Francisco Pérez is an activist, educator and researcher. He is currently an Assistant Professor of Economics at the University of Utah and a Senior Economist at the Center for Economic Democracy. Previously, he served as Director of the Center for Popular Economics, a nonprofit collective of political economists whose programs and publications demystify the economy and put useful economic tools in the hands of people fighting for social and economic justice. Francisco has worked on social and economic development projects in Brazil, the Dominican Republic, Guinea, Senegal, Sierra Leone, the US and Venezuela. He worked for the Museum for African Art in NYC and was a member of a collective of artists fighting to free political prisoners called the “Scientific Soul Sessions.” He was also a Margaret Burroughs Fellow at the Social Justice Initiative at the University of Illinois-Chicago. He has a PhD in economics from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, an MPA from the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs and an AB from Harvard University.