Author

Janelle Orsi is the Director of the national nonprofit Sustainable Economies Law Center, and she is a "sharing lawyer" in private law practice in Oakland, CA. Her work is focused on helping communities, share, barter, and create cooperatives, social enterprises, cohousing communities, urban farms, local currencies, and community-supported enterprise. Through the Law Office of Janelle Orsi, she works with cooperatives, community gardens, cohousing communities, ecovillages, and others doing innovative work to change the world.

Janelle is author of the book Practicing Law in the Sharing Economy (ABA Books 2012), and co-author of The Sharing Solution: How to Save Money, Simplify Your Life & Build Community (Nolo 2009), a practical and legal guide to cooperating and sharing resources of all kinds.

The University of Wisconsin Center for Cooperatives seeks to increase understanding and encourage critical thinking about cooperatives by fostering scholarship and mutual learning among academics, the cooperative community, policy makers and the public.

Philip Mirkin is the founder and executive director of the Fiji Institute of Sustainable Habitats (www.SustainableFiji.org), now partnered with the Fiji Government, and the cofounder of the Fiji Organic Village. He is also founder of Hybrid Adobe International, which designs and creates new building materials and architecture to respond to climate change. He has designed ecovillages in Fiji and New Zealand, and is currently designing hurricane-resistant natural shelters. Philip has led more than 120 workshops in sustainable building at University of California Santa Cruz, The Institute for Solar Living, the American Institute of Architects, and many other locations. Since 1981, Philip has led annual humanitarian aid relief expeditions around the world. He has also authored several books including The Hybrid Adobe Handbook. He can be reached at philipmirkin [AT] hotmail.com.

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 National Institute for Children's Health Quality).

Yana Ludwig is a cooperative culture pioneer, intentional communities advocate, and anti-oppression activist. She serves on the board of the Fellowship for Intentional Community and works as a local chapter coach for Showing Up for Racial Justice. Her latest book, Together Resilient: Building Community in the Age of Climate Disruption, was awarded the Communal Studies Association 2017 Book of the Year Award. She is a podcast host on Solidarity House (advocating for cooperative culture and economics) and a founding member of the Solidarity Collective, an income-sharing community in Laramie, Wyoming.