ABOUT JEFFREY
EVERY JOURNEY BEGINS WITH A QUESTION
Mine began with one I couldn’t stop asking.
THE STORY BEHIND THE MISSION
WHY ARE WE POOR?
It is the simplest question I have ever asked. It has also been the most important.
Long before I studied economics, served on public boards, advocated for homeowners, or spoke about public policy, I was simply a young boy trying to understand the world around me. I wanted to know why some families struggled while others flourished. Why some nations created opportunity while others seemed trapped in instability. Why freedom appeared abundant in some places but scarce in others.
That question became the compass that has guided every chapter of my life.
I did not grow up dreaming of titles or public office. I grew up searching for answers.
A Childhood of Question
I was born in Guatemala during one of the most turbulent periods in the nation’s modern history. For thirty-six years, Guatemala endured a civil war that left deep wounds across the country. Violence, fear, political instability, and limited economic opportunity became part of everyday life for millions of families. Mine was one of them.
My mother made the most difficult decision a parent can make. She left. Not because she wanted to leave her children, but because she loved us enough to believe that temporary separation offered the only path to a better future. Like countless immigrants before her, she sacrificed years with her family so that my sister and I might someday have opportunities she never had.
As a child, I didn’t fully understand the weight of that sacrifice.
I only knew that my mother wasn’t there.
I knew we struggled financially.
A New Country. A New Opportunity.
I knew that somewhere to the north was a country called the United States—a place that seemed almost impossible to imagine.
Growing up, I watched movies like The Mighty Ducks. To many people, they were simply family films. To me, they were a window into another world. I saw neighborhoods that felt safe, schools filled with opportunity, and communities where children seemed free to dream about the future rather than worry about the present.
Even then, I found myself asking the same question. Why? Why did one country appear to offer such extraordinary opportunity while another struggled to provide even the basics?
That question followed me into adulthood.
When I immigrated to the United States as a teenager, I wasn’t just entering a new country. I was entering the country that had occupied my imagination for years. America represented more than economic success. It represented possibility.
Everything felt different.
The opportunities.
The institutions.
The belief that tomorrow could be better than today.
Like every immigrant, I faced challenges. I had to learn a new language, adapt to a different culture, and build a life in a country that was still unfamiliar.
There were moments of uncertainty and moments of self-doubt. But there were also moments I’ll never forget.
The day I realized I understood every word of an English song playing on the radio.
The day I became the first person in my family to earn a degree from an American university.
The day I raised my right hand and became a citizen of the United States.
The first time I walked into a polling place and exercised my right to vote in a presidential election.
Each of those moments represented something larger than personal achievement. They represented opportunity. They represented freedom. They represented the promise that had inspired my mother’s sacrifice years earlier.
Yet even after becoming an American, one question still remained unanswered.
Why had one nation created those opportunities while another had struggled to do the same?
The Search for Answers
That search eventually led me to economics.
Not because I wanted to become an economist. Because I wanted to understand the forces that shape human flourishing.
I immersed myself in the study of business, political economy, and economics—not merely to earn degrees, but to answer the question that had followed me since childhood. Along the way, I encountered thinkers whose ideas profoundly shaped my understanding of society. Frédéric Bastiat taught me about justice and the proper role of government. Henry Hazlitt showed me how policies must be judged by their long-term consequences, not merely their immediate effects. Friedrich Hayek warned how freedom can erode gradually when power becomes increasingly centralized. Ludwig von Mises demonstrated that economics begins with purposeful human action, while Carl Menger explained how prosperity emerges through voluntary exchange and individual choice.
For the first time, the pieces began to fit together.
The answer wasn’t geography.
It wasn’t luck.
It wasn’t natural resources.
The difference between prosperous societies and struggling societies rests on the ideas and institutions they embrace.
When people are free to innovate, build businesses, own property, exchange voluntarily, and pursue their aspirations under the rule of law, opportunity expands. When those foundations weaken, prosperity becomes more difficult to sustain.
Those discoveries transformed my life.
Economics stopped being an academic discipline.
It became a lens through which I understood history, public policy, and human potential.
Years later, another pivotal moment reinforced those convictions.
Turning Ideas into Action
During the COVID-19 pandemic, I watched governments around the world respond with extraordinary emergency measures. Although the circumstances differed greatly from those of my childhood, the experience reminded me that liberty should never be taken for granted. It reinforced my belief that preserving freedom requires thoughtful citizens, strong institutions, and a constant willingness to ask difficult questions about the proper balance between individual liberty and government authority.
That realization marked a transition in my own life.
I no longer wanted merely to study ideas.
I wanted to put them into practice.
Honoring the Sacrifice
Today, my work reflects that commitment.
Whether helping immigrants become citizens, promoting educational opportunity, defending homeowners’ property rights, serving on public boards, or advancing policies that expand opportunity, my purpose remains rooted in the same question that first captured my imagination as a child.
I believe ideas matter because ideas shape institutions.
Institutions shape opportunity.
And opportunity changes lives. Mine is one example.
My mother chose America because she believed a freer society would give her children the opportunity to build a better future.
She was right.
Everything I have accomplished—every degree, every leadership role, every opportunity to serve—can be traced back to that act of courage and faith. My story is not simply an immigrant story. It is an American story. It is the story of what becomes possible when freedom is protected, opportunity is expanded, and individuals are empowered to pursue their own potential.
That is why I continue to speak, write, teach, and serve. Because somewhere today, another young person is asking the same question I once asked.
Why are some societies able to create opportunity while others struggle to do so?
My life's work has been devoted to finding that answer. My mission is to help others discover it—and, together, build communities where freedom, responsibility, and opportunity can flourish for generations to come.
— Jeffrey C. Baldwin
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