Video Interview: Bob Massie at the New Economics Institute Strategies for a New Economy Conference

Jun 21, 2012 3:00 PM ET

Recorded live at the New Economics Institute Strategies for a New Economy Conference on June 9, 2012, Bob Massie speaks about the role people, businesses, and communities can play in building the New Economy Movement. "The New Economy Movement is spreading across the entire United States at different scales, from local action to regional action to national action, and the New Economics Institute has a role to play in helping at each scale," Massie says. "We see some very big companies trying to rethink their business models … asking themselves, 'is our only purpose simply to make as much money in the short term for our shareholders, or do we have broader obligations to work for our employees, for our communities,' and more and more companies are taking on that role."

"The New Economy Movement helps people articulate what the economy should be doing -- it should be in the service of humanity," Massie adds.  "We are in an extremely creative period of redesign, restoring the purpose of economics as a component of human philosophy."

Visit the Strategies for a New Economy Conference webpage for more information, including videos, resources, and a Storify timeline of tweets from the conference: http://neweconomicsinstitute.org/conference

For information on the New Economics Institute, please contact:

Carina Millstone

857.284.2915

carinamillstone@neweconomicsinstitute.org

About The New Economics Institute   The New Economics Institute is a US organization that combines vision, theory, action, and communication to effect a transition to a new economy -- an economy that gives priority to supporting human wellbeing and Earth’s natural systems. The organization is the successor organization to the 30-year old,well-respected E.F. Schumacher Institute. The Institute is headed by newly appointed President and CEO, Dr. Robert K. Massie and currently has offices in New York City, NY, and Great Barrington, MA.   The New Economics Institute’s multidisciplinary approach employs research, applied theory, public campaigns, and educational events to describe an alternative socio- economic system that is capable of addressing the enormous challenges of our times. NEI current projects include the well-known BerkShares Local Currency Program, the Community Land Trust Program, and the Global Transition Map to a New Economy.   The New Economics Institute Board of Directors include Gar Alperovitz, Jessica Brackman, John Fullerton, Neva Goodwin, Hildegarde Hannum, Eric Harris- Braun, Dan Levinson, Bob Massie, Richard Norgaard, David Orr, Will Raap, Gus Speth, Peter Victor, Stewart Wallis, Timothy Wirth and Susan Witt.   About Bob Massie   Bob Massie is the President and CEO of the New Economics Institute. An ordained Episcopal minister, he received his B.A. from Princeton Unversity, M.A. from Yale Divinity School, and doctorate from Harvard Business School. From 1989 to 1996 he taught at Harvard Divinity School, where he served as the director of the Project on Business, Values, and the Economy. His 1998 book, Loosing the Bonds: The United States and South Africa in the Apartheid Years, won the Lionel Gelber prize for the best book on international relations in the world. He was the Democratic nominee for lieutenant governor of Massachusetts in 1994 and a candidate for the United States Senate in 2011.   During his career he has created or led three ground-breaking sustainability organizations, serving as the president of Ceres (the largest coalition of investors and environmental groups in the United States), the co-founder and first chair of the Global Reporting Initiative, and the initiator of the Investor Network on Climate Risk, which currently has over 100 members with combined assets of over $10 trillion. His autobiography, A Song in the Night: A Memoir of Resilience, has just been published by Nan A. Talese/Doubleday.