Yaron Brook

Yaron Brook was born in 1961 in Jerusalem

Yaron Brook was born in Jerusalem and grew up in Haifa. His parents were Jewish socialists who came from South Africa. At 16 he read Ayn Rand's novel Atlas Shrugged and became interested in Objectivism.

After high school he served in Israeli military intelligence from 1979 to 1982. He earned a degree in civil engineering from the Technion in 1986. In 1987 he moved to the United States, where he earned an MBA in 1989 and a PhD in finance in 1994 at the University of Texas at Austin.

From 1993 to 2000 he taught finance at Santa Clara University, with research on corporate governance, banking and dividends. In 1994 he co-founded Lyceum International, which ran Objectivist conferences, and in 1998 he co-founded BH Equity Research.

In 2000 he became president and executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute, a post he held until 2017, when he became chairman of its board. He launched The Yaron Brook Show podcast in 2015. With Don Watkins he wrote books defending laissez-faire capitalism, published in 2012, 2016 and 2017.