New Economy Network Executive Committee Biographies

John Cavanagh is Director of the Washington-based Institute for Policy Studies and co-author of 12 books on the global economy.  He is co-chair of the New Economy Working Group, a collaboration between IPS, YES Magazine, the Business Alliance for Local Living Economies, and the People Centered Development Forum, which has launched a new website that offers visionary framing, new thinking, resources, and campaigns on key components of a new economy.  Cavanagh also sits on the boards of the International Labor Rights Forum, ProgressiveCongress.org, the International Forum on Globalization, and the UN Development Program Civil Society Committee.

David Wood is Executive Director of the Initiative for Responsible Investment (IRI), a project of the Hauser Center for Non-Profit Organizations at the Kennedy School of Government. Prior to the move to Harvard, he served as director of the IRI at Boston College, where he directed research on responsible investment across asset classes, responsible investment consulting, mission investment, corporate disclosure of environmental, social, and governance issues, responsible property investment, and offshore investment in sustainable small and medium-sized enterprises, among other topics. With Gary Pivo of the University of Arizona, he co-directs the Responsible Property Investing Center. He is a consultant to Sitra, a Finnish Innovation Fund, on the low2no project, an urban sustainable investment initiative. In 2008 he was elected to the Board of the Social Investment Forum. Before joining the IRI, he taught the history of ethics, including the history of economic thought, at Boston University. He received his Ph.D. in History from the Johns Hopkins University, and an M.A. in Political Theory and B.A. in History from the University of Virginia. For more on the IRI, see http://www.hks.harvard.edu/hauser/iri

Gus Speth is Professor of Law at the Vermont Law School and Distinguished Senior Fellow at Demos. He serves on the boards of several environmental and new economy groups and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund and previously served as Dean of the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, Administrator of the United Nations Development Programme, and President of the World Resources Institute. His most recent book is The Bridge at the Edge of the World: Capitalism, the Environment and Crossing from Crisis to Sustainability.

David Levine is the co-founder of the American Sustainable Business Council, a growing coalition of business networks committed to public polices that promote a vibrant, just and sustainable economy. It organizational members represent over 35,000 businesses and social enterprises and more than 150,000 entrepreneurs, owners, executive, investors and business professionals. David is also the Director of Sustainable Economies at the Environmental Health Fund . David is a founding partner of Green Harvest Technologies, a B Corp, working on producing sustainable bio-based consumer products.

David Brodwin is a nationally recognized expert on strategic framing and messaging.  He advises non-profits and sustainable businesses on critical issues of positioning and communications. Earlier, David held senior executive positions in both the private and public sector.  He co-founded the American Sustainable Business Council, a business network advocating for a vibrant, just and sustainable economy.   He led New Voice of Business, a California business group working for climate protection legislation.  He was executive director at Rockridge Institute, George Lakoff’s think tank on political communications. In the private sector, David was a partner at Accenture, a leading global management and technology consulting firm, and a director at Arthur D. Little, Inc.  David holds an MBA from Stanford Business School and a BA with honors in psychology and social relations from Harvard College.

Atlee McFellin is a Strategist at The Democracy Collaborative, a think tank based in DC.  His work focuses on creating community wealth building strategies based off of the Evergreen Cooperatives in Cleveland, OH.   Additionally, in Cleveland, Atlee spearheaded the development of a set of community wealth building strategies for a revitalization initiative on Cleveland’s west side.  The next cities on the list for the development of community wealth building strategies include Amarillo, TX and Pittsburgh, PA.  He is also Chair of the Research and Public Policy working group at the New Economy Network, the Co-Founder of The Symbiosis Center L3C, a consulting company specializing in organizational development, and a Co-Founder of the Organization for a Free Society (OFS). Prior to the Democracy Collaborative, Atlee worked for the American Sustainable Business Council as its first Staff Associate.  He was also a strategy consultant to Green For All working on scaling up innovative developments in the green economy.  Before that, he focused on sustainable investing research and client services as an intern then researcher for Veris Wealth Partners.  Atlee 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.

Keith Harrington is the Maryland/D.C. Field Director for the Chesapeake Climate Action Network – a climate and clean energy advocacy organization which Bill McKibben calls “the best regional climate organization in the world.” During his four years at CCAN, Keith has helped to pass an array of progressive climate and clean energy bills including the Maryland Greenhouse Gas Emissions Reduction Act of 2009, the federal American Clean Energy and Security Act, and the nation’s first county-level carbon tax. Keith also moonlights as the Climate and Clean Energy Specialist for the Center for the Advancement of the Steady State Economy and blogs on new economy, climate and energy issues for sites including Huffington Post, Grist, Change.org, Alternet.org, Common Dreams, and Truth-out. He holds a degree in environmental studies from the University of London.

Cheyenna Weber is an economic justice organizer and writer working to develop the solidarity economy in New York City. Originally from West Virginia, Cheyenna began organizing against mountaintop removal mining in high school and became active in global labor struggles in college. Her work on the solidarity economy grew out of a recognition that without an awareness of shared responsibility for our interconnectedness we are unable to address the myriad forms of injustice, oppression, and destruction currently dominating our economic activities. Through SolidarityNYC, a solidarity economy advocacy collective she co-founded, Cheyenna supports values-led grassroots economic development in the 5 boroughs. Cheyenna is also active in GEO (Grassroots Economic Organizing) Collective, a media collective focused on promoting worker ownership and the solidarity economy, the New Economy Network, and the U.S. Solidarity Economy Network. A former national organizer for the Responsible Endowments Coalition, she also mentors student and youth leaders interested in economic justice.

New Economy Network Staff Biographies

Sarah Stranahan, the Network Coordinator, has more than 20 years of experience in mission related investing, community organizing, and social change philanthropy.  As a Board member of the Needmor Fund she helped design and oversee a grants program in support of membership based community organizing and an integrated mission related investment program from 1986-2008. Sarah is Board member of the Stranahan Foundation and sits on its Strategic Initiative and Finance Committees. She serves on the Finance Committee of the Council on Foundations, which is implementing a mission aligned investment policy. She received a BA from the Evergreen State College in 1982 and an MA from the University of Pennsylvania in 1985 and is a Level II candidate in the Chartered Financial Analyst Program. Sarah lives in New York with her husband Henry Richardson, a glass sculptor and has three sons in college.