The Schumacher Lectures

The 44th Annual E.F. Schumacher Lecture took place on Wednesday, December 4th, 2024 featuring Paul Hawken and Báyò Akómoláfé in conversation. This virtual event was hosted and moderated by Alex Forrester, Board Member of the Schumacher Center for a New Economics and Co-Founder of Rising Tide Capital.

Julian Aguon is an activist lawyer and writer from Guam and the author of the acclaimed new book, The Properties of Perpetual Light . He is the visionary behind  Blue Ocean Law , a progressive firm that works at the intersection of Indigenous rights and environmental justice. He serves on the Council of  Progressive International —a global collective that launched in May 2020 to mobilize progressi...

Winona LaDuke —an Anishinaabekwe (Ojibwe) member of the White Earth Nation—is an environmentalist, economist, author, and prominent Native American activist working to restore and preserve indigenous cultures and lands. She graduated from Harvard University in 1982 with a B.A. in economics (rural economic development) and from Antioch University with an M.A. in community economic development. Whil...

Since the early 1980’s Hazel Henderson ’s name has been synonymous with impact investing. Probably more than any other person, Henderson has been responsible for creating and promoting a set of social and environmental indicators by which to judge the real health of an economic system including the well-being of its citizens and its ecosystem. These indicators are then widely used to guide busines...

Neva Goodwin is co-founder and co-director of the Global Development And Environment Institute at Tufts University , where her projects have included editing a six-volume series, Frontier Issues in Economic Thought (published by Island Press) and a Michigan Press series, Evolving Values for a Capitalist World.  She has edited more than a dozen books, and is the lead author of three introductory te...

Otto Scharmer  understands the stages of consciousness that are necessary to achieve transformation – whether that be transformation of the self, transformation of a group initiative, transformation of a business, or systemic change.  His Theory U training is a step by step exploration of these stages in different settings.  An economist by training, his application of Theory U to our economic sys...

Mary Berry is the Executive Director of The Berry Center and a leader in the movement for sustainable agriculture. A well-known advocate for the preservation of rural culture and agriculture, she is currently working to reconnect cities with landscapes around them. Founded in 2011, The Berry Center advocates for small farmers, land conservation, and healthy regional economies by focusing on land u...

Nwamaka Agbo  is a nationally respected voice for impacted communities, working to ensure they are not left behind with the growing New Economy movement.  Her approach, which she names  Restorative Economics , is strategically focused on community-owned and community-governed projects to bring residents together to create shared prosperity and self-determination and in turn build collective politi...

Wes Jackson is one of the foremost figures in the international sustainable agriculture movement. In addition to being a world-renowned plant geneticist, he is a farmer, author, and professor emeritus of biology. He was a professor of biology at Kansas Wesleyan University, and a tenured full professor at California State University, Sacramento. There he established and chaired one of the first Env...

John and Nancy Todd and a group of scientist friends established the New Alchemy Institute on a twelve-acre site in Falmouth, Massachusetts. Greg Watson joined the staff in 1980. He was inspired to apply New Alchemy's strategies and solutions to urban areas. He and John Todd have remained life-long friends making it a point to lunch together each week whenever possible. New Alchemy influenced a ge...

John McKnight ’s approach to community development is to turn attention to the assets of a neighborhood rather than elaborate on its problems.  For instance, he would suggest that the primary wealth in a neighborhood is the power generated by the investment of the capacities of the residents and their associations.   Called  Asset Based Community Development , John McKnight has influenced and trai...

Heinberg and Norberg-Hodge are experts on climate change, localization, and sustainability. Their past lectures have been almost prophetic in their accuracy, and their ideas are more relevant now than ever. Richard Heinberg , Senior Fellow of the Post Carbon Institute , is regarded as one of the world’s foremost advocates for a shift away from our current reliance on fossil fuels. An author, educa...

Every year during the first decade of the twenty-first century, the Business Alliance for a Local Living Economy (BALLE) would hold its annual conference.  Those conferences were a celebration of local economies and the small businesses that built those economies.   Judy Wicks , Michael Shuman , David Korten , Laury Hammel , Don Shaffer , Michelle Long , and Merrian Goggio Borgeson were among the...

George Monbiot is an author, Guardian columnist and environmental campaigner. His best-selling books include  Feral: Rewilding the land, sea and human life  and  Heat: how to stop the planet burning ; his latest is  Out of the Wreckage: a new politics for an age of crisis . George cowrote the concept album  Breaking the Spell of Loneliness  with musician Ewan McLennan; and has made a number of vir...

C. Otto Scharmer is a senior lecturer at Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Sloan School of Management. In 2015 he received the Jamieson Prize for Excellence in Teaching at MIT. He is co-founder of the Presencing Institute , which offers training and research sessions for executives and activists on how to advance the transformation of our economy, and is founding chair of the MIT IDEAS progr...

Van Jones is a CNN political commentator, regularly appearing across the network’s programming and special political coverage. The founder of Dream Corps, Rebuild The Dream, Green For All, the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, and Color of Change, he is presently a fellow at the MIT Media Lab. A Yale-educated attorney, he is the author of two New York Times best-selling books, The Green Collar E...

Charles (Chuck) Turner has been a community organizer and civil rights activist in Boston, Massachusetts, since 1966. He graduated from Harvard University in 1963 with a B.A. in government. After a year spent in Washington, D.C. reporting for The Washington Afro-American Newspaper , he moved to Hartford where he joined the influential civil rights group, the Northern Student Movement. Turner has c...

Jakob von Uexkull is a writer, lecturer, philanthropist, activist, and former politician. He is the founder and chair of the Right Livelihood Award (1980), often referred to as the Alternative Nobel Prize; co-founder of The Other Economic Summit (1984); and founder of the World Future Council (2007). He was a member of the European Parliament (1987-89) and of the United Nations Educational, Scient...

David Ross Brower (July 1, 1912- November 5, 2000) is considered by many to be the father of the modern environmental movement. Beginning his career as a world-class mountaineer with more than 70 first ascents to his credit, he became the first executive director of the Sierra Club in 1952 and successfully fought to stop dams in Dinosaur National Monument and in Grand Canyon National Park. He led...

Michael H. Shuman is the Director of Community Portals for Mission Markets and a Fellow at Cutting Edge Capital and Post-Carbon Institute .  He is a founding board member of the Business Alliance for Local Living Economies ( BALLE ). He is also an adjunct instructor in community economic development for Simon Fraser University in Vancouver and is one of the architects of the crowdfunding reforms t...

Chellis Glendinning was born just after World War II and came of age during the decolonization, liberation, and feminist movements. The central themes of her writings and presentations include the interlace of the personal with the political and a critique of mass technological society as contrasted by sustainable, nature-based cultures. She delivered this speech at the 19th Annual E.F. Schumacher...

David W. Orr is the Paul Sears Distinguished Professor of Environmental Studies and Politics as well as Special Assistant to the President of Oberlin College and executive director of the Oberlin Project . He is perhaps best known for his pioneering work on environmental literacy in higher education and his leading role in the promising new field of ecological design. He delivered this speech at t...

Thomas Berry (1914-2009) was a Passionist priest, cultural historian, philosopher, and self-described “geologian.” He was also a kind and gentle human being deeply concerned with the relation of the human world to the natural world . He delivered this speech at the 11th Annual E.F. Schumacher Lectures in October 1991.  If you would like a physical copy of this lecture or others like it, visit cent...

Alanna Hartzok is an educator, activist, and lecturer in the areas of economic justice, land rights, and land-value tax reform. She is co-director of Earth Rights Institute ; General Secretary for the International Union for Land Value Taxation; Global Outreach Coordinator for the Robert Schalkenback Foundation; and a member of the Advisory Council for the Prout Research Institute of Venezuela. Sh...

William A. Schambra joined the Hudson Institute as a Senior Fellow and director of the Institute’s Bradley Center for Philanthropy and Civic Renewal in 2003. Prior to that, he became senior vice-president for programs at the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation in 1992. Preceding his tenure at Bradley he served as a senior advisor and chief speechwriter for Attorney General Edwin Meese III, Director...