Nathalie Mezza-Garcia

(Managing Director)

Nathalie is the Managing Director of the Institute for Decentralized Governance and also serves as the Managing Editor of the Journal of Special Jurisdictions. She’s originally a doctor of the University of Warwick in the UK, where she focused her research on the study of new, alternative and local forms of governance and complex systems theory. Specifically, she did her thesis on the creation of blockchain based special jurisdictions floating on the waters of indigenous communities. Her research has had an impact beyond academia. It's been featured in 5 continents, 23 countries and in more than 15 languages, including Forbes, Business Insider and CNBC. She’s also the founder and CEO of Seaphia, a consultancy and business development company for special jurisdictions and aquatecture.Both organizations try to create small, alternative forms of governance. Nathalie brings to the Institute of Decentralized Governance a unique perspective on the future of governance, with heterarchical political systems, startup societies (or special jurisdictions) and, of course, complexity.

Joseph McKinney

(Director)

Joseph McKinney launched his career in electoral politics by participating in local, state and national political campaigns. In 2014, Joseph entered the blockchain space and was shortly thereafter introduced to key leaders in the Zone development sector.

In 2015, Joseph founded the Startup Societies Foundation, a nonprofit Zone policy think tank, the mother organization of the Institute for Competitive Governance. . Under his leadership, SSF hosted over 100 speakers at dozens of sold-out conferences. He also serves as CEO of Nuhanse Network and is currently writing his first book on innovative Zones.

CEO of the Catawba Digital Economic Zone

Tom W. Bell

(Academic Director)

Professor Tom W. Bell earned his J.D. from the University of Chicago in 1993, then practiced law in Silicon Valley and Washington, D.C., before serving as a policy director at the Cato Institute.

Bell has published papers on copyright, Internet law, polycentric law, prediction markets, and the Third Amendment (the one about quartering troops). His books include “Intellectual Privilege: Copyright, Common Law, and the Common Good" (Mercatus, 2014) and “Your Next Government? From the Nation State to Stateless Nations” (Cambridge University Press, 2018).

Bell also advises companies developing special economic zones on the design of their legal systems.

Bell has published papers on copyright, Internet law, polycentric law, prediction markets, and the Third Amendment (the one about quartering troops). His books include “Intellectual Privilege: Copyright, Common Law, and the Common Good" (Mercatus, 2014) and “Your Next Government? From the Nation State to Stateless Nations” (Cambridge University Press, 2018).

Juliana Rodriguez

(Operations Support)

Manuel Sosa

(Web Developer)

Bell has published papers on copyright, Internet law, polycentric law, prediction markets, and the Third Amendment (the one about quartering troops). His books include “Intellectual Privilege: Copyright, Common Law, and the Common Good" (Mercatus, 2014) and “Your Next Government? From the Nation State to Stateless Nations” (Cambridge University Press, 2018).

Alex Tabarrok

(Advisor)

Alex Tabarrok is Bartley J. Madden Chair in Economics at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University and a professor of economics at George Mason University. He specializes in patent-system reform, the effectiveness of bounty hunters compared to the police, how judicial elections bias judges, and how local poverty rates impact trial decisions by juries. He also examines methods for increasing the supply of human organs for transplant, the regulation of pharmaceuticals by the FDA, and voting systems.

Lotta Moberg

(Advisor)

Lotta Moberg is a senior macro analyst on the Dynamic Allocation Strategies team at William Blair. She has Ph.D. in economics from George Mason University, where she also taught classes in economics. Lotta has previously worked for the Swedish foreign ministry in Russia, the Swedish Defense Forces in Kosovo, and the World Bank as a consultant. She has published in several economics journals, including the Journal of Institutional Economics and the Review of Austrian Economics. Lotta wrote her PhD dissertation on special economic zones and is the author of the book "The Political Economy of Special Economic Zones." She has also researched areas such as tax policy and municipal bankruptcy.

Patri Friedman

(Advisor)

Patri Friedman founded The Seasteading Institute in 2008 with seed funding from PayPal founder Peter Thiel. He also founded the annual Ephemerisle floating festival. Friedman, the grandson of economist Milton Friedman, currently works at Google, runs a micro-venture capital fund, and lives with his family in San Jose, California.

About the Institute for Decentralized Governance

Nathalie Mezza-Garcia

Joseph McKinney

Tom W. Bell

Juliana Rodriguez

Manuel Sosa

Alex Tabarrok

Lotta Moberg

Patri Friedman

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