Gar Alperovitz, Lionel R. Bauman Professor of Political Economy at the University of Maryland, is co-founder of The Democracy Collaborative and a former Fellow of the Institute of Politics at Harvard and King's College of Cambridge University. He served as a Legislative Director in the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate and as a Special Assistant working on United Nations matters in the Department of State. Earlier he was President of the Center for Community Economic Development and of the Center for the Study of Public Policy. His numerous articles have appeared in publications ranging from The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Atlantic to The Journal of Economic Issues, Foreign Policy, Diplomatic History, and other academic and popular journals. His latest book is America Beyond Capitalism (2011, with a foreword by Gus Speth). Among other recent books:  Unjust Deserts (2008, with Lew Daly); Making a Place for Community (2002, with Thad Williamson and David Imbroscio); and The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb (1995).

Read Gar Alperovitz's E. F. Schumacher Lecture, "Distributing Our Technological Inheritance."
Read his article, "America Beyond Capitalism: The Pluralist Commonwealth."
Listen to his lecture at the University of Michigan, "Might There Be an America beyond Capitalism?"
Read his article, "The New-Economy Movement."
Read his report, Climate Change, Community Stability, and the Next 150 Million Americans.
Watch his lecture, "The Possibility of Profound Change in America."

 
David Barber spent his childhood summers working on his family's Blue Hill Farm in the Berkshire region of western Massachusetts. His love for the farm and dedication to protecting it through sustainable business activities led to Blue Hill's expansion beyond the farm's borders: he partnered with his wife and brother in 1999 to open Blue Hill Restaurant in New York City. The collaboration helped expand a neighborhood bistro into a broad effort to establish Blue Hill prominently in the sustainable-food movement. He developed the financial strategies that define how the restaurant, food purveyors, and the public interrelate. Blue Hill Farm's ongoing operations continue to provide critical reference points and perspective.
 
David is a founder of the Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture (2001) in Pocantico Hills, NY. This unique not-for-profit operation works in association with the Barbers' second Blue Hill restaurant located on the grounds of the farm and education Center. The HayLoft, a corporate event facility at Stone Barns, opened in 2009. Business clients now enjoy access to a fully equipped meeting space that complements interactive programming on sustainability, resiliency, and award-winning cuisine. 
 
David serves on the Board of Directors of Stone Barns Center and the Jacob Burns Film Center in Pleasantville, New York, and is a Trustee of Connecticut College. He is a graduate of the Collegiate School in NYC, Connecticut College, and the Program for Managment Development at Harvard Business School.

Rafael J. Betancourt is an urban economist with over 25 years of employment and academic experience in international development and management, urban economics and planning, and business administration and consulting. He is Senior Associate of the Canadian Urban Institute (CUI) and a research consultant for the Canadian Embassy in Cuba. Born in Cuba, Betancourt teaches urban economics at Havana Polytechnic Institute (ISPJAE) and at the San Geronimo de La Habana University College. He also teaches local development at the Cuban Association of Economists and Accountants (ANEC). He studied in the United States and holds a Masters in International and Urban-Regional Economics from the University of Florida in addition to a Masters in Urban and Regional Planning from Havana Polytechnic Institute.

Merrian Goggio Borgeson is a researcher at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL). Her work focuses on the financing and deployment of energy efficiency and renewable energy along with workforce development opportunities in these sectors. Prior to joining LBNL she partnered on clean energy projects with the Renewable and Appropriate Energy Laboratory, the Vermont Energy Investment Corporation, the California Public Utilities Commission, SunPower Corporation, and New Resource Bank. Merrian is the past co-chair of the Berkeley Energy and Resources Collaborative (BERC) and founding chair of the UC Berkeley Energy Symposium. She was director of the Sustainable Business Network of Greater Philadelphia and managing director of the Business Alliance for Local Living Economies (BALLE). She currently serves on the boards of BALLE and the Goggio Family Foundation and is an adviser to the New Economics Institute. Merrian has an MBA from the Haas School of Business, a Masters from the Energy & Resources Group at UC Berkeley, and a BA in International Relations from Stanford University.

David Boyle is a fellow of the new economics foundation, where he has worked in various capacities since 1987—writing and editing, developing new projects, launching the time-bank movement in the UK, advising on the future of money and volunteering, and most recently participating in research on localism and the future of public services. He is the author of a range of books about money, change, and the future, including Funny Money; The Tyranny of Numbers; Authenticity; Money Matters; and The Human Element: Ten new rules to kick-start our failing organizations. He also writes history books. David advises politicians and has run for Parliament in the UK.

 
David Brancaccio specializes in telling stories important to our democracy and our economy through the eyes of the real people who live at the cross hairs of crucial issues. His accessible yet authoritative approach to both investigative reporting and in-depth interviewing has earned his work the highest honors in broadcast journalism, including the Peabody, the Columbia-duPont, the Emmy, and the Walter Cronkite Awards.
 
Leading the Economy 4.0 team as Special Correspondent at American Public Media’s daily radio program Marketplace, David explored ways to make the economy better serve more people.  He served as host of Marketplace from 1993-2003 and as its London-based Europe correspondent from 1990-1993. He recently completed a special reporting project for Marketplace entitled “Robots Ate My job,” which explores the squeeze on the middle class produced by advances in technology.
 
As the longtime host and senior editor of public television’s NOW on PBS broadcast, David brought his engaging, probing style to beats that included business and finance, the environment, national security, and human rights. His documentary film about economic alternatives entitled “Fixing the Future” will be released in 2012.
 
David has contributed to CNN, MSNBC, CNBC, The Nightly Business Report, the BBC, The Baltimore Sun, The WallStreet Journal, and Britain’s The Guardian. He is author of the book Squandering Aimlessly, a nationwide odyssey that speaks to Americans about money and values.
 

Robert Braun, Ph.D., is chairman of the New Economics Forum in Budapest, Hungary. He also runs a business- focused Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) consultancy, bringing together specialists from the fields of social accounting, sustainable development, business strategy, and communication. Prior to his CSR work Braun  was strategy director for Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsány in Hungary and previously acted as communication director for Prime Minister Peter Medgyessy. Currently a strategy adviser to the Governor of the Hungarian National Bank, he is an Associate Professor of Corporate Social Responsibility and Marketing at Corvinus University of Economics in Budapest.  
Braun is a recognised expert in social thinking, strategy, and communications. He has 20 years of professional experience in marketing, branding, and communication, including 8 years of dealing with CSR issues. In pre-transition Hungary he led NGOs such as the Raoul Wallenberg Association and other human rights organizations. He has worked extensively internationally, including serving on commissions in the UK, Israel, and other European Union countries. Braun has lectured widely in the EU and the US and has conducted research at Rutgers University in the US and the Institute for Advanced Study in the Netherlands.

Deneene C. Brockington has 20 years of nonprofit leadership experience, including but not limited to program development and strategic planning. She is Director of the Community Currency System called Equal Dollars in Philadelphia, a multifaceted noninterest-bearing currency providing its members with a service that improves their communities and/or the lives of other members within the Equal Dollars community. The Equal Dollars are then exchanged for goods and services made available by community members and outside donations. As Director, Deneene oversees the day-to-day operations of the program, including redistribution of over $1,000,000 in retail value of donated goods and services to the 1200 plus members who have traded community-service hours to improve their community in various capacities. Over 220,000 units of Equal Dollars have gone into circulation. The Equal Dollars System operates a Community Food Market, the Treasure Chest Thrift Boutique, a Business to Business Exchange, and the Equal Dollars Urban Farm. 

 
Peter Brown’s teaching, research, and service are concerned with ethics, governance, and the protection of the environment. His appointments at McGill are in the School of Environment, the Department of Geography, and the Department of Natural Resource Sciences. He was the first full-time Director of the McGill School of Environment, which is involved in building programs with McGill’s Faculties of Arts, Science, Agricultural and Environmental Sciences as well as Religious Studies, Law, Engineering, Management, and Medicine. 
 
Before going to McGill Brown was Professor of Public Policy at the University of Maryland’s Graduate School of Public Affairs. While there, he founded the Institute for Philosophy and Public Policy as well as the School of Public Policy itself and established the school’s Environmental Policy Programs to operate not only at the University’s College Park campus but also at Maryland’s Department of the Environment and at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.    
 
Brown has held numerous administrative positions within the University of Maryland System. He has also taught at Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, at the University of Washington, and at St. John's College in Annapolis. In the early 1970s he was a Visiting Fellow at Battelle Seattle Research Center and Assistant Vice-President for Research Operations at The Urban Institute.  He is currently a research scholar at the Center for Humans and Nature. 

Lisa Byers has been the Executive Director of OPAL Community Land Trust (CLT) in Eastsound, WA (Orcas Island) since 1996. She was a co-founder of the Northwest Community Land Trust Coalition and of the National CLT Academy, also serving as the first President of National Community Land Trust Network. Prior to OPAL, Lisa was the Land Steward for the San Juan County Land Bank and worked for ten years as a manager of historic properties for Historic New England/SPNEA, based in Boston, MA. She has an M.B.A. in public and nonprofit management from Boston University and a B.A. from Vassar College.
www.opalclt.org
www.cltnetwork.org

Emanuele Campiglio works at the New Economics Foundation on the macroeconomics and modelling of a just and sustainable economic system, a critical part of the Foundation's work on the Great Transition. He has an academic background in economics, having graduated from Bocconi University of Milan. He then completed an MSc in Cooperation and Development at the University of Pavia and worked in various Latin American countries as a researcher. Emanuele is currently completing his PhD in Economics at the University of Pavia and the School of Oriental and African Studies, with a dissertation on sustainability of growth, common resources, and climate change. He is the author of With the World on its Shoulders: Global Issues and the Limits to Growth.

Chuck Collins is a senior scholar at the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS), where he directs its Program on Inequality and the Common Good.  He co-edits the web resource, www.inequality.org, an online portal for analysis and commentary. An expert on U.S. inequality and the economic crisis, he is a member of the New Economy Working Group (www.neweconomyworkinggroup.org) and co-founder of Wealth for the Common Good (www.wealthforcommongood.org), a national network of business leaders, small business owners, and wealthy individuals concerned about tax fairness and shared prosperity.
 
Chuck is the author of 99 to 1: How Wealth Inequality is Wrecking the World and What We Can Do About It (Berrett Koehler Publishing, March 2012) and co-author, with Bill Gates Sr., of Wealth and Our Commonwealth (Beacon Press, 2003), which makes the case for taxing inherited wealth and preserving the federal estate tax. His other books include Economic Apartheid in America: A Primer on Economic Inequality and Insecurity (New Press, 2005) and The Moral Measure of the Economy (Orbis, 2005).

Rupert Crilly is a senior researcher on the Natural Economies team at the new economics foundation.  Before that he was a scientific researcher: in Brunei he worked on orang-utan conservation, assessing the rainforest for their potential rehabilitation; in Canada he researched bone metabolism, then moved to France to study the evolution of bone mineralization. He has published in the peer-reviewed journal PLoS (Public Library of Science) on Natural Killer cells, focusing on the immune cell synapse. This work aimed to show how signals from cells such as cancers and virus-infected cells can elicit an immune response. Rupert received a  degree in biology from Imperial College London and subsequently has moved into economics, studying  at London School of Economics in 2008 and completing an MSc at University College London in 2009. His main research areas are the impact of growth on the environment, valuing the environment, and how policy can be made to increase sustainability.
 

Lew Daly is Director of the Sustainable Progress Initiative and Senior Fellow at Demos. He is leading a multi-year project on implementation of “Beyond GDP” metrics in federal- and state-level governance in the United States and also manages a research program on economic alternatives to mass consumerism. Lew is co-author of a recent Demos report, Beyond GDP: New Measures for a New Economy, and was previously Director of Demos’s Fellows Program, having come to Demos as a Senior Fellow in 2007.    
 
In addition to his program work, Lew writes on religion and economic policy as well as welfare-state development. His recent books include Unjust Deserts: How the Rich are Taking our Common Inheritance (with Gar Alperovitz, The New Press, 2008), which proposes a new theory of distributive justice for the era of the knowledge economy, and God's Economy: Faith-Based Initiatives and the Caring State (University of Chicago Press, 2009), a comparative study of church-state law and welfare governance in Europe and the United States. He has published articles, reviews, and commentary in many publications, including Newsweek, Democracy, Policy Review, Commonweal, Boston Review, Dissent, and Tikkun. His work has been covered in The Wall Street Journal, The Financial Times, The Weekly Standard, The Christian Century, Commonweal, and The Nation, among others. Lew is a frequent guest on radio programs, a guest contributor at Front Porch Republic, co-editor of a series of on-line forums with The Democratic Strategist, and an editorial consultant to the Economic Crisis Study Team of the Presbyterian Church USA. He was previously a senior fellow of the Schumann Center for Media & Democracy, where he worked closely with then president Bill Moyers on special projects.

 
Felix Dodds develops and manages projects for Stakeholder Forum, represents the organization at UN events, and helps organize and facilitate the involvement of Major Groups in the UN system both domestically and internationally. He was an NGO advisor to the UK Government at the UN Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD) (1993-96) and the European Commission (1997-98). Dodds co-chaired the CSD NGO Steering Committee (1997-2001), which coordinated the involvement of NGOs in the UN Commission on Sustainable Development. He  attended the UN Rio Summit, Habitat II, Earth Summit II, Beijing+5 and Copenhagen+5.

Steve Dubb is Research Director of The Democracy Collaborative at the University of Maryland and has worked for the Collaborative since 2004. He is the principal author of Linking Colleges to Communities: Engaging the University for Community Development (2007) and Building Wealth: The New Asset-Based Approach to Solving Social and Economic Problems, published by The Aspen Institute in 2005. In 2010 Steve co-authored a number of reports, including The Road Half Traveled: University Engagement at a Crossroads (with Rita Axelroth Hodges) and Growing a Green Economy for All: From Green Jobs to Green Ownership (with Deborah Warren). He also  conducted (with Ted Howard) the initial strategic planning that led to the development of the Evergreen Cooperative initiative in Cleveland, Ohio, and currently assists efforts to adapt that model to meet the needs of other cities.

Severine von Tscharner Fleming is a farmer, activist, and organizer based in the Hudson Valley, NY. She produced and directed a documentary film about the young farmers who are reclaiming, restoring, retrofitting, and respecting this country. Titled "The Greenhorns," the film resulted in a small nonprofit organization of the same name that produces events and new media for and about the young farming community. The mission of Greenhorns is to recruit, promote, and support the growing tribe of new agrarians by means of a weekly radio show on Heritage Radio Network, a popular blog, a wiki-based resource guide for beginning farmers, a GIS-based mapping project, and dozens of mixers and educational events for young farmers all around the country. Greenhorns actively works to provide venues for networking, collaboration, and communication within a large and growing network.
 
Severine co-founded the Pomona Organic Farm, founded UC Berkeley's Society for Agriculture and Food Ecology, and is a proud co-founder of the National Young Farmers Coalition. She attended Pomona College and graduated from the University of California at Berkeley with a B.S. in Conservation/AgroEcology.

Based in New York, Lisa French currently oversees the International Integrated Reporting Councils’s (IIRC) outreach efforts in North and South America. Prior to joining the IIRC, she served as Technical Director at the Global Reporting Initiative and as Principal, Guidance and Support, at the Canadian Institute of Chartered Accountants. Lisa's industry experience includes work at 3M Canada Company, Metso Minerals, and Ford Motor Company. She has also been a consultant for the International Finance Corporation on investment strategies, training programs, and external communications.
 
Lisa has an MBA in Finance and Business & Sustainability from the Schulich School of Business, York University, Toronto. She holds an Engineering Chemistry degree with an Environmental specialization from Queen’s University, Kingston. She is a licensed professional engineer.

Nathan Gilbert is a Program Associate for B Lab, a nonprofit dedicated to the creation of a new sector of the economy that uses the power of business to solve social and environmental problems. He promotes B Lab’s international partnership development, which helps entrepreneurs across the world earn B Corp certification while building a global community of social entrepreneurs. Nathan earned a BA in Ethnomusicology from Indiana University and an MS in Nonprofit Management from the New School for Public Engagement's Milano School of International Affairs, Management, and Urban Policy in New York City. He spent five years working with civil-society development organizations in Eastern Europe before becoming more involved with the for-profit social enterprise sector. Nathan has worked with New York City's Department of Youth and Community Development, the Institute of International Education, and in the Balkans with the Institute for Sustainable Communities. From 2005 to 2007 he served in Ukraine as a Peace Corps volunteer.  He has been employed at B Lab since 2010.  

Neva Goodwin is Co-Director of the Global Development And Environment Institute at Tufts University. She is the lead author of two introductory college-level textbooks: Microeconomics in Context and Macroeconomics in Context, published by M.E. Sharpe. These are the starting points for her endeavor to develop an economic theory— "contextual economics"—that will have more relevance to real-world concerns than does the dominant economic paradigm. The Microeconomics text is available in Italian, Russian, and Vietnamese. Goodwin is also director of a project that has developed a "Social Science Library: Frontier Thinking in Sustainable Development and Human Well-Being." Containing a bibliography of 10,000 titles, including full text PDFs of about a third of these, this material will be sent on USB drives or CDs to all university libraries in 137 developing countries. As a member of the board of Ceres and in other activities outside of her academic work, Goodwin is involved in efforts to motivate business to recognize social and ecological health as significant, long-term corporate goals.

Essay by Neva Goodwin:  "A New Economics for the Twenty-First Century," October 2010.
Lectures by Neva Goodwin: "What Can We Hope for the World in 2075?", November 2010;  Presentation on reforming economics education at the June 5, 2010, founding meeting for the New Economics Institute.
Collected articles click here. 

Alisa Gravitz has been the Executive Director of Green America (www.greenamericatoday.org), the national green economy organization, for 25 years. Green America, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, develops marketplace solutions to social and environmental problems with emphasis on climate change, solar energy, recycled paper, fair trade, and community investment. Major events and publications include Green Festivals, the Green Business Conference, National Green Pages, Green American, and Real Green. Green America operates the nation’s largest green business and consumer networks. Alisa’s board service includes Ceres, Anacostia Watershed Society, Social Investment Forum, and Network for Good. She earned her MBA from Harvard University and her BA in economics and environmental sciences from Brandeis University.

Rachel Erin Greenspan is a senior at Tufts University majoring in Anthropology. She was president of Tufts VOX: Voices for Planned Parenthood in 2011 and has been an organizer in a wide range of student and activist groups both on and off campus. These include Occupy Boston, Students Acting for Gender Equality, and the Student Anarchist Federation. She has worked to improve race and gender equity at Tufts and the broader community and to create alternative spaces where students can challenge institutionalized forms of oppression and experiment with horizontal and consensus-based methods of organization. 

Thomas Harttung is a biodynamic farmer, forester, and food entrepreneur in Denmark. In 1999 he co-founded Aarstiderne (The Seasons), reputedly one of the largest CSAs in the world. It serves more than 40,000 Danish and Swedish households by delivering organic and biodynamic produce, fruit, meat, dairy, and dry goods to their doorstep and employs more than 130 co-workers to generate an annual turnover of $45 million. Apart from cultivating 250 acres of fresh produce on its own land, Aarstiderne collaborates with organic  farms all over Denmark and Sweden, importing fruit and vegetables from fellow growers in southern Europe during  the winter season. The company adheres to a strict no-fly policy for its sourcing. It has pioneered farm-gate-to-doorstep carbon accounting and on-farm offsetting of greenhouse gas emissions  through the Green Carbon Initiative. Aarstiderne is also deeply engaged in teaching schoolchildren how to grow, cook, and understand their own food.
 
Thomas  continues to serve as the nonexecutive chairman of Aarstiderne while developing BlackCarbon,  a groundbreaking carbon-negative energy technology that combines cogeneration, biochar production, and methane capture in agriculture.
 
He  also serves as chairman of ICROFS, The International Centre for Research in Organic Food Systems,  a founding trustee of the Sustainable Food Trust, a commissioner on the Nature and Agriculture Commission in Denmark. He has lectured widely on the future of food and agriculture.
 

Elizabeth Henderson has been farming at Peacework Farm in Wayne County, New York, and has been producing organically grown vegetables for the fresh market for over 30 years. She is a founding member of the Northeast Organic Farming Association (NOFA) in Massachusetts, has been on the Board of Directors of NOFA-NY since 1989, and represents NOFA in the national discussions of organic standards and on the Management Committee of the Agricultural Justice Project. She chairs the Agricultural and Farmland Protection Board in Wayne County and helped organize the Domestic Fair Trade Association. Elizabeth has been honored by the organic industry with one of the first “Spirit of Organic" awards (2001), by Abundance Co-op  with its Cooperating for Communities award (2007), and by NOFA-NY with a Lifetime Achievement Award (2009). Her writings on organic agriculture appear in The Natural Farmer and the NOFA-NY Food, Farms and Folks. One of the authors of The Real Dirt: Farmers Tell about Organic and Low-Input Practices in the Northeast, she is also lead author of Sharing the Harvest: A Citizen’s Guide to Community Supported Agriculture (Chelsea Green, 1999, with a new edition in 2007) and wrote A Manual of Whole Farm Planning (2003) with Karl North. With her former farm partner she wrote A Food Book for a Sustainable Harvest for the members of the Genesee Valley Organic Community Supported Agriculture Project (GVOCSA). Peacework Organic Farm supplies vegetables to the 300-member GVOCSA, now in its twenty-fourth year.

Rebecca Henderson is the John and Natty McArthur University Professor at Harvard University, where she has a joint appointment at the Harvard Business School in the General Management and Strategy units and is the Co-Director of the Business and Environment Initiative. She is also a research fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research. Her work explores how organizations respond to large-scale technological shifts, most recently in regard to energy and the environment. She teaches Leadership and Corporate Accountability and the field study seminar Building Green Businesses in the MBA Program.
 
Henderson sits on the boards of Amgen and of IDEXX Laboratories, and she has worked with  members of the Fortune 100 as well as small, technology-orientated start-ups. She was retained by the U.S. Department of Justice in connection with the remedies phase of the Microsoft trial. In 2001 she was named Teacher of the Year at the MIT Sloan School of Management. Her work has been published in a range of scholarly journals including Administrative Science Quarterly, The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Strategic Management Journal, Management Science, Research Policy, The RAND Journal of Economics, and Organization Science. Her most recent publication is Accelerating Energy Innovation: Insights from Multiple Sectors, edited jointly with Richard Newell and published by the University of Chicago Press for the National Bureau of Economic Research.

Rob van Hilten is co-founder of Qoin, which designs, implements, and helps  set up and manage Community Currencies "out of the box" as well as tailor-made Complementary Currencies. A Dutch not-for-profit organization founded in 1998, Qoin also  researches the impact of Community Currencies and develops new tools and approaches to increase this impact. 
 
Since 1992 Rob has been working as a Community Currency expert. He initiated the Local Exchange Trading System NOPPES and worked for the Social Trade Organization (STRO). He specializes in online banking, administrative processes, strategic information and communication technology, and design of Community Currencies.

Jeffrey Hollender is the founder of Jeffrey Hollender Partners, a business strategy consulting firm, and is a leading authority on social entrepreneurship, corporate responsibility, sustainability, and social equity. More than 23 years ago he co-founded Seventh Generation and went on to build the company into a $150 million natural-product brand known for its authenticity, transparency, and progressive business practices. His passion for changing the negative impact that industry has on the environment and society is evident in each of his seven books, including The Responsibility Revolution: How the Next Generation of Businesses Will Win (2010). He is the 2011-2012 distinguished Citi Fellow in Leadership and Ethics at the NYU Stern School of Business
 
Jeffrey’s first business ventures were in the fields of banking, education, and publishing. He was a co-founder of Brooklyn’s Community Capital Bank and the founder of the Skills Exchange in Toronto and Network for Learning in New York City. He sold Network for Learning to Warner Publishing, a division of Warner Communications in 1985. Chair of the Greenpeace Fund US and a board member of Health Care Without Harm and Verité, a leading workers’ rights organization, he is also co-founder and Board Chair of the American Sustainable Business Council, a coalition of 110,000 business leaders committed to changing the rules of business.

 
Robert Johnson serves as Executive Director of the Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET) and is a Senior Fellow and Director of the Global Finance Project for the Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute in New York. An international investor and consultant to investment funds on issues of portfolio strategy, he recently served on the United Nations Commission of Experts on International Monetary Reform under the Chairmanship of Joseph Stiglitz.
 
Previously Johnson was a Managing Director at Soros Fund Management, where he oversaw a global currency, bond, and equity portfolio specializing in emerging markets. Before that he was a Managing Director of Bankers Trust Company, in charge of a global currency fund.
 
Johnson served as Chief Economist of the U.S. Senate Banking Committee under the leadership of Chairman William Proxmire (D. Wisconsin) and earlier was Senior Economist of the U.S. Senate Budget Committee under the leadership of Chairman Pete Domenici (R. New Mexico).
 
He was Executive Producer of the Oscar-winning documentary, Taxi to the Dark Side, directed by Alex Gibney. The former President of the National Scholastic Chess Foundation, he currently sits on the Board of Directors of both the Economic Policy Institute and the Campaign for America’s Future.
 
Johnson received a Ph.D. and M.A. in Economics from Princeton University and a B.S. in both Electrical Engineering and Economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Kevin Jones founded Good Capital, one of the first for-profit venture funds that invests in social enterprise companies designed to use the market as a tool to solve some of the world’s most complex social problems. He discovered that to help people understand what he was trying to do, he and his peers had to enable people to see that the market at the intersection of money and meaning is a real and thriving place and not an aberration or a heresy. The result was the Social Capital Markets conference, which attracts 1,500 people from 70 countries. Kevin also founded the Hub Bay Area, with more than 1,100 members, a place where change goes to work in San Francisco and Berkeley .
http://www.goodcap.net
http://www.socialcapitalmarkets.net
http://www.hubbayarea.com

Edgar Kampers is co-founder and director of Qoin, which designs, implements, and helps  set up and manage Community Currencies "out of the box" as well as tailor-made Complementary Currencies. A Dutch not-for-profit organization founded in 1998, Qoin also researches the impact of Community Currencies and develops new tools and approaches to increase this impact. 
 
Edgar has been working as a Community Currency expert since 1993. He worked as Director of NU-spaarpas, as researcher at the Social Trade Organization (STRO), and as manager of the Climate and Economy team at SNM (Stichting Natuur en Milieu). At Qoin he focuses on policy strategy, monetary design, legal advice and compliancy, and fundraising as well as monitoring and research.
 
He has an MSc degree in Political Science.

 
Brian Kelly, a  white man of Polish and Irish heritage, received his B.S. in Economics fromthe University of Pennsylvania, with a concentration in Local Development in a Globalized Society. He then spent one year in Guatemala as a human rights accompanier, using his international/racial privilege as a deterrent against politically motivated violence. In rural Guatemala he was inspired by community-driven action on the part of returned refugees to govern their community. In the mountains of Huehuetenango he was faced with the question, What does economic development look like when there is limited infrastructure, limited state involvement, and a limited cash economy? Upon returning to Philadelphia, Brian began work on the community planning and organizing project known as Shared Prosperity, which takes an asset-based community development approach to ensure just and equitable development that is simultaneously people- and place-based. He is an M.S. candidate in the Community Development and Applied Economics program at the Gund Institute for Ecological Economics, where his primary research focuses on just distribution of economic rents associated with natural resources, specifically looking at the governance of groundwater resources in Vermont. Additional areas of interests include how the structure of the monetary system corresponds to persistence of economic growth doctrine and how social justice memes spread through society.

Rina Kuusipalo is a Junior at Harvard, majoring in Social Studies (an inter-disciplinary honors degree in political theory, economics, history, and environmental studies), with minors in Literature and French. This year Rina is working in the lead-up to the Rio+20 Earth Summit at Stakeholder Forum and in human rights law at Leigh Day & Co. She grew up in Finland and, for a short time, in the Borneo rainforest, completing the International Baccalaureate diploma at the United World College of the Atlantic in Britain. Rina has worked in the past at the new economics foundation, Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, 350.org, New Economics Institute, Alternatives for Community and Environment, and a refugee camp in Bethlehem. At Harvard she founded a new economy-focused student group, responsible for organizing the "Transition to a New Economy" conference in April 2012. She is also the Policy Chair of the Harvard Environmental Action Committee and the Conference Chair of the Harvard Undergraduate Legal Committee. As a U.S. youth delegate for SustainUS, Rina has attended UN conferences on climate change as well as sustainable and social development. Recently she co-authored a chapter titled "The Case for a New Economics" for the book Regeneration. Her great interests lie in progressive law, ecological economics, global institutional reconstruction, ecology as a framework for social existence, the concept of justice, and the power of the imagination within the plurality of the human experience.

David Levine is the co-founder and Executive Director of the American Sustainable Business Council (ASBC), a growing coalition of business networks and businesses committed to advancing a new vision, framework, and policies that support a vibrant, equitable, and sustainable economy. The Council brings together the business perspective and experience, the political will and strength to stimulate our economy, benefit our communities, and preserve our environment.  The organizations that have joined in this partnership today represent over 100,000 businesses and social enterprises and more than 200,000 entrepreneurs, owners, executives, investors, and business professionals. http://www.asbcouncil.org 

Chris Lindstrom is a board member of Slow Money and co-founder of the Fund for Complementary Currencies. He has organized numerous conferences and events around the transformation of money and is particularly motivated by a holistic approach to money that advances sustainability and has a positive impact on culture and consciousness. .
 
Chris worked for the E. F. Schumacher Society from 2003 to 2008, spearheading the launch of BerkShares, the local currency of the southern Berkshires in Massachusetts, referenced innumerable times in international press as a model for communities worldwide.

Michelle Long is the executive director of BALLE. Its first co-director, she transitioned to serve on the BALLE board starting in 2003 and later returned as executive director in 2009. Founded in 2002, BALLE is amplifying and accelerating the enormous awakening energy directed toward local economies. Seeing local, independently owned businesses as the key to solving our communities’ toughest challenges and to creating real prosperity, BALLE connects visionary local leaders so they can find inspiration and support. Through intense collaboration BALLE identifies and promotes the most innovative business models for creating healthier, sustainable, and prosperous communities. With a growing network of 22,000 local entrepreneurs spanning 80 communities, BALLE is leveraging the collective voice of this movement to drive new investment, scale the best solutions, and harness the power of local, independently owned business to transform the communities where we work and live.     

Before going to BALLE, Michelle co-founded and was executive director of Sustainable Connections in Bellingham, Washington—one of BALLE's first member business networks. Its membership, now comprised of 700 locally owned businesses, has made Bellingham the nation's top EPA-certified green-power community, a leader in green building, in fostering hundreds of new relationships between farmers and food buyers, and in shifting the purchasing behavior of three out of five households toward choosing independent retailers and services first. NPR's Marketplace called Bellingham the “epicenter of a new economic model,” and the National Resources Defense Council named Bellingham the number one small city in the nation in urban progress toward sustainability. Michelle was named one of the West Coast's "top five leading ladies of sustainability" by the Sustainable Industries Journal. A regular keynote speaker, she is also the co-author of Local First: A How-to Guide and the author of the new Building a Community of Businesses: A BALLE Business Network How-to Kit.

Donnie Maclurcan is co-founder of the Post Growth Institute, an international group exploring inspiring paths to global prosperity that doesn't rely on economic growth. He is the Founder and Ideas Guy at Project Australia, a community organization helping people launch not-for-profit initiatives.
 
His unusually diverse career has included working as co-developer of the (En)Rich List, global organizer for Free Money Day, an exercise physiologist and telephone counsellor, coordinator of a lobby group for Aboriginal justice and a team assisting Sydney’s homeless, a journalist at the World Social Forum in Kenya, coach of the Fijian sailing team, an English and mathematics teacher in South Korea, and event manager for The Great Australian Bike Ride.
 
Donnie is a Fellow of the Royal Society of the Arts, an Honorary Research Fellow with the UTS Institute for Nanoscale Technology, and a Distinguished Fellow at the Schumacher Institute. With fieldwork in Thailand, his Ph.D. resulted in two books: Nanotechnology and Global Equality and Nanotechnology and Global Sustainability, which have been translated into 20 languages. Donnie is currently working on a new book, tentatively titled "Not-for-Profit World." In 2006 he led the development of an award-winning case study for Australian high schools about the drowning of 353 asylum seekers on their way to Australia. He founded Australia’s first professional speakers’ bureau for young social innovators, is one of the youngest to have competed in the Sydney Hobart Yacht Race, and at age 20 achieved the Guinness World Record for the fastest journey on foot across Australia, raising over $35,000 for the Fred Hollows Foundation, for which he remains an ambassador.
 

Heather C. McGhee is  Director of the Washington office of Demos, a New York-based public policy center. Demos blends research, advocacy, and communications in the pursuit of three overarching goals: a more equitable economy with opportunity for all; a more robust democracy in which all Americans are empowered to participate; and a strong public sector that can provide for our common interests and shared needs.
As Director, Heather develops and executes strategy for increasing the organization's impact on federal policy debates concerning issues of democracy reform, economic opportunity and financial regulation, trade and globalization. She is also a frequent commentator in print as well as on radio and television news. In 2010 she became a contributor to Countdown with Keith Olbermann on Current TV.  She is a frequent guest on MSNBC, Fox News, and CNN. Her opinions, writing, and research have appeared in numerous outlets, including the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, National Public Radio, The Washington Post, and The New York Times. She is the co-author of a chapter on retirement insecurity in the book Inequality Matters: The Growing Economic Divide in America and its Poisonous Consequences (New Press, 2005).
 
In 2009 Heather co-chaired a task force for Americans for Financial Reform that helped shape key provisions of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. In 2008 she served as the Deputy Policy Director in charge of Domestic and Economic Policy with the John Edwards for President campaign, helping craft the campaign’s agenda-setting policies to end poverty, halt global climate change, and reform financial services, along with other far-reaching aims.  
 
She holds a B.A. in American Studies from Yale University and a J.D. from the University of California at Berkeley School of Law (Boalt Hall).

 
Bill McKibben is the author of a dozen books, including The End of Nature and Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future. A former staff writer for The New Yorker, he writes regularly for Harper’s, The Atlantic Monthly, and The New York Review of Books, among other publications. In April 2007 he organized the Step It Up national day of rallies, the largest global-warming protest to that date. He is the founder of the grassroots climate campaign 350.org, which has coordinated 15,000 rallies in 189 countries since 2009. Time Magazine called him "the planet's best green journalist," and The Boston Globe said in 2010 that he was "probably the country's most important environmentalist."
 
 Bill McKibben will be presenting "Money and Climate: Can Both Exxon and the Planet Be Healthy?" The event is free and open to all Conference attendees and the general public. 

Katharine Millonzi has a breadth of experience in the sustainability and social change sectors worldwide. As an eco-gastronome and food systems thinker, she brings an integrative, multidisciplinary perspective to the relationship between culture and nature. Her vision is to foster in future generations a passion for responsible environmental stewardship and the rediscovery of vital, place-based food.  
After several years in the international public health sector, Katharine became part of several start-up business ventures—from an artisanal cheesemonger to a fair-trade botanicals company. During her 2007 Fulbright Fellowship in Italy, she conducted research on supply-chain development, traditional food production, and agricultural policy. She went on to direct the Sustainable Food and Agriculture Program at Williams College, where she examined the role of institutional procurement within regional economic development. Katharine holds an M.A. in Food Culture and Communications from the University of Gastronomic Sciences, founded by Slow Food International, and a B.A. from the University of London in Social Anthropology and International Development.
 
A native New Yorker, Katharine is a trained massage therapist and herbalist who finds inspiration in "the peace of wild things."

 
Shireen Mitchell is a web pioneer, author, social entrepreneur, nonprofit leader, advocate and digital media strategist.  Shireen is founder of Digital Sisters, Inc., an organization that focuses on using digital media and technology to support women and their children. As Co-Chair of the Media and Technology Task Force of the National Council of Women's Organizations (NCWO), Ms. Mitchell works to increase participation in technology and media by women. She also sits as the Vice Chair of the parent organization.  Shireenl is on the board of the Center for Partnership Studies and is the Social Marketer for the Caring Economy Campaign (CEC).
 
 
As an author she has written “Gaining Daily Access to Science and Technology” in the book 50 Ways to Improve Women's Lives and Access to Technology: Race, Gender, Class Bias. Shireen covers various areas of tech, media, policy and diversity in articles and blogs. She speaks and provides trainings on topics that include social media strategies with a particular expertise in reaching diverse populations, women in tech, the impact of apps designs, technology and social software on communities across the country and more.  Shireen has been recognized for her work as Fast Company's The Most Influential Women in Technology 2010, DC Tech Titan: Thought Leader , The Root 100: Emerging and established African-American Leaders of Excellence and GovFresh's 100+ Women in Government and Technology. She’s also been awarded the Social Citizen Award: Apps for Democracy DC, Rising Star: Woman of Color in Technology, Heroine in Technology, Community Technology Leader & DC Top Ten Influencers in Social Media.

Thorvald Grung Moe has been with the Levy Institute as a Visiting Scholar since September 2011. He is also a Senior Adviser in Norges Bank (Central Bank of Norway), where he has been working since 1985. Before joining the central bank, he worked at the World Bank and at the Ministry of Finance in Norway. He has consulted widely with the IMF in the Middle East, Latin America and Eastern Europe. His work at Levy deals with financial sector regulations, narrow banking, shadow banks, and the interface between financial stability and monetary policy.

Cynthia Nikitin has led numerous large-scale and complex projects during her 20 years with Project for Public Spaces (PPS). With a portfolio of more than 250 projects, her technical expertise stretches from the development of downtown master plans and transit facility and station area enhancement projects to the creation of corridor-wide transportation and land-use strategies, the coalescing of civic buildings and cultural institutions into civic centers, and the use of place-making to create safer cities and upgrade informal settlements in the developing world. 
 
One focus of Cynthia’s efforts around downtown and civic buildings has been with the U.S. General Services Administration Public Buildings Program. Currently she is spearheading PPS’s alliance with UN Habitat to create 300  public spaces in cities across the developing world in fulfillment of a UN-Habitat General Resolution that seeks to incorporate public-space planning and programming as part of slum upgrading, gender mainstreaming, and urban regeneration projects.  She has led place-making training initiatives for the City Council of Nairobi and City of Johannesburg/Johannesburg Development Authority. The City Council of Nairobi has committed to creating 60  public spaces in that city by 2017.
 
Cynthia authored one of the first books on transportation and livable communities. She has run more than 30 comprehensive transit and corridor planning projects and recently completed a research project for the U.S. Federal Transit Administration, which is seeking to develop evaluation and engagement tools to assist low-income communities in becoming involved in the transportation planning process. 
 
Recent design projects include the public space around a new library for Lee County that will create an eastern anchor for downtown Ft. Myers, Florida ;  a new park site and civic center for the Upper Kirby neighborhood in Houston, Texas; redesign and programming of the civic spaces around the Houston Central Library; a new civic square in Newberg, Oregon, connecting a library to a cultural arts center; and Master Concept Planning for Kaka’ako Makai, a 25-acre public park in Honolulu, Hawaii. 
  
Cynthia has delivered keynote addresses at many U.S. and Canadian Library Association events as well as the Alberta Museum and Americans for the Arts annual conferences.  She is an adjunct faculty member of Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts, and guest lectures at universities across North America and South Korea. 

Richard B. Norgaard is Professor of Energy and Resources at the University of California at Berkeley. Among the founders of the field of ecological economics, his recent research addresses how environmental problems challenge scientific understanding and the policy process, how ecologists and economists understand systems differently, and how globalization affects environmental governance. He has field experience in the Brazilian Amazon, Alaska, and Vietnam with minor forays in other parts of the globe. The author of one book and co-author or editor of three books, he has over 100 other publications spanning the fields of environment and development, tropical forestry and agriculture, environmental epistemology, energy economics, and ecological economics. He is among the 1,000 economists worldwide most cited by other economists and in 2004 was one of ten American economists interviewed in The Changing Face of Economics: Conversations with Cutting Edge Economists. Richard has served on numerous committees of the National Academy of Sciences and the former office of Technology Assessment, was a member of the U.S. Scientific Committee on Problems of the Environment, and served as President of the International Society for Ecological Economics (1998-2001). He has been a visiting scholar at the World Bank and served on the Science Advisory Board of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Read Richard Norgaard's essay, "Sustainable Development Futures."
Read Richard Norgaard's essay,  "A Coevolutionary Interpretation of Ecological Civilization."

 
Noel Ortega is the coordinator of the New Economy Working Group (NEWGroup), which is a partnership between YES! Magazine, the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS), the Business Alliance for Local Living Economies (BALLE), and the People-Centered Development Forum (PCDForum). 
 
He is co-founder of several student organizations such as Global Resistance Network at Mt. San Antonio College and Students To End Hunger and Poverty at the University of California at Irvine, taking on leadership roles with Students for Peace and Justice, the Worker-Student Alliance, United Students for Fair Trade, The Real Food Challenge, and the Student Trade Justice Campaign. He is an OXFAM America CHANGE leader.
 
Noel holds  Baccalaureates in Political Science and Sociology from the University of California at Irvine, where he conducted research on the impact on rural communities of regional free trade agreements between developing countries and developed countries. Before becoming the National Coordinator of the Student Trade Justice Group, he coordinated its campaign Justice For the Americas, which focused on defeating Free Trade Agreements between the United States and Latin America. 

Bob Perkowitz is an entrepreneur, environmentalist, writer, investor, and distance cyclist. Over the past 25 years he has been President of direct marketing and manufacturing organizations with revenues ranging to $600 million, including Cornerstone Brands, Smith+Noble, and Joanna Western Mills. He is currently Managing Partner of VivaTerra LLC; Chairman of Potenco, Inc.; President of Paradigm Management, Inc.; a Director of SRAM, Inc.; and a partner with Firebrand Partners LLC and Arqua Equity Partners LLC. In the nonprofit sector, in addition to his work with ecoAmerica, Bob is on the board of the Environmental Defense Fund, the Environmental Defense Fund of North Carolina, and the Queens University Learning Society. He also serves on the Sierra Club’s National Advisory Council and was a Trustee of the Sierra Club Foundation from 2001-2007. He received a B.S. in Social Thought from Lake Forest College and an M.B.A. from Lake Forest Graduate School of Management.
 
Bob resides in San Francisco and Charlotte, NC, with his wife Lisa Renstrom. He has ridden his bike across North and South America, Australia, and Europe and is currently trying to figure out how to ride across Africa and Asia.

Maria Mercedes Placencia is an Ecuadorian sociologist who has completed studies at the Universidad Abierta de Cataluña, Universidad del Valle de Mexico, Université de Toulouse-Le-Mirail, and  the Universidad de Católica del Ecuador.  Currently she is Undersecretary of the Ministry of Economic and Social Inclusion, encouraging and strengthening the sector of popular economics in Ecuador, working with public policies and programs promoting social production, business, and consumption.
 
Placencia has more than 20 years of national and international experience in social and economic areas, both public and private, of design, execution and evaluation of strategic planning, policy, programs, and projects. She has been involved in various organizations at both the state and local levels, having served as Undersecretary of several Ministries and as Secretary of Development and Social Equity of the Municipality of the Metropolitan District of Quito. In her field of gender equity she was National Director for the National Office for Women and was the founder and General Manager of the National Corporation of Support for Small Businesses, the first public organization created in the 1990s supporting the sector of popular economics. In addition, she has worked in the diplomatic field as Minister of External Services in the Ecuadorian Embassy in France. She is the co-founder of two Foundations, Gender Equality and Small Business. Placencia was an official and consultant for the InterAmerican Development Bank in Washington, D.C., and other international organizations.

Stephen Posner works at the science-policy interface between the design of knowledge systems and enabling conditions for translating ecological economics into action. He is a Sustainability Fellow and Doctoral Candidate at the Gund Institute, University of Vermont, where he develops institutional climate and energy projects, teaches undergraduate courses, and trains student leaders who model and promote environmentally responsible behaviors. He has worked as an independent economic consultant for businesses, NGOs, and governments since 2005. In 2010 he earned an M.S. in Natural Resources and a Certificate of Graduate Study in Ecological Economics from University of Vermont for work on the Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI) in Baltimore City, Baltimore County, and the state of Maryland. Maryland then became the first state in the U.S. to officially report GPI alongside other state statistics. Stephen earned a B.S. in astronomy and physics from Haverford College and studied science education at Stanford University. He lives and plays in Vermont with his wife and two young children.