New Economics Institute


	Bob Massie	President Bob Massie is the President and CEO of the New Economics Institute. An ordained Episcopal minister, he received his B.A. from Princeton Unversity, M.A. from Yale Divinity School, and doctorate from Harvard Business School. From 1989 to 1996 he taught at Harvard Divinity School, where he served as the director of the Project on Business, Values, and the Economy. His 1998 book, Loosing the Bonds: The United States and South Africa in the Apartheid Years, won the Lionel Gelber prize for the best book on international relations in the world. He was the Democratic nominee for lieutenant governor of Massachusetts in 1994 and a candidate for the United States Senate in 2011. During his career he has created or led three ground-breaking sustainability organizations, serving as the president of Ceres (the largest coalition of investors and environmental groups in the United States), the co-founder and first chair of the Global Reporting Initiative, and the initiator of the Investor Network on Climate Risk, which currently has over 100 members with combined assets of over $10 trillion. His autobiography, A Song in the Night: A Memoir of Resilience, has just been published by Nan A. Talese/Doubleday.
	Gar Alperovitz	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."
	Jessica Brackman	Jessica Brackman was CEO of FPG International, a leading stock photography agency recognized for its creative innovation, commitment to social issues and unique corporate culture. During her tenure there, she became involved with the Social Venture Network (SVN) and served on the board of the Aperture Foundation, a not-for-profit photography institute and book publisher. After retiring from FPG, Jessica co-produced a film documentary about the spiritual teacher, Ram Dass, entitled Fierce Grace. Currently she serves on the board of the Tibet Fund, an organization founded under the auspices of His Holiness the Dalai Lama to provide humanitarian aid to the Tibetan community in exile. She has worked on a number of publishing projects that deal with environmental, social and spiritual themes, including Al Gore’s book, An Inconvenient Truth, of which she authored the Resource Section: What You Personally Can Do to Solve the Climate Crisis and, most recently, to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Tibetan diaspora, she produced, Thank You Tibet.
	Farhad Ebrahimi	Farhad Ebrahimi is an activist, philanthropist, musician, lover of film and literature, hipster, and bicycle snob who is often found in either New York City or Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts. Farhad is the founder and trustee chair of the Chorus Foundation, whose mission is to end the extraction, export, and use of fossil fuels in the United States. This mission recognizes that the issues of climate, health, inequality, and democracy are intimately connected. The Chorus Foundation focuses its support on grassroots organizing in communities directly impacted by the fossil fuel industry and prioritizes work that builds power -- especially political power -- from the bottom up. Outside of his role at the Chorus Foundation, Farhad is an active movement organizer and a member of a Boston-based affinity group that focuses on climate and economic justice. Farhad graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2002 with a bachelor's degree in Mathematics with Computer Science. He's probably wearing some kind of a hat.
	John Fullerton	John Fullerton is the Founder and President of Capital Institute, a collaborative working to transform finance to serve a more just, resilient, and sustainable economic system. Through the work of Capital Institute, his syndicated “Future of Finance” blog on the Capital Institute website, regular public speaking engagements, and university lectures, he has become a recognized thought leader in the New Economy space generally and the financial-system transformation challenge in particular. John earned a BA in Economics from the University of Michigan and an MBA from New York University's Stern Business School. John is a recognized leading practitioner in “impact investment” as the principal of Level 3 Capital Advisors, LLC. Level 3 Capital’s direct investments are primarily focused on sustainable and regenerative land use, food, and water. Through both Capital Institute and Level 3 Capital, he brings a theory-and-practice approach to financial system transformation. Previously John was the seed funder and CEO of Alerian Capital Management, which is now a multi-billion- dollar investment management firm that invests in midstream energy infrastructure via Master Limited Partnerships (MLPs), and created the Alerian MLP Index. Prior to Alerian, he was a Managing Director of JPMorgan, where he worked for over 18 years. At JPMorgan he managed various capital markets and derivatives business around the globe, then shifted focus to private investments and was subsequently the Chief Investment Officer of LabMorgan through the merger with Chase Manhattan before retiring from the bank in 2001. John is a Co-Founder and Director of Grasslands, LLC, a holistic ranch management company in partnership with the Savory Institute and a Director of New Day Farms, Inc., New Economics Institute, and Savory Institute.org. Read John Fullerton's essay, "The Relevance of E. F. Schumacher in the 21st Century."
	Neva Goodwin	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.
	Hildegarde Hannum	After teaching German language and literature at Hayward State University, UC Berkeley, and Connecticut College, Hildegarde turned to a career as free-lance translator with her husband. Their translations from German to English include the work of philosopher Hans Jonas and psychoanalyst Alice Miller. A board member since 1982, she edits the Annual E. F. Schumacher Lectures, turning the spoken word into essays that are published in pamphlet form and are available on the internet. She also edited People, Land, and Community: Collected E. F. Schumacher Society Lectures (Yale University Press, 1997).
	Keith Harrington	Keith Harrington is the former Maryland and Washington D.C. Field Director for the Chesapeake Climate Action Network – a Mid-Atlantic-based climate and clean-energy advocacy group that 350.org founder Bill McKibben calls “the best regional climate organization in the world.” During his four years at CCAN, Keith organized grassroots activists across Maryland and D.C. to push for aggressive policy responses to the climate crisis. His work has positioned Maryland to become one of the first states to develop offshore wind power, and he has contributed to the passage of some of the most progressive state and local climate policies in the nation including the first county-level carbon tax, and the Maryland Greenhouse Gas Reduction Act of 2009. Keith’s appreciation of the need for systemic economic change led him join the Center for the Advancement of the Steady State Economy as its Climate and Energy Specialist in 2010, and thereafter to join the board of the New Economy Network before its merger with the New Economics Institute. Keith is currently pursuing a master’s degree in economics and leading NEI's Campus Network affiliate group at the New School for Social Research in Manhattan. He also recently launched Shoestring Videos for Nonprofits - a discount video-production and graphic-design service for progressive advocacy groups, and is a contributing writer on climate, energy and the new-economy at several publications including Truthout, Grist.org, Alternet, and the Huffington Post.
	Eric Harris-Braun	Eric Harris-Braun designs and builds software infrastructure for the new economy. He is a co-founder of the MetaCurrency project, which is creating a platform for communities of all scales to design and deploy their own currencies. He works closely with The Collective Intelligence Research Institute, a research and development group dedicated to understanding and developing new forms of collective intelligence. Eric is the co-founder of Glass Bead Software, a provider of peer-to-peer networking applications, and of Harris-Braun Enterprises, a free-lance software development shop, which has created, among other things, complex data-collection websites for the health-care industry, an Android application for catch monitoring for the fishing industry, and the Online Writing Workshop, which it built and operates. In 1994 he published the Internet Directory ( Fawcett Columbine), which sold over 100,000 copies and went on to a second edition in 1996 before being made obsolete by Google. Eric received a B.S. in Computer Science from Yale University. Currently he lives in rural New York, where he is part of a Quaker Intentional community, plays with his two boys, tends a vineyard, and lives in a straw-bale house.
	Dan Levinson	Daniel Levinson founded Main Street Resources after ten years with Holding Capital Group, a highly successful niche private equity firm and an investor in Main Street Resources. He received his MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business and a joint ScB with Honors in Applied Mathematics and Economics from Brown University. He spent time in the Corporate Finance department of Morgan Stanley after graduating from Brown. In 2008 Dan co-founded Westport Green Village Initiative, a grassroots nonprofit aimed at helping his town become a model of socially inclusive environmental sustainability. In addition to chairing Westport GVI, he serves as a board member of New Economics Institute. Dan's interest lies in the power of local action to inform and initiate systemic change. His work in this area is aimed at finding ways to formulate solutions and encouraging others to do so. Dan has three children and a dog.
	Atlee McFellin	Atlee McFellin is a community wealth strategist with The Democracy Collaborative. He works on creating comprehensive strategies based on the Evergreen Cooperatives in Cleveland, Ohio, for cities around the country. He is on the board of the New Economy Network, where he chairs the working group on research and public policy, and is co-founder of The Symbiosis Center, a consulting company specializing in organizational and program development, and of the Organization for a Free Society, a youth-focused group dedicated to building a world of solidarity, equity, self-management, diversity, and ecological balance. Before joining the Democracy Collaborative, Atlee worked for the American Sustainable Business Council as its first Staff Associate. He was also a strategy consultant for Green For All, working on expanding innovative developments in the green economy through public policy and investment. Before that, he worked as an intern, then researcher, with Veris Wealth Partners, a registered investment advisory firm. He attended graduate school in political theory and economics at the New School for Social Research, with a focus on U.S. political economy and the effects of neoliberal economic policies.
	Richard Norgaard	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."
	David Orr	David W. Orr is the Paul Sears Distinguished Professor of Environmental Studies and Politics and Senior Adviser to the President at Oberlin College. He is the author of seven books, including Earth in Mind and Ecological Literacy, and co-editor of three others. The recipient of seven honorary degrees and other national awards, he has served on the Boards of many organizations, including the Rocky Mountain Institute, the Aldo Leopold Foundation, and Bioneers. Orr regards environmentalism as a matter of ethical design, involving our responsibility and relationship to the earth we've inherited and the earth we will bequeath. His career as a scholar, teacher, writer, speaker, and entrepreneur spans fields as diverse as environment and politics, environmental education, campus greening, green building, ecological design, and climate change. In 1987 Orr organized studies of energy, water, and materials use on several college campuses, helping to launch the green campus movement. In 1996 he organized the effort to design the first substantially green building on a U.S. college campus. The Adam Joseph Lewis Center was later named by the U.S. Department of Energy as “One of Thirty Milestone Buildings in the 20th Century.” Orr holds a B.A. from Westminster College (1965), an M.A. from Michigan State University (1966), and a Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania (1973). Read David Orr's E. F. Schumacher Lecture, Environmental Literacy: Education as if the Earth Mattered.
	Will Raap	Will Raap is founder and chairman of Gardener's Supply, an employee-owned family of companies that has won several national and regional awards for its innovative business and socially responsible business practices. He also founded the Intervale Center, a community farming innovation center and incubator of dozens of new organic farms. Currently Will is working on several environmental restoration initiatives, including four "new urbanist" conservation developments in Vermont and Costa Rica. These conservation developments are The Earth Partners, Restoring Our Watershed, El Centro Verde, and Carbon Harvest Energy. The Earth Partners are working on developing "conservation biomass" globally; Restoring Our Watershed in Costa Rica is committed to reclaiming the health and resiliency of critically damaged or threatened natural areas in a 28,000 acre watershed; EL Centro Verde is an agroforestry and training center in Costa Rica; Carbon Harvest Energy is a business developing integrated energy and food projects fueled by landfill methane. Read Will Raap's E. F. Schumacher Lecture. E. F. Schumacher: He Taught Us to Build Bridges and Plant Trees; his recent article for Vermont Natural Resources Council, "The 'New Economy' Can Strengthen Vermont's Working Landscape"; his TED (Technology,Entertainment,Design) talk on mitigating climate change; and his June 5th, 2010, talk on using Vermont as a model for rebuilding our economies (given at the founding meeting of the New Economics Institute). Visit Will Raap's website at http://www.willraap.org.
	Gus Speth	Gus Speth is a Professor of Law at the Vermont Law School in South Royalton, Vermont, and Distinguished Senior Fellow with Demos and with the United Nations Foundation, both in New York City. He was Professor in the Practice of Environmental Policy at Yale where he served as Dean of the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies from 1999 to 2009. From 1993 to 1999, Speth was Administrator of the United Nations Development Programme and chair of the UN Development Group. Prior to his service at the UN, he was founder and president of the World Resources Institute; professor of law at Georgetown University; chairman of the U.S. Council on Environmental Quality; and senior attorney and co-founder, Natural Resources Defense Council. Throughout his career, he has provided leadership and entrepreneurial initiatives to many task forces and committees whose roles have been to combat environmental degradation, including the President’s Task Force on Global Resources and Environment; the Western Hemisphere Dialogue on Environment and Development; and the National Commission on the Environment. Among his awards are the National Wildlife Federation’s Resources Defense Award, the Natural Resources Council of America’s Barbara Swain Award of Honor, a 1997 Special Recognition Award from the Society for International Development, Lifetime Achievement Awards from the Environmental Law Institute and the League of Conservation Voters, and the Blue Planet Prize. He holds honorary degrees from Clark University, the College of the Atlantic, the Vermont Law School, Middlebury College, and the University of South Carolina. Publications include The Bridge at the Edge of the World: Capitalism, the Environment, and Crossing from Crisis to Sustainability (2008),Global Environmental Governance (2006), Red Sky at Morning: America and the Crisis of the Global Environment (2004), Worlds Apart: Globalization and the Environment (2003); and articles in Foreign Policy, Foreign Affairs, The Nation, The Harvard Business Review, and other journals and books. Speth currently serves on the boards of the New Economics Institute, New Economy Network, Natural Resources Defense Council, Center for a New American Dream, Climate Reality Project, and the Institute for Sustainable Communities. His recent articles include: A New American Environmentalism and the New Economy; Towards a New Consciousness in America: Roles for Grantmakers; Towards a New Economy and a New Politics; Letter to Liberals: Liberalism, Environmentalism, and Economic Growth; Preamble: New Economy, Sustaining Economy; Off the Pedestal: Creating a New Vision of Economic Growth; What Is the American Dream?: Dueling Dualities in the American Tradition; and America the Possible: A Manifesto, Part I. http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/6681
	Sarah Stranahan	Sarah Stranahan has more than 20 years of experience in mission related investing, community organizing, and social change philanthropy. As a long term Board member of the Needmor Fund, she helped design and oversee its philanthropic support of community organizing and its integrated mission related investment program. She served on the Finance Committee of the Council on Foundations from 2008-2012, where she helped design and implement an investment policy aligned with the Council’s mission. Sarah’s experiences as a fiduciary led her to study finance, and she passed her level one Chartered Financial Analyst exam in 2009. She co-founded the New Economy Network in 2010, to increase collaboration between individuals and organizations working to accelerate the transition to an economy that supports people and the planet. She served as the Network Coordinator from 2010 through 2012, and then as co-chair of its Board. Sarah is a Board member of the Stranahan Foundation and Free Speech for People, a non-profit working to challenge the misuse of corporate power and restore republican democracy to the people. Sarah works at Bolder Giving, a non-profit that encourages exceptional philanthropy, where she manages their Bold Investing and Environmental Justice Initiatives. She lives in New York City and Tyringham MA with her husband, Henry Richardson, a glass sculptor. They have three adult sons.
	Peter Victor	Peter Victor is a Professor in Environmental Studies at York University. He is a member of the Advisory Council of the Royal Canadian Institute for the Advancement of Science, Canada’s oldest science organization having served as its President from 2000 to 2004. He was the founding President of the Canadian Society for Ecological Economics and is a member of many boards and committees including the Ontario Government’s Advisory Committee on Transboundary Science, the Advisory Panel of TruCost, the Board of the David Suzuki Foundation, and the Advisory Committee on the National Accounts for Statistics Canada. Peter's current research is an inquiry into managing without growth, using LOWGROW, a systems model of the Canadian economy for exploring the interplay of growth, employment, poverty, and the environment. His book Managing Without Growth: Smaller by Design, Not Disaster was published in 2008 by Edward Elgar Publishing. In 2011 he was selected as one of two winners of the prestigious Molson Prize for "continuing to find new ways to manage economic growth that are easier on the planet and population." Read Peter Victor's essay, "Bigger isn't Better." Read the Article, "Prosperity Without Growh is Possible." Watch "Managing Without Growth," A System Change Lecture for the Council of Canadians.
	Stewart Wallis	Stewart Wallis graduated in Natural Sciences from Cambridge University. His career began in marketing and sales with Rio Tinto Zinc followed by a Masters Degree in Business and Economics at London Business School. He spent seven years with the World Bank in Washington DC working on industrial and financial development in East Asia. He then worked for Robinson Packaging in Derbyshire for nine years, the last five as Managing Director, leading a successful business turnaround. He joined Oxfam in 1992 as International Director with responsibility, latterly, for 2500 staff in 70 countries and for all Oxfam’s policy, research, development and emergency work worldwide. He was awarded the OBE for services to Oxfam in 2002. Stewart joined nef (the new economics foundation) as Executive Director on 1 November 2003. His interests include: global governance, functioning of markets, links between development and environmental agendas, the future of capitalism and the moral economy. Read Stewart Wallis' Five Principles for the New Economy by 2020
	Timothy E. Wirth	Timothy E. Wirth is President of the United Nations Foundation and the Better World Fund as well as a former Congressman and Senator from the state of Colorado. As President of the UN Foundation (UNF) since its inception in 1998, he has organized and led the formulation of the Foundation’s mission and program priorities, which include the environment, women, population, children’s health, peace, security, and human rights. To address the major problems facing the UN and the world community, Wirth has drawn together diverse private- and-public-sector collaborators and UN agencies, including Rotary International, the Gates Foundation, the World Bank, Nike, Expedia, the National Basketball Association, members of the US congress, the UN leadership, and The Club of Madrid. Wirth began his career in politics as a White House Fellow under President Lyndon Johnson and was Deputy Assistant Secretary for Education in the Nixon Administration. He ran successfully for the U.S. House of Representatives in 1974 and represented Denver, Colorado, suburbs from 1975 to 1987. As Congressman he chaired the Communications Subcommittee, was the lead legislator in restructuring the cable television and telephone industries, and authored the Indian Peaks Wilderness Act of 1978. In 1986 Wirth was elected to the U.S. Senate, where his primary concerns were environmental issues, global climate change, and population stabilization. He organized the historic Hansen hearings on climate change in 1988, and with the late Senator Heinz (R-PA) he introduced the groundbreaking “Cap and Trade” idea, which became law in the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990. As Senator he authored the far-reaching Colorado Wilderness Bill, which became law in 1993. Following two decades of elected politics, Wirth served from 1993 to 1997 in the U.S. Department of State as the first Undersecretary for Global Affairs under Bill Clinton, helping to organize U.S. foreign policy in the areas of refugees, population, environment, science, human rights, and narcotics. He was also the lead U.S. negotiator for the Kyoto Climate Conference. Wirth is a graduate of Harvard College and Stanford University. He has served as a member of the Harvard Board of Overseers and was recently honored as a Champion of the Earth by the United Nations Environment Programme. He is married to Wren Wirth; together they have two grown children and five grandchildren.