Liberty in Our Lifetime

Dr. Titus Gebel is the inventor of the Free Private Cities concept and CEO of TIPOLIS. 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 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 Cities implementation by partnering commercially with trade zones and city authorities around the world.

Patri Friedman spent 10 years coding at Google, starting in 2004, and has run the angel fund ZIG since 2011. His personal investments include Palantir (2009 => IPO 2020) and Matterport (2011 => IPO 2021). In 2008, he founded the Seasteading Institute with seed funding from Peter Thiel, in 2009 started Ephemerisle, the largest self-organizing festival on water, and in 2011 co-founded Future Cities Development which had the first MOU for a modern charter city in 2012.

Patri is on the board of the Startup Societies Foundation and advises a variety of new governance projects. He speaks and interviews regularly around the world. He has a BS in Math from Harvey Mudd, an MS in CS from Stanford, and an MBA.

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 Cities.

Mr Ivan Ko is the CEO of Victoria Harbour Group and Chairman of RECAS Group and a Director of At Home Foundation. 

Mr Ko was born in Hong Kong and speaks fluent Cantonese, English and Mandarin.  He graduated from the Chinese University of Hong Kong in 1984 and studied a master degree course in real estate development in the University of Hong Kong. 

Mr Ko has 27 years of real estate development and real estate finance experience in Hong Kong, China, Macau, US and UK. He was the Chairman and CEO of a mortgage service company – Advantage China Limited which he set up in JV with the International Finance Corporation (The World Bank), Deutsche Bank, Netherlands Development Finance Company (FMO) and another institutional investor. He was the Managing Director and Head of Real Estate Asset Management of two listed financial institutions – SW Kingsway Capital Holdings Limited and Value Convergence Holdings Limited, in which he set up real estate funds for the China and Macau market.  He set up the RECAS Group in 2004. 

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. 

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.

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.

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.

Mason Leschyna is the Chair of Atlas Island, an organization dedicated to supporting individual sovereignty by applying the principles of Free Cities to the world of seasteading. Atlas Island aims to become an archipelago of independent seasteading platforms which adhere to a common set of rules that protect natural rights. The project has a five-stage plan for developing an online community of seasteaders into a full offshore community. You can find out more about Atlas Island on their official website: Atlas Island.

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.