Miguel A. Soto-Class

Mike Soto-Class is the President for the Center for the New Economy in San Juan, Puerto Rico. He has had a wide range of experience in both the private and public sectors. In the private sector he has worked at law firms in Puerto Rico and the U.S. and in the banking sector as Assistant to the President of a bank in San Juan. He has also worked in the non-profit sector with California Rural Legal Assistance in San Francisco and has been involved with United Way and the Boys and Girls Clubs, where he served as a Board member, in Puerto Rico. In the Public Sector he has served as an appointed member of the Policy Group drafting a gubernatorial campaign platform and as Director of Public Policy and Legal Counsel in the Senate of Puerto Rico.

Mike has a B.A. from Yale University and a Juris Doctor from Vanderbilt University.

He is a past appointee by the Governor of Puerto Rico to the Board of Directors of the Corporation for National Service in Puerto Rico and to the Advisory Board of the Department of the Family. He has also been appointed by the President of the University of Puerto Rico to serve on the Board of Directors for the University Press. He is a member of the Board of Directors of the Baldwin School of Puerto Rico; the Advisory Council for the Conservation Trust of Puerto Rico; and the YouthSave Advisory Board at the New America Foundation in Washington, D.C. He was selected as an Aspen Institute Ideas Fellow in 2008.

In 1999, Mike founded the Center for the New Economy (CNE), Puerto Rico’s first think-tank. CNE is an independent, nonprofit, research and policy development organization dedicated to promoting innovative economic development strategies. In 2003 CNE received the prestigious Zenith Award for Best Non-Profit from the Chamber of Commerce.

Mike has been a columnist for El Nuevo Día, Puerto Rico’s largest circulation daily, since 2003. His first book, The Economy of Puerto Rico: Restoring Growth, was published by the Brookings Institution in 2006.