New Economics Institute


	Vivian Barlach Albertini	Vivian Barlach Albertini recently earned her MS degree in Environment and Development at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, where she conducted research on the practices of Industrial Symbiosis and Industrial Ecology among firms in the UK. Prior to joining the New Economics Institute, she worked in environmental education at a botanic garden in South Florida and as an events planner. A Brazilian native, Vivian was introduced to environmental issues from a very early age and has always believed in the possibility of finding a positive balance between sustainable economic development and environmental conservation. An avid international news reader, she is always searching for new trends in economic thought and policy, particularly in ecological and de-growth economics. In her spare time, Vivan enjoys cooking and home brewing.
	Camille Goulding	Camille Goulding is a spring Intern at the New Economics Institute. She graduated with a B.A. in Natural Sciences and an M.Litt in Geography and Environmental Governance from Trinity College, Dublin. Born and raised in Ireland, she developed a great appreciation for the beauty of raw natural landscapes, unique cultural heritages, and a great deal of rain. Her master’s thesis looked at transatlantic comparisons in urban agriculture between community gardens in Dublin and New York. Camille’s interests lie in current and future environmental issues, sustainable agricultures, alternative and transparent food networks, and community empowered grassroots actions that create a healthier and better planet. She was an integral member of the Transition Wicklow Initiative and has a passion and great admiration for the Transition Towns movement and its philosophy. She loves cats and other animals and in her spare time likes to knit and cook.
	Scott Grimm-Lyon	Global Transition Program Assistant & Media Coordinator Scott Grimm-Lyon is a staff member working on the Global Transition Project. He has a Masters Degree in City and Regional Planning from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York. Scott has worked with a youth based community group in the South Bronx to find ways of connecting their neighborhood with a proposed greenway, with a Business Improvement District in Central Brooklyn to make recommendations improving urban design along a retail corridor, and with a community coalition in North Brooklyn to create a citizen based vision to act as an alternative to an unpopular rezoning proposal. He has also studied sustainable development projects in Germany. In his work as a community organizer for affordable housing on Long Island, Scott helped faith based coalitions lobby the New York State Senate to pass a bill requiring 10% affordability on all new construction developments. He also worked with The Center for Urban Pedagogy and the Queens Museum to set up an exhibit about the mortgage crisis and to develop a Foreclosure Survival Guide to be used in community education efforts throughout Queens. Scott has a long relationship with Heifer International and served as an Americorps volunteer at their Overlook Farm in Rutland Massachusetts, where he led workshops discussing global poverty and sustainable international development. He grew up on Long Island and currently lives in Brooklyn with his wife Jessica.
	Nicholas Kacher	Assistant to the Director Nicholas Kacher assists the Education Director in operating the Great Barrington office of the New Economics Institute, specifically in outreach to student and activist groups, and serves as a liaison between the New Economics Institute and BerkShares local currency. He is also the intern coordinator for the Berkshire office. A graduate of Wheaton College (MA), class of 2011, Nick holds a B.A. in economics with a minor in African and African Diaspora studies. His academic interests include economic policy, urban and regional economics, steady state economics, and the commons. His previous nonprofit experience includes an internship with AHEAD, Inc., an organization operating in Kisarawe, Tanzania, that promotes local and technologically appropriate solutions to pressing social, public health, and economic problems in the area.
	Noa Kornbluh	Noa Kornbluh is an intern at the New Economics Institute's Great Barrington office. She is originally from California and graduated from the University of California, Berkeley, in 2011 with a bachelor's degree in political economy. While at Berkeley Noa was actively involved in the leadership of Stop the Cuts Movement for public education and was a member of the Berkeley Students Cooperative, a student-run housing organization that provides affordable, environmentally conscious student housing. Noa's interests are international labor history and political economic theory. She plans on attending graduate school to pursue a master's degree in development economics.
	Emily LeGrand	Emily LeGrand is a spring Library Intern at the New Economics Institute. Her primary role is to develop annotated bibliographies for the "Strategies for a New Economy" conference. An environmentalist at heart, she loves the optimism and systemic solutions inherent in pursuing a new economics that values what matters: people and the planet. She grew up in rural New Jersey; while an undergrad at Carleton College, she fell in love with Minnesota. Graduating in 2009 with a B.A. in Biology and Environmental Studies, she then spent several years of practical skill building as a research assistant, farmer, trail builder, and environmental educator. Emily decided to pursue a Master's in Library and Information Science at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia. She hopes to better understand how information about resources flows within communities to build interdependent local economies.
	Bob Massie	President and CEO Bob Massie is the President and CEO of the New Economics Institute. An ordained Episcopal minister, he graduated from Princeton Unversity and Yale Divinity School. He received his doctorate in business policy from Harvard Business School in 1989. 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. Over 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 over $10 trillion. His autobiography, A Song in the Night: A Memoir of Resilience, is being published by Nan A. Talese/Doubleday in 2012.
	Katharine Millonzi	Operations and Development Manager Katharine has a breadth of experiences in the sustainability and social change sectors worldwide. An eco-gastronome and food systems thinker, she brings an integrative, multidisciplinary perspective to the relationship between culture and nature. After several years work in international public health, she enjoyed being part of several start-up business ventures - from an artisanal cheesemongers to a fair-trade botanicals company. She recently directed the Sustainable Food and Agriculture Program at Williams College, where she examined the role of institutional procurement within regional economic development. Katharine holds an MA in Food Culture and Communications from the University of Gastronomic Sciences, founded by Slow Food International. She also holds a BA from the University of London in Social Anthropology and International Development. Her 2007 Fulbright Fellowship in Italy offered her a platform from which to measure and assess the responses of traditional food producers to global economic policy structures. Katharine is a trained massage therapist and herbalist who finds inspiration in ‘the peace of wild things'.
	Carina Millstone	Carina Millstone directs the Global Transition Program and also oversees new programmatic development at the New Economics Institute. Prior to joining the Institute, Carina founded The London Orchard Project in her home city. The project aims to address the twin challenges of food security and climate change in the urban environment; by March 2014 the organization will have brought about the planting or restoration of 80 urban orchards, the training and active involvement of thousands of volunteers, and the creation of new fruit harvesting, distribution, and processing projects across the city. In addition to her work in the community Carina has served as a sustainability consultant, advising corporate, government, and donor agency clients on sustainability strategies, socio-economic impact and risk assessments, labor and supply-chain issues, and policy appraisal. She has worked in the food, energy, manufacture, and financial sectors in Western Europe, Africa, and the former Soviet Union. Carina holds a Masters Degree in Leadership for Sustainable Development and a Masters in Politics and Russian. Her areas of interest include change leadership, permaculture, and transition.
	Debbie Pierce	Debbie Pierce is a spring Intern at the New Economics Institute. She graduated from the University of Michigan in 2011 with degrees in Economics and Environmental Policy. She completed a thesis on sustainable water management in Las Vegas and Phoenix. After studying environmental policy and sustainable fisheries in Greece and Turkey, she became interested in the intersection of economics and environmental sustainability. Before moving to New York, Debbie worked at the Michigan Department of Natural Resources and the Environment and the Matthaei Botanical Garden. Working at the Garden sparked Debbie’s interest in sustainable food systems and health, especially at the community level. She plans to pursue a graduate degree in environmental economics with a focus on agriculture and water resources. In her spare time Debbie likes to run, cook, and travel.
	Caitlin Quigley	Caitlin Quigley is a spring Intern at the New Economics Institute. She graduated with a B.A. in Film Studies and Spanish Literature from Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut. She is currently working in the library at the Berkshires office on researching archival material and creating annotated bibliographies related to the June conference themes. As a member of the Transition Whatcom initiative in Bellingham, Washington, Caitlin led a workgroup that launched a Move Your Money campaign. This campaign generated enough demand for local finance options that Caitlin and her workgroup founded the Whatcom Investing Network, a forum for local businesses and local investors to meet one another and make investments. In the fall Caitlin is moving to Philadelphia and hopes to contribute to strengthening the local economy there.
	Susan Witt	Susan Witt is Education Director and ex-officio member of the Board of Directors of the New Economics Institute. Previously she was Executive Director of the E. F. Schumacher Society, the predecessor of New Economics Institute. In 1980 she helped found the Society and led the development of its highly regarded publications, library, seminars, and other educational programs while at the same time remaining deeply committed to implementing Schumacher’s economic ideas in her home region of the Berkshires. Susan helped found the Community Land Trust in the Southern Berkshires in 1980 and has been responsible for many of the innovative financing and contracting methods that the Land Trust uses to create more affordable access to land. In 1982 she created and administered the SHARE micro-credit program, the precursor of BerkShares, and in 1985 helped Robyn Van En form the first Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm in the United States at Indian Line Farm. In 2006 she co-founded the BerkShares local currency program, which has won unprecedented international media attention as a model for other regions. Susan writes and speaks on the theory and practice of building sustainable local economies. Her essays appear in Rooted in the Land, edited by William Vitek and Wes Jackson (Yale University Press, New Haven, CT, 1996); People, Land, and Community: Collected E. F. Schumacher Society Lectures, edited by Hildegarde Hannum (Yale University Press, New Haven, CT, 1997); the 1999 edition of Small Is Beautiful: Economics As If People Mattered, by Ernest Fritz Schumacher (Hartley and Marks Publishers, Point Roberts, WA, and Vancouver, BC, 1999); A Forest of Voices: Conversations in Ecology, edited by Chris Anderson and Lex Runciman (Mayfield Publishing Company, Mountain View, CA, 2000); Environmental Activists, edited by John Mongillo (Greenwood Publishing Group, Westport, CT 2001); The Money Changers: Currency Reform from Aristotle to E-cash, edited by David Boyle (Earthscan Publications, London, UK, 2002); The Essential Agrarian Reader, edited by Norman Wirzberg (University Press of Kentucky, 2003); and What We See: Advancing the Observations of Jane Jacobs, edited by Stephen Goldsmith and Lynne Elizabeth (New Village Press, 2010). See the Detailed biography of Susan Witt; Archive of Susan Witt's articles and essays; Article about Susan Witt from The Women's Times (PDF); Essay on Jane Jacobs by Susan Witt