E. F. Schumacher Society Board of Directors

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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 Social Venture Network 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. Most recently she participated with Melcher Media on the production of Al Gore’s book, An Inconvenient Truth and authored the book’s Resource Section: What You Personally Can Do to Help Solve the Climate Crisis.  Presently, she is working with Melcher Media to develop illustrated books that address pressing social, political and environmental issues.

 

Starling Childs A graduate of the Yale School of Forestry, Starling Childs manages the six thoundand acre Great Mountain Forest, organized as a 501(c)(3) operating foundation, and once his family's land. Management employs sustainable practices, setting a model for community-based forestry and serving as a teaching center for new foresters.   Starling is a founder and principal of EECOS, an environmental consulting firm. He serves his local community on several boards and is President of Berkshire-Litchfield Environmental Council.

Merrian Fuller Merrian Fuller is currently a MBA student at UC Berkeley studying energy efficiency and renewable technologies. Before returning to school, Merrian was the managing director of the Business Alliance for Local Living Economies (BALLE), a non-profit that connects and supports business networks across North America that are committed to improving the social, environmental, and economic life of their communities. She was also the director of the Sustainable Business Network of Greater Philadelphia. Merrian has written for publications such as The Nation, Orion Magazine, Yes! Magazine, and In Business. She also serves on the board of BALLE.

Hildegarde Hannum A professional translator of works from German to English, including books by Alice Miller, Hildegarde Hannum married her skills to her beliefs when she took on the work of editing the Annual E. F. Schumacher Lectures. In her capable hands, a passionate oral lecture turns into a polished written essay that highlights the quality of the ideas.

Eric Harris-Braun Eric Harris-Braun lives in rural New York where he writes software for a living, is working to launch a local currency, serves on the board of a small school, is starting a Quaker Intentional community, plays with his two boys, raises chickens, tends a vineyard, and is learning to fly small airplanes.

Dan Levinson Daniel Levinson, Managing Partner, 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. Dan received his MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business and a joint ScB in Applied Mathematics and Economics from Brown University with Honors. He spent time in the Corporate Finance department of Morgan Stanley after graduating from Brown.

Connie Packard Connie Packard , MSW, is a retired social worker and family therapist. She is a founder and Board member of Windhorse Associates, Inc., a community-based, recovery oriented treatment program in Northampton, MA for people with serious psychiatric disturbances, and the author of The Windhorse Guide for Families. She is one of the conveners of the 2004 international conference for leaders pioneering new approaches to recovery from major mental illnesses. Connie is the Director of the Valentine Fund of the Tides Foundation which supports grass roots organizing initiatives in the New York City area around issues of community empowerment, youth organizing, gay and lesbian rights, and farm worker rights.

 

Joe Stanislaw   Joseph A. Stanislaw is founder of the advisory firm JA Stanislaw Group, LLC, specializing in strategic thinking and investment in energy and technology.  He is Independent Senior Advisor to Deloitte & Touche USA LLP’s Energy & Resources practice.  He serves as a member of a number of advisory boards for energy, technology, and investment companies.  He was one of three founders of Cambridge Energy Research Associates in 1983 and served as managing director for non-U.S. activity until 1997 when he was named president and later CEO.  He is an adjunct professor in the Nicholas School of the Environment and Earth Sciences at Duke University, where he is a member of the advisory board for the Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions.  He co-authored with Daniel Yergin the book The Commanding Heights: The Battle for the World Economy.  He received his B.A. from Harvard College, his Ph.D. in economics from the University of Edinburgh, and was awarded an M. A. from Cambridge.

Nancy Jack Todd A co-founder of New Alchemy Institute and of Ocean Arks International, Nancy Todd continues to be the recorder of the innovation that has come from these two groundbreaking institutions.  As editor of Annals of Earth, she guides readers to an understanding of the new technology described in its articles and conveys the story of the cultural context within which the technology is embedded.

Chuck Turner Chuck Turner is a Boston City Councilor representing District 7 including Roxbury, Lower Roxbury, and parts of the Fenway, South End, Dorchester. He has worked as an activist for over forty years. During that time, he has served as the director of a community development corporation, an organizer training center, and a  placement agency for construction workers of color. He has also worked as a manager/counselor at the nation's oldest batterers' treatment organization and as education director at a nonprofit consulting firm, focused on establishing worker cooperatives. He has a BA from Harvard, was a Community Fellow at MIT, and was awarded an honorary Associates of Arts degree from Roxbury Community College.

E. F. Schumacher Society Board of Founders
 

Ian Baldwin Ian Baldwin's commitment to environmental issues led him from the Environmental Defense Fund to taking the risk of starting his own green publishing firm.  Chelsea Green has become one of the most effective voices for an ecological future.

David Ehrenfeld David Ehrenfeld is Professor of Biology at Rutgers University, an author, and most importantly our conscience when it comes to how we should conduct our lives in concert with the earth.

John McClaughry John McClaughry wrote the incorporation documents for the E. F. Schumacher Society because he believes in solving problems at the local level through citizen-based initiatives and believed that Schumacher championed such a world view.  He is President of the Ethan Allen Institute in Vermont and is a regular commentator on Vermont Public Radio.

Satish Kumar Satish Kumar is the editor of Resurgence magazine, the ProgramDirector for Schumacher College in Devonshire, England, and the President of the Schumacher Society in the U.K.  He is author of "You Are, Therefore I Am" and "No Destination:  An Autobiography."

Kirkpatrick Sale Kirkpatrick Sale has the Irish gift for words, but he combines it with the disciplined research needed to effectively make his case.  His classic work Human Scale examines the impact of size throughout human history and institutions.  It is the natural companion to Schumacher's "Small Is Beautiful."

E. F. Schumacher Society Advisory Board
 

Tanya and Wendell Berry The Berrys are deeply entwined with the Kentucky community, human and natural, surrounding their hillside farm.  Through his essays, stories, and poems, Wendell Berry is the consummate contemporary American spokesperson for small communities and an agrarian ethic.

Thomas Berry A cultural historian and Passionist Priest, Thomas Berry is the spiritual heir of Teilhard de Chardin.  His writings on a vision of an Ecozoic Era have had a profound influence on members of many cloistered religious communities, leading them to rethink how they conduct their lives on their land.

Lisa Byers Lisa has been the Director of OPAL Community Land Trust in Eastsound, WA since January 1996. She has supervised the design, development and financing of multiple new permanently affordable single family homes and a mixed use project with offices and rental apartments on Orcas Island. Prior to OPAL, Byers was the Land Steward for the San Juan County Land Bank, and worked for ten years as a manager of historic properties for the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities.

Olivia Dreier Olivia Stokes Dreier is the Associate Director of the Karuna Center for Peacebuilding and has facilitated intercommunal dialogues and peacebuilding seminars in many troubled regions of the world including, Azerbaijan, Bosnia, India, Macedonia, the Republic of Georgia, Rwanda, Senegal, and Sri Lanka. She is the Director of the Graduate Certificate Program in Conflict Transformation Across Cultures at the School for International Training (SIT) in Brattleboro, Vermont. A clinical social worker with many years of experience in community mental health, Ms. Dreier also worked for two years with the Gandhian movement in rural India and served as President of the Board of the Hartsbrook Waldorf School in Hadley, Massachusetts and of the E.F. Schumacher Society.

Jane Jacobs A planner and author by profession, Jane Jacobs was one of the most powerful spokespersons for regional economies. She is remembered as a valued and much loved advisor to the Schumacher Society.

Hazel Henderson Hazel Henderson is the founder of Ethical Markets Media, LLC and the creator and co-executive Producer of its TV series. She is a world renowned futurist, evolutionary economist, a worldwide syndicated columnist, consultant on sustainable development, and author of The Axiom and Nautilus award-winning book Ethical Markets: Growing the Green Economy (2006) and eight other books. She co-edited, with Harlan Cleveland and Inge Kaul, The UN: Policy and Financing Alternatives, Elsevier Scientific, UK 1995 (US edition, 1996). Hazel Henderson has done more than any other one person to spread the ideas of E. F. Schumacher around the world.

Wes Jackson Wes Jackson is a geneticist by training but by nature a radical with the courage to follow through on his dreams.  His commitment to achieving a perennial agriculture for the prairies is a bold initiative for the future of the landscape he loves.

Amory Lovins One of today's most brilliant thinkers on the subject of energy, Amory Lovins persuasively argues that energy security can be achieved only with decentralized production and conversion to renewable fuel sources.

John McKnight Ever committed to the welfare of the poorest in our midst, John McKnight has helped design tools and systems that empower marginalized communities.

David Orr Professor of Environmental Studies at Oberlin College, David Orr demands that we live the principles we teach.  That determination has involved him in spearheading the construction of university buildings that are ecological models and in developing curriculum that involves students directly in the environment of their community.

Michael Shuman With a background in policy issues and an understanding of organizational structures, Michael Shuman turned his attention to what makes local economies work and in the process has become the Johnny Appleseed for the renewal of local economies.

Cathrine Sneed Her fellow law-enforcement officers thought she was crazy, but Cathrine Sneed believed in the prisoners under her care and in the healing power of growing vegetables.  That belief started a garden and a movement.

Lewis Solomon A Professor of Law at George Washington University, Lewis Solomon wrote the handbook on legal issues regarding community issued scrip, a handbook that every local currency activist needs.

John Todd One of the original "New Alchemists," biologist and Professor of Environmental Design at the University of Vermont, John Todd continues to amaze us by showing what well designed communities of plants can achieve in repairing the consequences of human intervention on the earth.

Greg Watson Greg Watson's peers thought he had sold out when he became an advocate for environmental issues, but Greg knew that the consequences of ecological degradation would most directly affect poor communities.  He is a charismatic speaker, compellingly making the link between social and ecological issues.

Barbara Wood Barbara Wood is E. F. Schumacher’s eldest daughter and also his biographer (see E. F. Schumacher: His Life and Thought.) She has degrees in History, Economics, and Theology. She also has an MA in Interreligious Dialogue. She worked for the Intermediate Technology Development Group in its early years and then for Voluntary Overseas Association. After marriage and six children she became convinced that education for sustainable living had to be rooted in the experience of daily life, practiced within the context of the family and that the role and presence of the mother was fundamental. She therefore worked at home and from home. She has a particular interest in Christian theology and the Christian response to the environmental crisis on which she has written and lectured.

Arthur Zajonc Professor of Physics at Amherst College, Arthur Zajonc leads us from a careful study of the physical world into what is traditionally called the ìother world.î  Goethean in his approach, he makes the connection between these two worlds step by step, clearly, confidently, as if the transition were a common natural phenomenon.

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