Chafuen Short Bio
Alejandro “Alex” Antonio Chafuen is Managing Director, International, of the Acton Institute. A U.S. citizen, born in Argentina in 1954, and a graduate of the Argentine Catholic University and Grove City College, Chafuen received his Doctorate under Dr. Hans F. Sennholz, a disciple of Ludwig von Mises. He also received an honorary doctorate from the Universidad Francisco Marroquín. While at Grove City College he wrote his doctoral dissertation on the Christian roots of the free-market economy which was later published under the title of Faith and Liberty and has been translated into Portuguese, Chinese, Polish, Czech, Italian, Slovenian and Spanish. He has been member of the Mont Pelerin Society since 1980 and President of the Philadelphia Society (2017-2018). In 2007 he received the Nassau Institute Freedom Prize, in 2010, the Global Leadership Award from the Leadership Institute US, and in 2014, the Walter Judd Freedom Award from The Fund for American Studies. In 2017 he received the Mengzi – Marco Polo Award from the the Italian-Chinese Association for the Development of Economics and Culture (ASECIC). Chafuen writes a column for Forbes.com on economic policy, think tanks and international issues http://www.forbes.com/sites/alejandrochafuen/
Chafuen is Chairman the board of the Chase Foundation of Virginia and on the governing board of several think tanks including the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, Fraser Institute, in Canada; Center for Legal Integrity (US); and the Fundación Internacional para La Libertad (Madrid). He is past president of the American Friends of the IEA (UK) foundation and current Vice President of CEDICE US (Venezuela). He is also chairman and founder of the Hispanic American Center for Economic Research (www.hacer.org), and the International Freedom Educational Foundation (www.theifef.org). He is a trustee of Grove City College, and member of the John Templeton Foundation, The World Charity Foundation and the Templeton Religion Trust.
He is past president of the Atlas Network (1991-2017) also known as Atlas Economic Research Foundation) which works to help create and nurture free-market think tanks across the globe.