Andrei Illarionov is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute's Center for Global Liberty and Prosperity, and is one of Russia's most forceful and articulate advocates of an open society and democratic capitalism.  

From 1993 to 1994 Illarionov served as chief economic adviser to Viktor Chernomyrdin, prime minister of the Russian Federation. He resigned in February 1994 to protest changes in the government's economic policy. In July 1994, Illarionov founded the Institute of Economic Analysis and became its director. From 2000 to December 2005, he was the chief economic adviser of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Illarionov also served as the president's personal representative in the G-8.

In October 2006, Illarionov was appointed senior researcher of the Cato Institute’s Center for Global Liberty and Prosperity in Washington, DC. In this position, he has lamented Russia's new corporate state in which state-owned enterprises are governed by personal interests and private corporations have become subject to arbitrary intervention to serve state interests as well as new ways in which political, economic and civil liberties are being eliminated.  Illarionov is one of the 34 first signatories of the online anti-Putin manifesto Putin must go, published on March 10, 2010.

Illarionov received his Ph.D. from St. Petersburg University in 1987. He has coauthored several economic programs for Russian governments and has written three books and more than 300 articles on Russian economic and social policies.