To inquire about one of our speakers, please write to editor@freetochoose.net. We’ll do our best to coordinate with potential speakers and put them in touch with you.

John Stossel

John Stossel joined Fox Business Network in 2009. He hosts Stossel, a weekly program highlighting current consumer issues with a libertarian viewpoint, which debuted on December 10, 2009. Prior to joining FBN, Stossel co-anchored ABC’s primetime newsmagazine show, 20/20. He is a graduate of Princeton University, with a BA in psychology.

George Shultz

A native of New York, Mr. Shultz graduated from Princeton University in 1942. After serving in the Marine Corps (1942-45), he earned a PhD at the Massachussetts Institute of Technology. Mr. Shultz taught at MIT and the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business, where he became dean in 1962. He was appointed Secretary of Labor in 1969, Director of the Office of Management and Budget in 1970, and Secretary of the Treasury in 1972. From 1974 to 1982, he was President of Bechtel Group, Inc. Mr. Shultz served in the Reagan administration as Chairman of the President’s Economic Policy Advisory Board (1981-82) and Secretary of State (1982-89). Since 1989, he has been a Distinguished Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. Mr. Shultz is willing to speak on a venue-appropriate topic.

Ben Wattenberg

Ben J. Wattenberg is a Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C. He is the moderator of the weekly PBS television program Think Tank with Ben Wattenberg. His most recent major project was The First Measured Century, an effort to understand, explain and dramatize American life through the lens of social and economic data. Wattenberg is the author of eight additional books, including Values Matter Most (1995), The First Universal Nation (1991), The Birth Dearth (1987), The Good News is the Bad News is Wrong (1984), The Real America (1974), and co-author with Richard M. Scammon of The Real Majority (1970), considered the best-selling "bible" of the 1970 and 1972 elections, This U.S.A. (1965) and a novel, Against All Enemies, co-authored with Ervin Duggan. Ben J. Wattenberg graduated from Hobart College in 1955, and was awarded an honorary Doctor of Laws degree from Hobart in 1975.

Magatte Wade

Magatte Wade, born in Senegal, educated in France, launched her entrepreneurial career in the San Francisco Bay area. She is fluent, and conducts business, in Wolof, French, and English. Magatte’s first company, Adina World Beverages, was founded in her home kitchen and was originally based on indigenous Senegalese beverage recipes using organic ingredients. The company has attracted talent from beverage industry leaders, and is now carried in major national retailers across the U.S. As a consequence, Adina is the most widely distributed U.S. consumer brand founded by an African entrepreneur. Magatte recently launched her second company, The Tiossano Tribe, which produces and retails luxury organic skin-care products. Her products can be found at high-end specialty boutiques and at www.tiossano.com. She also serves on the board of the SEED Academy (Sports for Education and Economic Development), a private school in Senegal that prepares Senegalese athletes to succeed academically and athletically on basketball scholarships in the NCAA. She writes for The Huffington Post, Barron’s, and other publications. The World Economic Forum named her one of their Young Global Leaders for 2011 and Forbes named her one of the "20 Youngest Power Women in Africa" in 2011. She blogs at www.magatte.wordpress.com and at www.tiossano.com/blog.

Mario Villareal-Diaz

Mario Villarreal, a former Fulbright fellow, is a professor and Research Chair in Strategic Intelligence at the Public Policy Graduate School at the Instituto Tecnológico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey in Monterrey, Mexico, and an Affiliated Senior Scholar at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. His professional experience includes numerous research and consulting projects for both the private and public sectors, particularly on issues of regulation, industrial organization, and the provision of public goods. In 2005, he received his PhD in Economics and Political Science from Claremont Graduate University. When he is not thinking about economics and politics, you can find him at the nearest soccer field, playing the real foot-ball game.

Michael Strong

Michael Strong is the CEO of Freedom Light Our World (FLOW), co-founded with John Mackey, co-CEO of Whole Foods Market. Michael is also the co-founder of The Free Cities Institute, through which he promotes Milton Friedman's idea of eliminating poverty by creating "Hong Kongs" around the world. Prior to founding FLOW, he spent fifteen years as an educational entrepreneur, including creating a charter school ranked the 36th best public high school in the U.S. He did his dissertation work at the University of Chicago under economics Nobel laureate Gary Becker, whom Friedman once described as "the best student I ever had." He is the lead author of Be the Solution: How Entrepreneurs and Conscious Capitalists Can Solve All the World's Problems, co-authored with John Mackey, Nobel Peace Prize laureate Mohammad Yunus, and Hernando de Soto; and author of The Mystery of Capital and others.

Fred Smith

Fred Smith is an expert in the advancement of capitalism. The President and Founder of the Competitive Enterprise Institute since 1984, Mr. Smith combines intellectual and strategic analysis of complex policy issues ranging from the environment to corporate governance with an informative and entertaining presentation style. He is also a frequent guest on national television and radio programs to discuss and debate regulatory initiatives and topical policy issues. Currently, he sits on the Institute Turgot in Belgium. Mr. Smith holds a BS degree in Theoretical Mathematics and Political Science from Tulane University where he earned the Arts and Sciences Medal (Tulane’s highest academic award) and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa.

Ken Schoolland

Ken Schoolland is presently an Associate Professor of Economics and Political Science at Hawaii Pacific University. He is an economist, academic, author, and political commentator. Schoolland is also a member of the Board of Directors for the International Society for Individual Liberty, and a Sam Walton Fellow for Students in Free Enterprise. He is author of the “Free Market Odyssey” Jonathan Gullible teaching the ideas of liberty in a simple form. Schoolland studied Political Science at American University and earned his Master of Science in Foreign Service from Georgetown University.

Michael Sanera

Michael Sanera is Director of Research and Local Government Studies at the John Locke Foundation. He served as a policy analyst for the Washington, DC based The Heritage Foundation, and the Competitive Enterprise Institute and the California based Claremont Institute. In the early 1990s, Sanera was the founding president of the Goldwater Institute in Arizona, a state-based think tank studying Arizona public policies. At that time, the Goldwater Institute laid the groundwork for Arizona’s first-in-the-nation school reforms, including its innovative charter school legislation. On Milton Friedman he says "Capitalism and Freedom is one of three books that influenced me and a generation."

Lawrence Reed

Lawrence Reed is currently the President of the Foundation for Economic Education, after serving as President of the Mackinac Center for Public Policy for its first two decades. He has served on the Boards of Directors of many libertarian think tanks and has delivered more than 1,000 speeches worldwide on the topics of liberty. A member of the Mont Pelerin Society, Reed has an extensive history of spreading the ideas of freedom, and has made himself available to discuss the legacy of Milton Friedman on the world.

Don Racheter

Dr. Racheter is the Founder and current President of the Public Interest Institute in Mt. Pleasant, Iowa. He has over 20 years teaching experience in American political economy and philosophy. Having used Free to Choose in the classroom throughout his teaching career, Don offers his services to speak on the legacy of Milton Friedman.

Karen Palasek

Dr. Palasek is currently the Director of Educational and Academic Programs at the John Locke Foundation. Dr. Palasek's teaching experience includes positions in economics at Tuskeegee Institute, the University of Hartford, George Mason University, Johns Hopkins University, Towson State University, North Carolina State University, Campbell University, and Peace College, among others. Upon moving to North Carolina in 1993, she spent nine years as a full-time homeschool parent before joining the Locke Foundation while maintaining an adjunct college teaching role. She received her B.Mus.Ed. from Hartt College of Music at the University of Hartford, the MA in Economics from the University of Connecticut, and her PhD in Economics from George Mason University.

David Nott

David Nott is president of Reason Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to advancing free minds and free markets. Under Nott's leadership, Reason's public policy experts have advised President George W. Bush, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, Florida Governor Jeb Bush, and numerous other officials on how to shrink the burden of government. His professional experience includes six years as president of the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, where he is credited with developing and implementing a business plan that led to a 250 percent increase in revenue. He earned a Bachelor of Arts and Sciences, with Distinction, in Economics and Petroleum Engineering from Stanford University.

Joshua Muravchik

Joshua Muravchik is a Fellow at the Foreign Policy Institute of the Johns Hopkins University School for Advanced International Studies and is also a Fellow in Human Freedom at the George W. Bush Institute. He was once (1968-1973) the National Chairman of the Young People’s Socialist League. In coming to grips with his own past, Muravchik wrote Heaven on Earth: The Rise and Fall of Socialism (Encounter; 2001), the definitive account of history’s greatest illusion. Mr. Muravchik, who received his Ph.D. in International Relations from Georgetown University, is also the author of eight other books and more than 400 articles on ideology, politics and international affairs, contributing to, among others, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, the International Herald Tribune, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, The New York Times Magazine, Commentary, The New Republic, and The Weekly Standard. Some years back, The Wall Street Journal's op-ed editor wrote: "Muravchik may be the most cogent and careful of the neoconservative writers on foreign policy."

Rich Lowry

Editor of The National Review, Rich Lowry has written for The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The Los Angeles Times, and a variety of other publications. His book, Legacy: Paying the Price for the Clinton Years, was a New York Times bestseller. Lowry graduated from the University of Virginia in 1990 after studying English and history.

Herb London

Herbert I. London is President Emeritus of Hudson Institute. He served as the Institute's President from December 1997 to March 2011. He is professor emeritus and the former John M. Olin Professor of Humanities at New York University. London was responsible for creating the Gallatin School of Individualized Study in 1972 and was its dean until 1992. This school was organized to promote the study of "great books" and classic texts. Herbert London is a graduate of Columbia University, 1960 and the recipient of a PhD from New York University, 1966.

Brad Lips

Chief Executive Officer of Atlas Network since 2009, Lips received his MBA from the Goizueta Business School of Emory University and his BA from Princeton University. Previously, Lips was a research associate for Smith Barney Inc. He is a member of the Mont Pelerin Society and the John Templeton Foundation. He has written on classical liberal ideas, including The Reagan Vision, published by the Goldwater Institute, and two chapters in Freedom Champions, published by Atlas in 2011.

Dwight Lee

Professor Lee received his PhD from the University of California, San Diego in 1972. Since that time he has had full-time tenured faculty appointments at the University of Colorado, Virginia Tech University, George Mason University, and the University of Georgia, where he was the Ramsey Professor of Economics and Private Enterprise from 1985-2008. He is currently the William J. O’Neil Professor of Global Markets and Freedom at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. Professor Lee's research has covered a variety of areas including the economics of the environment and natural resources, the economics of political decision making, public finance, law and economics, and labor economics. During his career Professor Lee has published 145 articles in refereed journals, 272 articles and commentaries in magazines and newspapers, 49 chapters in books, 33 book reviews, 9 monographs, coauthored 14 books, and been the contributing editor of 4 more. He has lectured at universities and conferences throughout the United States as well as in Europe, Central America, South America, Asia and Africa.

Steven Landsburg

Steven E. Landsburg is a professor of economics at the University of Rochester (where students recently elected him "Professor of the Year"), the author of several popular books on economics including the widely praised Armchair Economist, and a prolific blogger at www.TheBigQuestions.com. He's been a regular columnist at both Forbes and Slate, and his op-eds appear from time to time in both The Wall Street Journaland The New York Times. His most popular lecture titles include "More Sex is Safer Sex: Some Surprises from Economic Theory" and "How to Fix Everything: The Power of Economic Growth". He also lectures frequently on population growth (he's for it!), income redistribution (he's largely against it!), tax policy, and the power of incentives.

Babu Joseph

Professor Babu Joseph is currently President of the free-market think tank, Liberal Group-Kerala based in Kottayam, India. The think tank received Honorable Mention for the John Templeton Freedom Award in 2006, and members of the Indian group travelled to the Berlin School for Freedom conference in 1973 during the heyday of Cold War politics. He is willing to speak on the influence Milton Friedman had on Indian classical liberal thinking after independence.

Gary Hoover

Gary Hoover travels the world speaking to Fortune 500 executives, trade associations, entrepreneurs, and college and high school students about how enterprises are built and how they stand the test of time. His speeches and workshops have ranged from the Hong Kong and Jakarta chapters of EO (Entrepreneurs' Organization) to keynote at the National Association of Convenience Stores Convention and the Mid-Atlantic Venture Capital Conference, from Microsoft and Oracle client conferences to strategic planning meetings of major law firms. He talks about the role of history, of geography, of demography, of curiosity, and the other key things that aren’t discussed every day in the newspaper—or the classroom. As part of his education, he studied economics at the University of Chicago under Milton Friedman and two other Nobel Prize winners.

Joshua Hall

Professor Hall received his PhD in economics from West Virginia University and graduate and undergraduate degrees in economics from Ohio University. Formerly an economist for the Joint Economic Committee of the U.S. Congress, Professor Hall has an extensive background in writing for scholarly audiences as well as for policy makers and citizens. In addition to authoring or co-authoring over 100 journal articles, book chapters, and academic book reviews, numerous articles and reviews, he is co-author of the widely-cited annual Economic Freedom of the World report.

Kenneth Green

Currently with the American Enterprise Institute, Kenneth P. Green has studied public policy and regulation at free-enterprise think tanks across North America for nearly 20 years. An environmental scientist by training, Ken focuses on policy and regulations involving energy and environmental health. He has previously been Executive Director of the Environmental Literacy Council as well as holding positions at the Frasier Institute and Reason Foundation. Ken is a prolific writer of policy studies and articles, blogs regularly at AEI’s Enterprise Blog, and is a monthly contributor to AEI’s web magazine, The American. He speaks frequently to the public and in the media, and has testified before regulatory and legislative bodies at local, state, and federal levels. Ken holds a BS in biology from UCLA, a MS in molecular genetics from San Diego State University and a D.Env. in environmental science and engineering from UCLA.

Veronique de Rugy

Veronique de Rugy is a senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. She was previously a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a policy analyst at the Cato Institute, and a research fellow at the Atlas Economic Research Foundation. Her primary research interests include the federal budget, homeland security, taxation, tax competition, and financial privacy issues. She writes a column for Reason magazine and is a regular contributor to The American, AEI's online magazine. She also blogs at "The Corner" at National Review Online and at Big Government.

Roy Cordato

Dr. Roy Cordato is currently Vice President for Research at the John Locke Foundation and an expert on discussing corporate social responsibility. From 1993-2000 he served as the Lundy Professor of Business Philosophy at Campbell University in Buies Creek, NC. From 1987-1993 Dr. Cordato was Senior Economist at the Institute for Research on the Economics of Taxation (IRET) in Washington, DC. He has served as full-time economics faculty at the University of Hartford and at Auburn University and as adjunct faculty at Johns Hopkins University. In 2000 he received the Freedoms Foundation's Leavey Award in Free Enterprise Education. Cordato holds an MA in urban and regional economics from the University of Hartford and a PhD in economics from George Mason University. He also holds a Bachelor of Music Education degree from the Hartt School of Music.

Bob Chitester

Bob Chitester is the Founder and President of Free To Choose Network. With David and Janet Friedman, Chitester is a partner of Free To Choose Enterprise, and manages licensing and sales of Free To Choose. Free To Choose is the award-winning PBS TV series hosted by Milton Friedman, and also the name of Friedman's best-selling book based on the series. Chitester conceived the project and was Executive Producer of the series. Bob was formerly President and CEO of the Erie, Pennsylvania PBS and NPR stations (WQLN and WQLN-FM). He received BA and MA degrees from the University of Michigan, and the Honorary Doctor of Literature degree from Allegheny College.

Kenneth Chilton

Dr. Kenneth Chilton is expert on the topic of the economics of environmental policy. He has spent 30 years researching, teaching and speaking on the economics of climate change policy, the Clean Air Act and sustainable development. He most recently founded and directed the Institute for Study of Economics and the Environment at Lindenwood University in St. Charles, Missouri. Prior to that he was an administrator and researcher for 24 years at the Weidenbaum Center on the Economy, Government and Public Policy (formerly the Center for the Study of American Business). He is available for lectures on topics in his area of expertise.

A. Lawrence Chickering

Lawrence Chickering, founder and President of Educate Girls Globally, has worked for more than thirty years on designing and implementing reforms of government institutions and policies to empower disadvantaged people. EGG is the third policy institute he has either founded or co-founded. His experience in reframing issues to broaden political support is crucial for EGG, promoting an issue that is controversial in some places. He is currently working on two new books: one presenting a strategy for promoting girl’s education, and a second, co-authored book on citizens and foreign policy. Mr. Chickering has been associated with many international organizations, including Freedom House, the Council on Foreign Relations, the Pacific Council for International Policy, and Search for Common Ground. He is a graduate of Stanford University and the Yale Law School, and is currently a Research Fellow at the Hoover Institutions.

Art Carden

Art Carden is an Assistant Professor of Economics at Rhodes College in Memphis, Tennessee, a Research Fellow with the Oakland, California-based Independent Institute, a Senior Fellow with the Beacon Center of Tennessee, and a member of the adjunct faculty of the Ludwig von Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama. He's also on Twitter: @artcarden. He likes to talk about "the economic way of thinking" and understands the impact of Milton Friedman's ideas on our lives.

Bryan Caplan

Bryan Caplan is an Associate Professor of Economics at George Mason University and an adjunct scholar of the Cato Institute. His articles have appeared in The American Economic Review, The Economic Journal, The Journal of Law and Economics, Social Science Quarterly, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and many other outlets. He is also the author of The Myth of the Rational Voter: Why Democracies Choose Bad Policies and Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids: Why Being a Great Parent Is Less Work and More Fun Than You Think.

Eamonn Butler

Dr. Eamonn Butler is Director and co-founder of Britain’s leading free-market policy think tank, the Adam Smith Institute, and a leading author and broadcaster on economics and social issues. Westminster insiders look forward each week to his wry online commentary on politics and politicians. Eamonn is the winner, with his colleague Dr. Madsen Pirie, of the 2010 National Free Enterprise Award, for the greatest contribution to furthering the market economy. He is Vice-President of the Mont Pelerin Society, an international association of distinguished economists and entrepreneurs, founded in 1947 by the Nobel Prize winner F. A. Hayek. Eamonn is author of books on a wide range of subjects, from economics through psychology to politics. These include easy-read introductions to the economists Milton Friedman, F. A. Hayek and Adam Smith, and a short explanation of how markets work, is called (modestly) The Best Book on the Market, which he wrote to be “so simple that even politicians can understand it.”

Robert Bradley

Robert L. Bradley Jr. is the CEO and founder of the Institute for Energy Research. As one of the nation’s leading experts on the history and regulation of energy markets, he has testified before the U.S. Congress and the California Energy Commission, as well as lectured at numerous colleges, universities, and think tanks around the country. Bradley is a visiting fellow at the Institute of Economic Affairs in London, an honorary research fellow at the Center for Energy Economics at the University of Texas at Austin, and an adjunct scholar at both the Cato Institute and the Competitive Enterprise Institute. Bradley received a BA in economics from Rollins College, where he also won the S. Truman Olin Award in economics, an MA in economics from the University of Houston, and a PhD in political economy from International College. In 2002 he received the Julian L. Simon Memorial Award for his work on energy and sustainable development.