AF Announces New Executive Director and Chairman

America’s Future Foundation is excited to announce two leadership changes. The board of directors elected Richard Lorenc as chairman and Cindy Cerquitella as executive director. Richard succeeds Carl Helstrom, who served as chairman for the last two years and will continue to serve on the board. Cindy succeeds Roger Custer as executive director, who departed in August.

Richard N. Lorenc is the chief operating officer (COO) of the Foundation for Economic Education (FEE). FEE is making the ideas of liberty familiar and credible to the rising generation. As COO, Lorenc supports FEE’s business unit leaders, supervises program measurement, directs artwork and corporate communications, and participates in fundraising and strategic planning. Lorenc also serves as managing director of FEE’s Youth Education & Audience Research (“YEAR”) project. Lorenc is involved in a variety of civic, educational, and professional development organizations. He serves on the board of directors of the Coalition to Reduce Spending, Inc. A dual American-Polish citizen, Lorenc serves on the advisory board of the Freedom and Entrepreneurship Foundation (Fundacja Wolności i Przedsiębiorczości). Lorenc is graduate of both the Charles Koch Institute’s Liberty@Work program and the Atlas Network’s Leadership Academy, including the Think Tank MBA. His background includes service at the Illinois Policy Institute, America’s Future, and Truth in Accounting. Lorenc has traveled to over 30 countries and is widely published on topics ranging from constitutional government to LGBT rights and design. He is a graduate of Emory University (where he continues to play the double bass with the Emory University Symphony Orchestra), and lives in beautiful Lake Claire, Atlanta, with his husband, Colin Caldarera.

Cindy Cerquitella is executive director at America’s Future Foundation. Cindy has spent her career empowering champions of freedom across the globe by giving them the skills, support, guidance, and community they need to take the ideas of liberty and spread them throughout their countries. Her work at the Atlas Network, first in institute relations and later as the developer of the Atlas Leadership Academy, provided guidance and training to hundreds of free-market think tanks, as well as thousands of individuals dedicated to making a difference in their communities. With the Atlas Leadership Academy, she developed a suite of online courses and hosted live classes with world changers like Matthew Elliott, Tyler Cowen, Darcy Olson, and Dan Pallotta. She developed dynamic and innovative in-person courses hosted on six continents, and she spearheaded the now-famous John Blundell Elevator Pitch and Think Tank Shark Tank competitions. During her early years in Washington, DC, she also worked part-time planning galas, dinners, panel discussions, and networking events for America’s Future. She studied political economy at Hillsdale College, has a certificate in facilitation from Georgetown University’s School of Continuing Studies, and spent her high school years in Budapest, Hungary, where her parents directed an international Christian school. She’s more comfortable on an airplane than on the ground but is happy as long as a good cup of coffee is close by.