Speaker: David Korten
Author, When Corporations Rule the World and Agenda for a New Economy

Topic: Creating a Real Wealth Economy for a Just and Sustainable Cascadia

We humans are awakening to the reality that we are living beings and that life, by its nature, can exist only in community. The framework for a New Economy is designed to bring humans into balance with Earth's biosphere, equitably share the wealth of our common human heritage, and make democracy a living practice. It's time to turn away from the economic system ruled by global corporations and financial markets and create a future in which economic power is rooted in people and communities of place.

Visionary author and lecturer Dr. David Korten will speak on the themes of his most recent book, Agenda for a New Economy: From Phantom Wealth to Real Wealth, which sets forth a framework for an economy designed to bring humans into balance with Earth's biosphere, equitably share the wealth of our common human heritage, and make democracy a living practice.

Bio:
David Korten is a visionary proponent of a planetary system of local living economies. His most recent book, Agenda for a New Economy, calls for an economic system that measures wealth less on the currency system and more on families, communities, healthy children, and environmental health. He outlines an agendar to liberate the latent entrepreneurial energies of Main Street from Wall Street's deadly grip and bring into being a new economy - locally based, community-oriented, and devoted to creating a better life for all, not simply increasing profits.

David is co-founder and board chair of the Positive Futures Network, which publishes YES! Magazine; founder and president of the People-Centered Development Forum; a board member of the Business Alliance for Local Living Economies; and co-chair of the New Economy Working Group. He is also a founding associate of the International Forum on Globalization and a major contributor to its report on Alternatives to Economic Globalization.

In his earlier career, David acquired a variety of establishment credentials, including MBA and Ph.D. degress from the Stanford Business School, service as a captain in the US Air Force, and five years as a Harvard Business School professor, a Ford Foundation project specialist, and Asia regional adviser on development management to the U.S. Agency for International Development. Thirty years working as a development professional in Asia, Africa, and Latin America eventually opened his eyes to the devastating consequences of an economic system designed to make rich people richer without regard to the human and environmental consequences. He became a defector from the foreign aid establishment and joined the global resistance against flawed development models.