia; senior fellow at the Cato Institute and Director emeritus of the of the Center for Monetary and Financial Alternatives. He formerly taught at George Mason University, the University of Hong Kong, and West Virginia University. His main research areas are monetary and banking theory, monetary history, and macroeconomics. Selgin holds a PhD from New York University and a BA from Drew University.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb spent 21 years as a risk taker (quantitative  trader) before becoming a researcher in philosophical, mathematical and (mostly) practical problems with probability. 


Taleb is the author of a multivolume essay, the Incerto (The Black Swan, Fooled by Randomness, Antifragile, and Skin in the Game) covering broad facets of uncertainty. His work has been published  into 49 languages.

In addition to his trader life, Taleb has also written, as a backup of the Incerto, more than 70 technical and scholarly papers in mathematical statistics, genetics, quantitative finance, statistical physics, medicine, philosophy, ethics, economics, & international affairs, around the notion of risk and probability  (grouped in the Technical Incerto).

Taleb is currently Distinguished Professor of Risk Engineering at NYU’s Tandon School of Engineering (retired) [and, finance related bio only: scientific advisor for Universa Investments]. His current focus is on the properties of systems that can handle disorder (“antifragile“).

Taleb refuses all honors and anything that “turns knowledge into a spectator sport”.

Luis Carlos Ugalde was president of the Federal Electoral Institute and has held key positions in government and the foreign service. He has been a researcher and professor at institutions such as Harvard, CIDE and ITAM, and is a renowned political analyst in media. Currently he is CEO of Integralia Consultores, he holds a degree in Economics from ITAM and a PhD in Political Science from Columbia University.