Francisco Pérez is a solidarity economy activist, educator and researcher. He is a Co-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.  He is also an Assistant Professor of Economics at the University of Utah, and a Fellow at the Center for Economic Democracy.  Francisco has worked on social and economic development projects in Brazil, the Dominican Republic, Guinea, Senegal, Sierra Leone, the US and Venezuela. He has a PhD in economics from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.  His research focuses on the political economy of the CFA Franc, a currency union of fourteen West and Central African countries.