Micha Josephy is CFNE's Program Manager, with varied responsibilities, including grant writing, communications and networking. He first joined the co-op movement as a member of the Oberlin Student Cooperative Association, in Oberlin, OH, and later coordinated the development of Boston Community Cooperative’s first housing development, Seed Pod Co-op, in Dorchester, MA.
Len Krimerman lives, works, dances, and dreams in rural eastern Connecticut, and has helped build bridges between the many varieties of grassroots democracy over the past five decades. In this, he has invariably been mentored by his amazing GEO colleagues, by the imagination and support of his lifelong partner, Marian Vitali, and by the courageous activism of so many of his students and community partners. Marian and Len are now engaged in helping develop the Windham Hour Exchange, a community barter initiative in and around Willimantic, CT.
Jessica Gordon Nembhard is a political economist and Associate Professor of Community Justice and Social Economic Development in the Africana Studies Department at John Jay College, City University of NY; and author of 
I’ve lived in intentional community for 41 years: 39 years at Sandhill Farm (a small, income-sharing community I helped found in 1974 in northeast Missouri), followed by 20 months at nearby Dancing Rabbit, an ecovillage started in 1997 with a core mission of modeling how to live a great life on a resource budget that’s only 10% of the US average. Today I live in Chapel Hill NC, where I’m trying to pioneer a new community with close friends. For the last 28 years I’ve also been integrally involved with the Fellowship for Intentional Community—a North American network dedicated to providing the information and inspiration of cooperative living to the widest possible audience. Recognizing the value of what is being learned in intentional communities about how to solve problems collaboratively and work constructively with conflict, I started a part-time career as a process consultant in 1987. Today, I’m on the road half the time conducting trainings, working with groups, and attending events all over the country. Recreationally, my passions include celebration cooking, duplicate bridge, wilderness canoeing, and the New York Times Sunday crossword.
For more than 20 years Ina Meyer-Stoll and Achim Ecker have lived and worked at the intentional community of ZEGG (www.zegg.de). They lived many years in the forerunner community and have been deeply involved in the development of Forum and have trained and supervised groups at ZEGG and in Europe, South America and the USA. They are united by their deep care for people and for our planet.
From 2006 to 2008 they joined a profound spiritual training with Thomas Hübl to broaden their communication and training skills. They see themselves as constantly learning to be more authentic in their lives and in their teachings. Living in a community with a strong focus on love, partnership and friendship, gives them a special awareness in these issues. They have lived in a committed and polyamorous partnership for more than 14 years.
They are familiar with and use "Open Space" Technology, World Cafés, Integral Life Practice, Collective Intelligence, Deep Ecology and "The work that reconnects", "Non Violent Communication", Spiral Dynamics teachings, Appreciative Inquiry, Worldwork, Consensus Decision making, Dynamic governance, …
Thomas M. Hanna is Senior Research Associate with The Democracy Collaborative. Hanna’s areas of expertise include public ownership, nationalization, privatization, and banking, among others. He has published articles in popular and academic journals including The Nation, Truthout, The Neoprogressive, and The Good Society as well as providing research support for numerous articles that have appeared in such publications as The New York Times,Alternet, Dissent, The Review of Social Economy, Solutions, and The Ecologist. Hanna assisted on the Collaborative’s contribution to a report for the United Nations 2012 Rio+20 Conference and worked closely with Gar Alperovitz on his recent book What Then Must We Do? Straight Talk About the Next American Revolution. He received his M.A. and B.A. degrees in History from Virginia Commonwealth University.
Thomas M. Hanna is a Senior Research Associate at the Democracy Collaborative at the University of Maryland. You can connect with him on twitter 
Mary Hoyer is a community and cooperative development consultant working out of Amherst, Massachusetts. She co-chairs the UnionCo-ops Council of the U.S. Federation of Worker Co-ops and has worked with the Cooperative Fund of New England, the Cooperative Development Institute, the Eastern Conference for Workplace Democracy, Citizens Research Education Network, Asylum Hill Economic Development Committee, the Hartford Public Schools, and the Hartford Federation of Teachers AFL-CIO Local 1018 as a teacher, facilitator and consultant on organizational development, finance and fundraising, governance, anti-racism, public and community education, and union organizing.
Christopher Michael is a founder of the 
Monica M. White earned a Ph.D. from Western Michigan University in Sociology. She is an assistant professor of Environmental Justice at the University of Wisconsin-Madison with a joint appointment in the Gaylord Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies and the Department of Community and Environmental Sociology and is a former Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of African American Studies at the University of Illinois-Urbana Champaign.
Dara Cooper is an activist, organizer, indigenous priestess and whole food lover based in Brooklyn, NY. She is the director of the NYC Food and Fitness Partnership at Bedford Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation, the first and one of the largest community development corporations in the country. The Partnership works to address food and health access issues, creating model places where communities of color have equitable access to healthy, safe, clean environments with an empowered community that determines and participates in an accessible, equitable, affordable food system for all residents. In November 2013, she travelled with a delegation to Cuba as a part of the first Black Permaculturalist Network and participated in the 2013 International Permaculture Conference. She believes in the power of people organizing, investing in self-determining, sustainable communities worldwide and is guided by the quote: “Imperialism is an international system of exploitation, and we, as revolutionaries, must be internationalists to defeat it.” – Assata Shakur
Ed Whitfield is a musician, writer, and raconteur in Greensboro, North Carolina. He is co-directer of the Fund for Democratic Communities where he is working to build more democratically-based collaborative economic structures.
John Zippert is the Director of Program Operations for the Federation of Southern Cooperatives/Land Assistance Fund at their Rural Training and Research Center in Epes, Alabama. He has over 45 years experience in community organizing, cooperative and credit union development, community based economic development and rural development in distressed communities. Prior to working for the Federation, he was a fieldworker for the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) in Louisiana. He has a BA degree in history from the City College of New York; and has participated in numerous training sessions and courses to enhance his skills in rural development.
Sarah Taub, Ph.D is a cultural activist whose passion is creating events where people transform. She teaches the skills of peaceful, sustainable community, self-awareness, honesty, clear boundaries, and facilitates group processes of many sorts, including consensus decision-making, business meetings and retreats, ZEGG Forum, and conflict resolution sessions. Sarah co-founded the first cohousing community in Washington, DC, and for the past 12 years has lived at Chrysalis, a small urban intentional community in Arlington, VA whose mission is to support activists and healers (www.chrysalis-va.org). Since 2004, she has been a major organizer of Network for a New Culture's East Coast Summer Camp (www.cfnc.us) and other events aimed at creating a culture based on awareness, compassion, and freedom rather than on fear and judgment. In 2006, she left her tenured professorship in Cognitive Linguistics at Gallaudet University to focus full-time on events, community-building, and cultural change. Since 2011, she has been the financial and programs manager for Abrams Creek Center (www.abramscreekcenter.com), a retreat center and community in the mountains of West Virginia.
Matthew Slater builds and implements open source software for social & complementary currencies. As a full nomad, he knows first hand many people and projects in his field. In 2009 he co-founded with Tim Anderson the Swiss association Community Forge which freely hosts web sites for LETS and timebanks. He is also active in thinking and educating about money. In 2013 He co-created the 'trading floor game' with Sybille Saint Girons. In 2015 he co-authored the Money and Society MOOC with Professor Jem Bendell. In 2016 he co-authored the Credit Commons white paper with Tim Jenkin.
Paul Glover
Joe Guinan is a Senior Fellow at The Democracy Collaborative and Executive Director of the Next System Project. Born in England with dual Irish and British citizenship, he grew up in British labor movement circles and was educated at Balliol College, Oxford. He writes regularly for progressive outlets in the UK, including openDemocracy and the journal Renewal.
Noel Ortega is the coordinator of the New Economy Working Group (NEWGroup), which is an informal partnership between YES! Magazine, the Institute for Policy Studies, the Living Economies Forum, and the Democracy Collaborative, the Institute for Local Self-reliance, and the New Economy Coalition.
Caitlin Quigley helped launch the
Tom Llewellyn is the Network Coordinator for the international 
Hilary Abell is co-founder of 
Cliff DuRand is a Research Associate at the Center for Global Justice, located in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico and a retired Professor of Philosophy at Morgan State University in Baltimore. For 25 years he has been organizing and leading educational trips to Cuba. For this work, in 1997 he was made Profesor Invitado by the University of Havana. (
Tony Patterson lives in Ottawa in a boutique housing co-op called Catalpa. This is where his interest in the world of cooperatives originates. He kicked up his participation a level once the UN declared 2012 the Year of Cooperatives. In July 2012 he wrote Catalpa's submission to the House of Commons Special Committee on Cooperatives. In October 2012 he was a participant at the IYC International Summit of Cooperatives in Quebec City, and also at the preliminary IMAGINE conference on co-op economics. That same month he launched 
Lauren Hudson is s a collective member of 
Jay Walljasper, Senior Fellow at On the Commons and editor of 
Dr. Brian D’Agostino is an interdisciplinary scholar, educator, and consultant, with publications and other professional qualifications that span public policy, education, statistical research, and the social sciences. He is President of the 
Gowri J. Krishna is the 
John Lawrence is a professor of psychology at the College of Staten Island, The City University of New York. He is also a member of the 
Penn Loh wrote this article for 
Linda Hogan is a social architect, writer and activist for peace. Her first professional incarnation was achieved within a myriad of human service organizations in local and national organizations. Linda prefers local, cooperative activism that promotes the authentic wealth and reclaimed application of community currency. She is an unapologetic, heart based storyteller with a bumper sticker that reads “Destined To Be An Old Woman With No Regrets.”
Devra Gartenstein founded Patty Pan Grill, a farmers' market
Aurora DeMarco has over 30 years of community organizing experience.She has written and published on various topics including health care; child care; migrant workers; parenting; women's issues and cyberbullying. She has worked with senior advocates pushing for Health Care for All , This coalition was successful in helping to pass a single-payer bill through the NYS Assembly. Aurora is a Licensed Massage Therapist with a specialty in working with Trauma Survivors. Aurora has worked as a Grief Counselor for Hospice of New York. She developed and presented workshops on working with trauma survivors in hospice settings. She most recently facilitated a workshop on providing elder and hospice care in intentional communities. She lives in an intentional community on Staten Island, New York and is working with Point A a collective dedicated to building more intentional income-sharing, egalitarian urban communities.
Ruby Levine is the Marketing and Communications Contractor for 
Paul Stacey, Associate Director of Global Learning—Paul is a senior project manager with Creative Commons. His project management skills were honed at Hughes Aircraft working on large scale, international air traffic control systems. Paul’s core expertise is in adult learning, educational technology, and open education. Prior to joining Creative Commons, Paul led Open Educational Resource (OER) and professional development initiatives across all the colleges and universities in British Columbia Canada. Paul’s firsthand experiences using Creative Commons’ licenses with faculty, institutions, and government inspired him to join Creative Commons. Paul is an avid outdoor and ping pong enthusiast.
Zoe Oja Tucker is originally from the East Coast. She learned about the functionality and joy of cooperation while living in the Dudley Co-op for three years as a Harvard College student. After graduating in 2013, she spent a year teaching, gardening, and cooking in schools with FoodCorps in Somers, Montana. She is now living in Oakland, California, where she has been working in freelance editing, writing, and SAT tutoring.
Jo Bird is a cooperative business consultant and long-time pro-democracy activist and organizer. Her full bio can be found 
David Morgan is a worker-owner at 
Gloria Lowe is the founder and CEO of 
Innosanto Nagara is another coop geek who has been working in worker coops since 1995. He is one of the founding members of Design Action Collective in Oakland and before that, he was a worker-owner at Inkworks press for seven years. Both are flat-structured and union shops. At various times he has been active in the Network of Bay Area Worker Cooperatives, was at the founding of the US Federation of Worker Cooperatives, and served on the board of the Western Worker Cooperative Conference. In his home life he lives in a cohousing community he built with five other families and he trains martial arts at Suigetsukan, a collectively-run dojo in Oakland. He is originally from Indonesia, is a graphic designer and activist with a degree in zoology. And he is the author of the children's books A is for Activist and Counting on Community, and an upcoming book and music CD set of Indonesian children's
Chris Tittle co-leads SELC’s Housing, Commons Governance, and Money & Finance Programs, and coordinates SELC’s grant writing, grassroots fundraising, and internal governance. He is particularly focused on participatory and polycentric governance structures for more just and resilient economies. He practices Aikido and once traveled from Japan to West Africa by land and sea.
Abigail Savitch-Lew wrote this article for 
Michelle Camou researches imaginative approaches to economic development for a more just economy at the 
Amanda Huron is an Assistant Professor of Interdisciplinary Social Sciences at the University of the District of Columbia in Washington, D.C. Her research interests are in urban geography, city planning, housing, the urban commons, community mapping, and Washington, D.C. She has published on her research into D.C.'s limited-equity cooperatives and the urban commons in the journals Washington History (2014) and Antipode (2015), and has published a piece on relationships built between housing organizers in Washington, D.C. and Johannesburg in the edited volume Capital Dilemma: Growth and Inequality in Washington, D.C. (2015). Amanda is a native of Washington's Ward 1, and lives there today.
Rob Brown wrote this article for New Economy Week, a collaboration between the New Economy Coalition and 
Fabiane Kravutschke Bogdanovicz is a Brazilian social psychologist. She worked for 4 years as a Solidarity Economy Technician at a University Social Incubator, supporting the organization of cooperatives and associations in the areas of artisan crafts and agroecological agriculture (organized by the Landless Workers Movement), and community associations. She has been a representative at Solidarity Economy Regional and State Forums, City Council, and National Conference, among other political spaces. She is a researcher of Social Movements, Communities and Participatory Democracy.
Araz Hachadourian wrote this article for
Maira Sutton is the Campaign Organizer at Shareable, working on campaigns for the international Sharing Cities Network and building our online advocacy projects. She was formerly at the 
Chelsea Rustrum is the co-author of It's a Shareable Life, a practical guide to the sharing economy, as well as a consultant, speaker, connector, and practitioner. She both lives and works in the sharing economy, with specific interests in how the sharing economy can evolve into being a part of every day life through housing and peer-to-peer platforms. She's a digital native, a self-proclaimed digi-hippie, and an entrepreneur. She also founded several local event series, including the Sharers of SF and Hippie Hour as well as Startup Abroad, a live/work program for international entrepreneurs.
Stacco Troncoso (Spain) is the advocacy coordinator of the P2P Foundation as well as the project lead for Commons Transition, the P2PF’s main communication and advocacy hub. He is also co-founder of the P2P translation collective Guerrilla Translation and designer/content editor for CommonsTransition.org, the P2P Foundation blog and the new Commons Strategies Group website. His work in communicating commons culture extends to public speaking and relationship-building with prefigurative communities, policymakers and potential commoners worldwide.
Leah Penniman wrote this article for 
Michele 'Micky' Metts is a software developer and community activist. Her previous experience includes creation and development of diverse online communities, and small and large websites. Michele has also managed many diverse teams of programmers to create custom applications specifically for community use. As a pioneer, working with VoipDrupal technology, she has created and presents VoipDrupal webinars in conjunction with the MediaLab at M.I.T. Micky was formerly a punk rock bassist and guitarist, a welder and a silversmith, a formula racing pit crew member, and a creator of some radically modified late 1960's VW beetles. Michele travels to events as a speaker presenting on topics ranging from Community Building, Industry Organizing and Cooperative Development, to some interesting modules and things you can do with Drupal.
Travis Putnam Hill wrote this article for 
Tsvetan is a developer at Camplight digital cooperative. Follow 
Jennifer Bryant is a DC-based writer, organizer and radio host. She is a founding steering committee member of Cooperation DC (a project of ONE DC). Cooperation DC's mission is to expand opportunities for dignified employment and democratic ownership in low-income communities of color through the development of worker-owned cooperatives. Jennifer co-hosts Voices with Vision - a weekly radio show on WPFW 89.3FM - and produces Agenda 2016, the station's national elections coverage.
Stephanie Rearick is Founder and Co-Director of the Dane County TimeBank and Project Coordinator of Mutual Aid Networks.
Matt Grillo has been a worker-owner member of Collective Copies since 2000.
Atlee McFellin is a Co-Founder & Principal of The Symbiosis Center LLC where he specializes in the creation of innovative economic development strategies and programs. He is also the founder and President of Inge’s Place: The Space for Innovation; a 6,000sqft co-working space in his hometown of Battle Creek, MI fostering entrepreneurship and collaboration amongst small non-profits, microenterprises, and the creative community. Inge’s Place, named after his grandmother, is also the home of the BC New Economy Initiative, a loose network of organization working together to create economic opportunity for the local community. His writings can be found on Shareable.net, Resilience.org, CommonDreams, and especially his company at blog.symcenter.org.
Jim Tull teaches Philosophy, Community Service and Global Studies at the Community College of Rhode Island, Providence College and Rhode Island’s state prison. He is also the co-founder of 
Christina Clamp (“Chris”) is a professor of sociology and the director of the Center for Cooperatives and Community Economic Development at Southern New Hampshire University. 
Avery C. Edenfield is an assistant professor in Technical Communication and Rhetoric at Utah State University. Avery researches professional communication in cooperatives, collectives, and nonprofits. He has hosted several workshops on writing, including at the NASCO 2016 Institute and the 2017 ACE Institute. Avery is a member of several cooperatives and has been involved in cooperative development and governance since 2012. He has published on writing in cooperatives in the Journal of Technical Writing and Communication, Technical Communication, and Nonprofit Quarterly.
At the time this piece was written, Kathleen McGwin was the Executive Director of Cooperative Care in Wautoma, Wisconsin. 
George Dafermos is a researcher of technology policy and management and a copyleft activist affiliated with the P2P Foundation. He holds a PhD from Delft University of Technology and is an internationally recognised expert on issues related to the governance of the commons, peer production, open/user innovation, open licensing and new organisational structures enabled by the Internet.
J. Gabriel Ware wrote this article for 
Aaron Fernando is the Development and Communications Director at the Schumacher Center for a New Economics in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. He is also a freelance writer focusing on local movements, new economy initiatives, and behavioral economics.
Valeria Sosa Garnica is currently a junior at Williams College. She is a political science and American studies double major. She hopes to pursue a life of cooperative resistance, community organizing, and anti-capitalist joy.
Cadwell Turnbull is a graduate from the North Carolina State University’s Creative Writing MFA in Fiction and English MA in Linguistics. He is a writer of science fiction and fantasy with work appearing in Asimov's Science Fiction, Lightspeed and Nightmare.
Reed Ingalls is an intern at the Northwest Cooperative Development Center and a student at the Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington, where he studies Cooperative Business Development and Restoration Ecology. You can read more of his writing at 
Stephanie Van Hook wrote this article for 
Miki Kashtan is an international teacher, creator of Convergent Facilitation, and author of three books, the latest being Reweaving Our Human Fabric: Working Together to Create a Nonviolent Future.
Michaela Fisher is a recent graduate of Wesleyan University and a 2017-2018 Thomas J. Watson Fellow studying worker cooperative and the greater solidarity econmy abroad. Over the course of a year, she will travel to Spain, Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, Nepal, and Canada to explore their cooperative economies.
Crystal Byrd Farmer is an engineer turned educator. She is the organizer of Charlotte Cohousing, supporting three forming communities. She is passionate about encouraging people to change their perspectives on diversity, relationships, and the world. She loves organizing meetups, teaching, and playing with her six-year-old daughter. As the owner of Big Sister Team Building, she leads team-building exercises and creates mobile escape room experiences.
Jonah Fertig-Burd is a Cooperative Development Specialist with the Cooperative Development Institute in the 
Chris Winters wrote this article for 
Oliver Sylvester-Bradley is a co-founder of 
Ted, formerly known as Jennifer Rau, is a linguist, videographer and singer-songwriter. Ted got exposed to sociocracy when moving into a sociocratically run cohousing community. Seeing how effective decision-making was there, and enjoying the flow in sociocratic meetings, he realized that: “I am leaving the meeting even more refreshed and energized than I came.” Ted realized sociocracy, particularly in the combination with NVC, was big and potentially world-changing and started paying attention to the suffering that ineffective meetings and collaboration bring almost everywhere people collaborate – which is everywhere where people are. People and their universal need to connect and move things are at the center of attention. The training in syntax and semantics taught Ted to find patterns that work well for the human mind, work empirically and break things down so they can be understood. Being a parent had taught him to be extremely pragmatic; at the end of the day, dinner must be on the table no matter whether the new vision statement is done.
Saki Bailey is an activist, legal scholar and writer on the Commons. She has published several articles and books. For a full bio and publication list 
Evie is a Southern Californian and recent graduate of Barnard College, where she majored in Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies with a concentration in Race and Ethnicity Studies. Over the past couple of years, Evie has been involved with anti-mass incarceration work, environmental justice organizing, and facilitating a radical discussion group about all things related to gender and sexual identity. Her passion for environmental, economic, racial, and gender justice brings her to the world of solidarity economy work, where she serves as Program Manager for 
Chuck Collins wrote this article for 
Robert Raymond is the Co-Producer and Creative Director of the Upstream Podcast and Senior Producer, Designer, and Creative Director of 
Daniel Chavez, a TNI fellow, specialises in left politics, state companies and public services. He is an active contributor of the Municipal Services Project (MSP) research network, has contributed to Alternatives to Privatization: Public Options for Essential Services in the Global South (Routledge, 2012) and has co-edited The Reinvention of the State: Public Enterprises and Development in Latin America and the world.
Benjamin Melançon is a member of Agaric, a worker-owned tech co-op. His work with Agaric clients has included universities (MIT and Harvard University), corporations (Backupify and GenArts), and not-for-profit organizations (Partners In Health and 
Janelle Orsi is the Director of the national nonprofit 
Shernee Bellamy is the 31 year old Co-Owner of Concrete Dreamers, LLC., a full-time Youth Leadership teacher in Gainesville Florida, and in May completed a master's degree in English and Language Arts from Mercyhurst University. She also holds a B.F.A in Theatre, minor degree in Speech Communications, served two years in AmeriCorps, and has over 10 years of experience teaching students K - College. Taking from her personal experiences as a black female who grew up in poverty, Shernee uses Experiential Learning Design to develop innovative lessons for her students at Project Youth Build in Gainesville, Fl. Her well-developed curriculum centers around culturally sensitive issues such as: poverty, trauma, systemic oppression, resiliency, privilege, financial literacy, empathy, and much more.Her passion from theater enhances each lesson using role play and team building. She stands firm in her conviction that this curriculum is best taught by black women. Her goal is to empower more people of color to enter the Education Sector; where our voices are often absent. She envisions herself getting a Ph.D in Educational Leadership so she can educate teacher candidates about best practices when teaching students who are enrolled in schools that are referred to as alternative.
Tom Llewellyn is the Strategic Partnerships Director at
Peter Harris is the Founder and CEO of Resonate, a streaming music cooperative.
Matt Cropp has an MA in history from the University of Vermont, where he focused on the history of the credit union movement. He currently works as Co-Executive Director of the Vermont Employee Ownership Center, serves as chair of the Vermont Solidarity Investing Club (which invests exclusively in co-ops), and is involved with a number of co-op start-up and cross-sector initiatives including Full Barrel Co-op, social.coop, and Cooperative Vermont. He lives in Burlington, VT.
Isabel Marlens is a Special Projects Coordinator for Local Futures. She studied Ecology and English Literature at Bennington College, has a Permaculture Design Certificate from Quail Springs Permaculture, and has done native plant conservation and education, forest ecology research, and research and writing for various documentary film and online publications in the areas of social and environmental justice.
Nina Ignaczak writes and edits stories about all aspects of people and place: development, entrepreneurship, transportation, education, energy, policy, tech, the sharing economy, local food and agriculture, and the environment. She also loves telling (and visualizing) the stories behind the data.