Born and raised in Israel, Yaron served as a first sergeant in Israeli military intelligence and earned a BSc in civil engineering from Technion-Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa, Israel. Yaron admits to being a socialist until the age of 16--then he read Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged. Despite his best efforts to poke holes in Rand's arguments, he couldn't, and went on to become a student of Rand's philosophy, Objectivism.In the late 1980s, Yaron and his wife started thinking about where in the world they would want to live their lives and raise a family. Where could they find the greatest amount of freedom and the greatest amount of opportunity? The answer was clear, so in 1987 they emigrated to the United States. He would go on to become an American citizen in 2003.Yaron received his MBA and PhD in finance from the University of Texas at Austin. For seven years he was an award-winning finance professor at Santa Clara University, and in 1998 he cofounded a financial advisory firm, BH Equity Research, of which he is presently managing director and chairman.While in America, Yaron continued studying Ayn Rand's philosophy. In the mid-1990s, he joined the Ayn Rand Institute's new educational program, the Objectivist Graduate Center. It was in the OGC (now expanded into the Objectivist Academic Center) that Yaron deepened his knowledge of Objectivism, thanks to the efforts of teachers such as Rand's heir, Leonard Peikoff, as well as leading Objectivist thinkers Harry Binswanger and Peter Schwartz.It was also during this time that Yaron launched Lyceum International, an organization that for many years ran conferences on Objectivism.In 2000 Yaron left teaching to become the president of the Ayn Rand Institute. Since then he has become a leading advocate of Rand's ideas. His articles have been featured in major publications such as the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and Investor's Business Daily, and he is a frequent guest on radio and TV. In addition to co-authoring Free Market Revolution, Yaron is co-author of Neoconservatism: An Obituary for an Idea and a contributor to Winning the Unwinnable War: America's Self-Crippled Response to Islamic Totalitarianism.Yaron lives in Orange County, California.