About Us

Peter Young

Managing Director

Peter is the managing director of the Free Cities Foundation. He leads the operational management of the foundation, with oversight over project delivery, communications and finance.

Before joining the Free Cities Foundation, Peter spent most of his career based in Beijing supporting trade links between the UK and China.

Jan Bertram

Director of Operations

Jan is the Director of Operations for the Free Cities Foundation. Jan is passionate about advancing liberty in his lifetime and envisions special zone jurisdictions as the biggest opportunity to move forward. He manages daily operations and leads the Foundation’s projects.

Nikola G. Petrovski

Web Administrator

Nikola G. is a web developer working with front end technologies such as WordPress and JavaScript. He has a background in non-profit organizations and libertarian student movements. At the Foundation, he develops and maintains websites.

Juan D. Estevez

Operations Assistant

Juan D. studies political science at the Goethe University in Frankfurt. Born and raised in socialist Bolivia, he currently lives in Germany, where he co-founded and chairs the Frankfurt Students for Liberty. He is Campus Ambassador of the Foundation for Economic Education and Young Affiliate at the Network for Constitutional Economics and Social Philosophy.

Kristy Gilger

Head of Marketing

Kristy is the Foundation’s head of marketing, leading on our social media and communications strategy. She graduated from the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising in Los Angeles. She has over a decade of experience working across multiple industries including non-profits, real estate, and healthcare. She is passionate about expanding the freedom of individuals to pursue a better life.

Joyce Brand

Writer

Joyce is a writer and editor. She is co-author of the book Economics and the Spiritual Life of Free Men, and the intellectual heir of philosophers Spencer Heath and Spencer Heath MacCallum. She lives in the ZEDE Ciudad Morazán in Honduras, a prototype Free City based on the ideas of the two Spencers.

Hynek Fencl

Head of Research

Hynek has a degree in Politics and International Relations from the University of Cambridge and a background in media and journalism as a writer. His interests encompass political-economic aspects of Free Cities as well as urbanism. At the Foundation, he leads research into free communities around the world.

Vera Kichanova

Senior Economist

Dr Vera Kichanova is an urban economist exploring the future of private governance. Besides the Free Cities Foundation, she works at Zaha Hadid Architects as urban policy advisor. Vera’s career has spanned roles including elected Municipal Councillor in Moscow, Editor-in-Chief with Atlas Network in Kyiv, and President of the Oxford Hayek Society. She is a Frédéric Bastiat Fellow at the Mercatus Center (US), a contributor to the Adam Smith Institute (UK) and a Mont Pèlerin Society member.

Vera holds a PhD in Political Economy from King’s College London, a Master of Public Policy from the University of Oxford, and a BA in Journalism from Moscow State University.

Baixu

Content Creator

Baixu supports the work of the Foundation by creating videos that explain our core ideas. She is a licensed architect in the UK and Germany with architecture degrees from the universities of Cambridge, Bath and University College London. Baixu sees Free Cities as a means to unleash the creative power of architects by allowing them to build more mixed-use, human-scale urban spaces where thriving communities can develop.

Tamara Milakovic

Graphic Designer

Tamara Milakovic is a visual designer for Free Cities Foundation. She specializes in branding and intuitive interface design.

Timothy Allen

Creative Director

Timothy has had a 25-year career in the media, starting in London’s Fleet Street as a multi-award-winning photographer, then producing films for the likes of BBC Earth and the Discovery Channel. He hosts the Free Cities Podcast.

Titus Gebel

Foundation Council President

Dr Titus Gebel is the inventor of the Free Private Cities concept and CEO of TIPOLIS Corporation. He is a serial entrepreneur with a doctorate in law who has founded a number of companies, including multinational energy and resources group Deutsche Rohstoff AG. In 2015, Titus resigned as CEO of Deutsche Rohstoff to devote himself entirely to his new project: Free Private Cities.

Titus wants to create an entirely new product in the “market of living together” which aims to fast-track economic and societal progress. His new enterprise, TIPOLIS, focusses on the practical side of Free Private Cities implementation by partnering commercially with trade zones and city authorities around the world.

Marc-Felix Otto

Foundation Council Member

Marc-Felix Otto is a Foundation Council Member of the Free Cities Foundation, having supported the idea of contract-based government for over 20 years and authored scientific articles on the topic of coercion together with Rahim Taghizadegan.

He is a Partner at The Advisory House, a leading management consultancy to the energy industry in S/A/G.

Marc holds a PhD in Physics and lives with his wife and two sons in Switzerland.

Olivier Kessler

Foundation Council Member

Olivier Kessler is an economist, publicist and director of the Liberal Institute in Zurich. Previously, he worked for several public affairs, media and finance companies. Olivier studied International Affairs & Governance at the University of St. Gallen.

In 2017-18 he led the campaign for the liberal “No Billag” initiative in Switzerland as the president of the association for the abolition of compulsory media tax. He is a member of the Friedrich A. von Hayek Society and the jury for the Roland Baader Award.

Olivier is co-author of the book “64 Klischees der Politik: Klarsicht ohne rosarote Brille” (2020) and author and co-editor of several books.

Johannes Viehbacher

Foundation Council Member

Johannes N. Viehbacher is an attorney at law and public notary in the Principality of Liechtenstein. He has extensive legal experience across countries in German-speaking central Europe.

He is a member of the European Bar Association D.A.CH., the Deutscher Anwaltsverein (DAV) (German Bar Association), the “International Legal Relations” working group in the German Bar Association, the Deutsche Anwalts- und Steuerberatervereinigung für die mittelständische Wirtschaft (DASV) (German Bar and Tax Advisors Federation for Medium-sized Enterprises) and the International Association of Young Lawyers (AIJA), and he represents Munich within the International Business Law Consortium (IBLC)

His focus for many years has been economic (criminal) legal mandates between Liechtenstein, Germany, Austria and Switzerland.

Rahim Taghizadegan

Chief Economist

Rahim Taghizadegan is the last Austrian economist of the Austrian School in the direct tradition and has been teaching at universities in Austria, Liechtenstein, Switzerland, and Germany.

As one of the last Viennese polymaths, he is also a physicist (specialization in nuclear physics and complex systems), philosopher, investor and entrepreneur.

He has written more than a dozen books, some of them best-sellers, and is the founder of the private university Scholarium in Vienna, where the Austrian School is kept alive in its original interdisciplinary form of the Hayek- and Mises-Circles. He is originally from Iran, but has grown up in Austria and studied in Switzerland and the US.

Alex Voss

Senior Advisor

Alex is a Senior Advisor of the Free Cities Foundation. He has a background in investment banking and joined Titus Gebel as the CFO of TIPOLIS Corporation from its beginning.

Alex lives in Chicago and is working to expand the ideas of the Foundation to the Americas. He studied economics and finance at University of Chicago and Notre Dame and holds the CFA Charter. More recently Alex has formalized his study of Austrian Economics under the tutelage of the Mises Institute.

William Markus

Free Cities Ambassador

William Markus is a co-founder and partner at the Pacioli Network, an international consulting network focused on Corporate Performance Management.

William is also a staunch supporter of the Free Cities movement. He believes that more decentralization and competitiveness in governance improves the lives of people from all walks of life.

Joe Quirk

Free Cities Ambassador

Joe Quirk is President of The Seasteading Institute and co-founder of Blue Frontiers.

Joe is also a science writer, novelist, and memoir ghostwriter, with a national bestseller in each category. He is co-author with Patri Friedman of Seasteading, an Amazon bestseller in the category of marine engineering.

Joe leads a team of lawyers, engineers, business leaders, artists, and investors to establish the first floating community with unprecedented political autonomy in the waters of a host nation.

Annette Heinisch

Free Cities Ambassador

Annette Heinisch is a lawyer with special expertise in international banking, currency, and constitutional law, including financial constitutional law. Apart from her own practice, she works as a consultant for medium-sized companies.

Annette’s belief that the opportunity to live the life that one wants to live is the most essential part of human dignity has led her to support and promote Free Cities as a way to give more people such a chance.

Patrik Schumacher

Free Cities Ambassador

Dr. Patrik Schumacher is principal of London-based Zaha Hadid Architects, with a track record of highly esteemed and award-winning projects.

He is teaching at various architectural schools in Europe and the US including Harvard University. Additionally, he has been involved in several master plan projects worldwide, such as Singapore One North. His contribution to the discourse of contemporary architecture includes the concept of a market-based urban order. He will support the planning and design of Free Private Cities.

Magatte Wade

Free Cities Ambassador

Magatte Wade is a U.S.-based entrepreneur who manufactures products in Senegal that are sold at US Whole Foods Markets. She serves as the Director of the Center for African Prosperity of the Atlas Network, and is an advocate of entrepreneurship and economic freedom in Africa. She seeks to empower Africans to become prosperous innovators.

Magatte has spoken at the U.N., Aspen Institute, Clinton Global Initiative, MIT, Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Dartmouth, Cornell, Wharton, UC-Berkeley, and more. Forbes named her one of the “Twenty Young Power Women of Africa.” She is working on developing new zones in Africa that create jobs and broad-based prosperity.