Speaking requests

All my speaking requests are handled by Gravity. ~ I don’t need more exposure, and I abhor having my brain picked. Thanks for understanding!

Things I have said

With opinions come speaking requests, and I frequently speak in rooms large and small about the main themes of my work and experience: technology for the greater good; design principles for systems change; resilience; social innovation; inclusive entrepreneurship; and the business of philanthropy and social change.

Here is a selection of things I have said that were captured on video and / or audio:

  • In August 2023, I spoke with Jahed Momand on the Ownership Economy podcast about Innovating on Organizational Structures

  • In June 2023, I was a guest on this German podcast series about the future of the economy. Hear me opine (in German, no less) on the differences in American and German startup culture.

  • In September 2022, I spoke with Nina de Korte during the Steward Ownership conference in Berlin for the We Are Stewards podcast.

  • In August 2020, Matthew Weatherly-White and I were guests on the More than Profit podcast on Rethinking Risk for Foundations

  • A talk I gave to the online social enterprise accelerator, Explorer by Santander; click here for some excerpts.

  • A fun podcast on the animal metaphors for startups, from January 2020 on Technical.ly

  • In December 2019, our friends at Wefunder spoke to me about the vision for Zebras Unite on their Adventure Capital podcast.

  • In November 2019, I sat down with the Better Money team at XRAY Radio to talk about the need to invent the new kind of founder-centric, responsive, inclusive capital that’s sorely lacking in contemporary startup culture.

  • My 2018 TEDx talk on the design principles for scaling innovations and capital to address the urgent challenges of the 21st century.

  • A talk I gave at the Sun Valley Institute’s annual gathering in 2017, on the innovation needed to build resilient communities in the face of climate change and other challenges we are facing.

  • An excerpt from a panel I spoke on at the 2016 Skoll World Forum, about the need to retool the business model of social change and philanthropy if we want to make real progress in the world.

  • I spoke with Karthik Vijayakumar from Design Your Thinking about my transition from a non-profit intrapreneur to a for-profit, for purpose tech entrepreneur.

  • Back in early 2016, Tony Loyd interviewed me about the vision and business model of Sphaera, a few months before we hit on the zebra name and principles for these kinds of for-purpose, for-profit businesses.

Things I have written

I maintain a regular writing schedule of blog posts (which I repost on LinkedIn, albeit after a delay of several months) that help me organizew the thoughts clunking around in my head. I am also an occasional contributor to other publications.

  • Here is a May 2023 op-ed in Impact Entrepreneur on the need to make impact capital as dazzlingly diverse and fit for purpose as the businesses that are better for the world.

  • The social change industry exists because markets and governments are broken and don’t provide the things we need to live well, and within the boundaries of our planet. It produces beneficial social, environmental and economic outcomes the way other industries produce widgets, and like many other industries it has become crusty. ~ Here’s a post I wrote about that “Questioning the Business of Philanthropy”.

  • One of my pet peeves about the social change industry is that non-profit organizations and their funders are not very savvy about building technology, further exacerbating the inefficiencies in the sector. This is particularly prevalent in “impact investing” where there are hundreds of platforms competing with fragile business models where they could be collaborating. ~ Here is a piece about that phenomenon, “Requiem for a Dream of an online Impact Investing Platform.”

  • Check out the Armillaria website for some pertinent concept papers, especially “From Billions to Trillions”, where we describe the design principles and roadmap for a distributed, democratic infrastructure for mobilizing innovations and capital.

  • Fun fact: my work as an ecological economist led to a New York Times op-ed.

  • If you must, you can find copies of my dissertation in the stacks at UC Berkeley, and my academic & applied research footprint on ResearchGate

Things others have said or written about me

Live long enough, have enough opinions, chances are someone will have something to say about you. It’s called earned media, and here is a collection of some of the things said about me (and my frequent collaborators):