MONTHLY discovery dialogues

We draw on our extensive global network of global thought leaders with specific topic expertise to engage in this live dialogue. RSVP for our next live dialogue and catchup on the archives below in the meantime!

About Capital Institute’s Discovery Dialogues

Every month John Fullerton will host a Dialogue on a current and vital topic with relevance to economics and finance. We will draw on our extensive global network of global thought leaders with specific topic expertise to engage in dialogue with John.

We draw on David Bohm’s,* On Dialogue and Danny Martin’s concept of “Mindfulness Dialogue” to guide our conversations. The roots of the word “dialogue” come from the Greek words dia meaning “through” and logos which means “the divine wisdom manifest in creation” or simply “meaning”. Our Discovery Dialogues therefore do not follow the standard “interview the expert” design of many podcasts. Rather, John and one or two thought leaders will seek to illuminate wisdom through mindful engagement on the topic of the moment, first among themselves, and then including our audience. To do this, we will explore the topic using our Eight Principles of Regenerative Vitality as our compass. Our goal will be to uncover fresh perspectives and possible pathways forward not previously considered by any of the participants, in other words, emergent understanding and actionable ideas.

Join Us Live!

Join Capital Institute founder John Fullerton in conversation with Thomas Homer-Dixon, Founder and Executive Director of the Cascade Institute and one of today’s foremost complexity thinkers, for a deep and honest dialogue about what it means to navigate through what Thomas has framed as the Chaos Vortex.

Drawing from his decades of work on civilizational risk, the polycrisis, and his most recent book Commanding Hope, Thomas will share his latest thinking on how we confront hard truths without succumbing to paralyzing despair—or clinging to naïve optimism.

Whether you are shaping capital flows or on the front lines in this time of profound uncertainty, this conversation will offer vital insights into the civilizational context Regenerative Economics and Regenerative Finance must respond to—and the kind of imagination and systems-thinking investors, leaders, professionals and changemaking citizens must now embrace.

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Meet Thomas Homer-Dixon

Dr. Thomas (Tad) Homer-Dixon is founder and Executive Director of the Cascade Institute at Royal Roads University in Victoria, British Columbia. His research focuses on threats to global security in the 21st century, including economic instability, climate change, and energy scarcity. He also studies how people, organizations, and societies can better resolve their conflicts and innovate in response to complex problems. He holds a PhD from MIT in international relations, defense and arms control policy, and conflict theory. He is considered among the world’s leading experts on the intricate links between nature, technology, and society.

Watch Past Episodes

Meet Andrew Winston

Andrew Winston is a globally-recognized expert on megatrends, sustainable business, and how to build companies that profit by contributing to a thriving world. He was ranked #3 on the Thinkers50 list of the most influential management thinkers in the world. Andrew’s books on strategy – including Green to Gold, The Big Pivot, and Net Positive, which was co-authored with legendary CEO Paul Polman – have sold over a quarter million copies in 15 languages. The Financial Times selected Net Positive as one of the Best Business Books of the Year. Andrew writes regularly for the Harvard Business Review and MIT Sloan Management Review. His views on strategy have been sought after by many of the planet’s leading companies, including 3M, DuPont, J&J, Kimberly-Clark, Marriott, PepsiCo, and Unilever. Andrew is a dynamic and inspiring speaker, reaching audiences of thousands at executive meetings globally. He received degrees in economics, business, and environmental management from Princeton, Columbia, and Yale.

Meet Jonathan Rose

Jonathan F.P. Rose’s business, public policy, teaching, research, writing, and not-for-profit work focuses on creating more environmentally, socially, and economically resilient cities.

In 1989, Mr. Rose founded and is President of Jonathan Rose Companies LLC, a real estate development and investment firm that acquires and develops affordable and mixed-income housing. The firm has long been a leader in environmentally responsible building.

Mr. Rose received the Enterprise Community Partners, James W. Rouse Civic Medal of Honor in 2012, the 2021 ULI Prize for Visionaries in Urban Development, and, in 2023, The Order of the Beloved of the Thunder Dragon awarded by His Majesty, The King of Bhutan.

Mr. Rose’s book on how to create resilient cities, The Well-Tempered City: What Modern Science, Ancient Civilizations and Human Nature Teach Us About the Future of Urban Life, was published by Harper Wave in 2016 and won the 2017 PROSE Award for Outstanding Scholarly Work by a Trade Publisher.

Mr. Rose and his wife, Diana Calthorpe Rose, are the co-founders of the Garrison Institute. He serves as Chair on its Board and of the Bhutan Urban and Regional Planning Global Advisory Committee. He is also a trustee of Enterprise Community Partners.

Mr. Rose graduated from Yale University in 1974 with a B.A. in Psychology and Philosophy and received a Master’s in Regional Planning from the University of Pennsylvania in 1980. He was appointed an Executive in Residence at the Saïd Business School, focusing on his work on regenerative business and regenerative economies.

Reparations are often framed through the lens of division, but what if we reimagined them as a pathway to systemic health and collective regeneration? On February 27th at 11am ET, John Fullerton joined by Enith Williams of the Reparations Finance Lab for a vital dialogue on the why, the who, the what, and the how of reparation finance. Our guiding question: Where does moral clarity and systemic health align?

Don’t miss this opportunity to learn from thoughtful voices bringing new perspectives that will help us navigate this essential challenge that has been avoided far too long.

Meet Enith Martin Williams

Enith Martin Williams is the Founder and Executive Director of the Reparations Finance Lab (RFL), a non-profit that seeks to deliver Reparative Capital to the descendants of the Transatlantic Slave Trade. RFL’s vision is to dismantle practices and structures in all institutions that perpetuate harm; repair intergenerational trauma, eliminate the racial wealth gap, and end modern-day systemic racism through reparative redress for African people’s stolen labor, knowledge, and property.

RFL has developed a groundbreaking impact measurement framework built on large-scale data analysis that quantifies the harms created by publicly traded corporations on Black Americans in the United States to drive its engagement with the private sector. The framework is categorized by wellness indicators defined by the WHO’s Social Determinants of Health framework.

Enith is a graduate of Williams College and worked as an international banker with Merrill Lynch in New York. She later returned to live in Jamaica, where various economic development agencies of the Government of Jamaica employed her. She also served on the boards of directors of public agencies and companies listed on the Jamaica Stock Exchange.

Enith is a committed volunteer and serves on the board of several nonprofit and charitable organizations. She is the mother of two adult children and a published author exploring her memories of growing up in rural Jamaica.

On January 30th at 11am ET, John Fullerton and Jasper van Brakel, CEO of RSF Social Finance, hosted an inspiring live Discovery Dialogue as we celebrated the 40th anniversary of RSF. Founded in 1984, and rebranded to Regenerative Social Finance, RSF is a true pioneer in impact investing, guided by the visionary ideas of Rudolf Steiner’s writings. We explored how RSF’s innovative approach to regenerative finance has mobilized over $1 billion to fund businesses and nonprofits tackling the world’s most urgent issues. Don’t miss this opportunity to learn from one of the leading organizations in impact investing about shaping a future where we don’t just finance change, but change finance.

Meet Jasper van Brakel

As president and CEO of RSF Social Finance, Jasper van Brakel sees firsthand the energy that mission-aligned, catalytic capital sparks. He guides RSF in revolutionizing how people relate to and work with money, leading a talented team that develops innovative giving, investing, and lending programs to address the significant social, environmental, and economic challenges of our time.

Prior to joining RSF in March 2018, van Brakel was a partner at Newpark Capital, a private equity firm for impact-driven companies. He served as an operating partner with Armonia, an impact investor and regenerative field builder, where he initiated collaborative partnerships and provided strategic leadership support to several portfolio companies, both as an adviser and as a board member.

Born and raised in the Netherlands, van Brakel worked for 14 years with the Weleda Group, advancing from sales positions in Germany to leading global strategy, branding, and marketing initiatives. He moved to the U.S. in 2008 to lead Weleda North America as president and CEO in New York, a position he held for 7 years. As chair and interim CEO for Weleda’s Dutch and Belgian subsidiaries from 2013 to 2014, van Brakel restructured the company and positioned it for growth while maintaining the culture of the venerable natural, organic, and biodynamic consumer product company.

A graduate of Harvard Business School’s general management program, van Brakel also holds a master’s degree in economics from Erasmus University Rotterdam. He chairs the board of Gaia Herbs in Brevard, North Carolina and sits on the advisory board of Flock, an accelerator focused on regenerative and natural food. Jasper lives in San Rafael, California with his wife Marieke and their four children.

On December 4th at 12 PM ET on “ESG Blowback: Activist Investors and the Future of Investor Activism”, we dug into what’s really happening with ESG, how investors are pushing for change, and what all this means for the future of capitalism. Whether you’re a finance professional or just wondering the true potential of ESG in re-imaging the future of finance, this is a discussion you don’t want to miss!

Meet Kristin Hull

Kristin is a conscious investor empowering individuals, families and organizations to invest in alignment with their values, for the world they want to see. Kristin launched Nia Global Solutions in 2013 to bring activism and impact investing into the public markets. In doing so, she developed Nia’s six solutions-focused investment themes, weaving a gender-lens throughout the investment process. She launched the Nia Growth and Dividend portfolio in 2018 and Nia’s Racial Justice portfolio in 2022.

Kristin founded Nia Community Investments in 2010, a 100% mission-aligned investment fund focused on social justice and environmental sustainability in Oakland. Prior to Nia Community, Kristin served as President and Chair of the Board of the Hull Family Foundation from 2007 to 2011, where she oversaw all of the investment efforts, transitioning the endowment from a traditional investment portfolio to one of the country’s first 100% mission impact invested portfolios. Kristin is also a co-founder of Impact Hub Oakland, a co-working space nurturing entrepreneurs and social change makers.

Prior to dedicating her career to conscious investing,

Kristin served as an educator and classroom teacher. In 1997, Kristin co-founded the North Oakland Community Charter School, and served on the founding board of the George Mark Children’s House, the first free standing children’s hospice and palliative care center in the U.S.

Kristin is devoted to promoting inclusion and diversity in leadership, to re-envisioning capitalism and to changing the face of finance. She serves on the leadership committee of How Women Lead, and on the board of directors for the Mosaic Project and American Rivers, and is an advisor to African Women Rising, GenderSmart and the Nicholson Foundation.

Kristin holds a Ph.D. in Urban Education from the University of California at Berkeley, an MA in Research in Bilingual Education from Stanford University. She earned her BA and teaching credentials at Tufts University. She lives in Berkeley, California and enjoys river rafting and hiking.

Episode 15: Regenerative Technology: Mission Impossible?

Throughout human history, technology has been a double-edged sword. With exponentially more powerful tech at our doorstep, its potential for systemic harm, or health, could grow wildly. Might a living systems lens help us chart a course towards life affirming technologies?

On Thursday, October 24th at 12pm EDT (New York) John Fullerton welcomed Jessica Groopman, Thought Leader within the upcoming Money & Banking for a Regenerative Economy course, back for a second Discovery Dialogue to explore the acceleration of regeneration in the tech sector and the potential of The Regenerative Technology Project along with Danielle Lanyard.

Meet Jessica Groopman & Danielle Lanyard

Jessica Groopman is the founder of The Regenerative Technology Project, a platform to encourage and accelerate the Tech industry’s shift towards supporting societal and ecological health. A technology industry analyst, author, and speaker, she studies the intersection of emerging technologies and regeneration, and advises forward-thinking leaders globally on disruptive “horizon 3” innovations. She has published over 50 reports on a wide range of emerging tech applications and implications across culture, business, economics, and environment. Jessica was also included in Onalytica’s list of the 100 Most Influential Thought Leaders on the Internet of Things and Top Women in AI Ethics, and recently co-authored a book about converging trends called The Fast Future Blur.

Prior, she founded research firm, Kaleido Insights, and was formerly principal analyst at Tractica, Harbor Research, and Altimeter Group, later serving as Digital Strategy & Innovation Director, now Senior Innovation Advisor with impact consultancy, Intentional Futures. Jessica is also a distinguished fellow at RegenIntel, ambassador at Capital Institute, faculty at Fast Future Fundamentals, part of the Nexxworks’ collective of futurists, and serves on CapGemini’s Net Positive Advisory Board. Trained in anthropology, Jessica loves helping leaders think differently about the future.

Learn more about Jessica on her LinkedIn, connect on Twitter or at these upcoming events, and find all past research at jessgroopman.com. Learn more about her latest projects at regentech.co and The Future Blur.

Danielle Lanyard is the founder of big deep digital, a firm led by an environmentally focused entrepreneur whose career path has been at the intersection of sustainability, technology and storytelling. Danielle’s background of life & work experience includes environmental study, community action, and startup development, beginning as a child working on her first local campaign and charity fundraiser, and now spanning two decades and four continents. After taking Capital Institute’s Regenerative Economics course, Danielle joined forces with Jessica Groopman to co-found The Regenerative Technology Project.

Episode 14: Rethinking Global Governance in the Age of Complexity

We welcomed Hunter Lovins into public dialogue with John Fullerton on “Rethinking Governance.” President and Founder of Natural Capitalism Solutions and Time Magazine’s Millennium Hero for the Planet, Hunter has extensive experience across decades of public sector, private sector, and NGO institutional efforts such as the UN SDG process and too many COP convening to recall, all anticipating what we now call the polycrisis which so far appears to present challenges beyond our collective ability to respond.

Meet Hunter Lovins

L. Hunter Lovins is the President and Founder of Natural Capitalism Solutions (NCS), a non-profit formed in 2002 in Longmont, CO. She is Managing Partner of NOW Partners. A renowned author and champion of sustainable development for over 35 years, Hunter has consulted on regenerative business, economic development, sustainable agriculture, energy, water, security, and climate policies for scores of governments, communities, and companies worldwide. Within the United States, she has consulted for heads of state, departments of defense, energy agencies and hundreds of state and local agencies.

Hunter believes that citizens, communities and companies, working together within the market context, are the most dynamic problem-solving force on the planet. She has devoted herself to building teams that can create and implement practical and affordable solutions to the problems facing us in creating a sustainable future.

Hunter has co‐authored seventeen books and hundreds of articles. Her book, Natural Capitalism, Won the Shingo Prize. It has been translated into a more than three dozen languages and summarized in Harvard Business Review. Its sequel, The Way Out: Kickstarting Capitalism To Save Our Economic Ass, won the Atlas Award. Her book, Creating a Lean and Green Business System again won the Shingo Prize. Her latest book, A Finer Future: Creating an Economy in Service to Life won the Nautilus Award.

Hunter has taught at numerous universities around the world. Currently a professor of Sustainable Management at Fordham University, she was named a Master at the Chinese De Tao Academy, where she helped launch the Institute for Green Investment in Shanghai.

A consultant for scores of industries and governments worldwide, she has worked with International Finance Corporation, KPMG, Unilever, Walmart, the United Nations and Royal Dutch Shell, as well as such sustainability champions as Interface, Patagonia and Clif Bar, among many others.

Hunter lectures regularly to audiences around the globe, and has briefed senior officials in more than 30 countries. She has worked in economic development from Afghanistan to New Zealand, and served the King of Bhutan on his International Expert Working Group, charged with reinventing the global economy. She serves on the Executive Committee of the Club of Rome, the steering committee of the Alliance for Sustainability And Prosperity, and Capital Institute’s Advisory Board. A founding mentor of the Unreasonable Institute, Hunter teaches entrepreneurship and coaches social enterprises around the world. She is also a founding partner in Change Finance, an impact-investing firm. Hunter has won dozens of awards from the Right Livelihood Award (Alternative Nobel), Leadership in Business, The Rachel Carson Award, and the European Sustainability Pioneer award. Time Magazine recognized her as a Millennium Hero for the Planet, and Newsweek called her the Green Business Icon.

Episode 13: Limits to Growth: Charting the Next 50 Years

50 Years ago in a Report to the Club of Rome, Limits to Growth warned that exponential population and industrial economic expansion were driving humanity towards crisis – or a cliff. Sitting here today in what we now call the polycrisis, Limits to Growth has proven to be frightfully prescient. And yet, our collective response remains woefully inadequate in pace and scope.

On Thursday, August 29th at 12pm EDT (New York) John Fullerton welcomed Sandrine Dixson-Declève, Co-President of the Club of Rome, for an inspiring dialogue on the failures and future of global leadership, and how we can achieve prosperity within planetary limits.

Meet Sandrine Dixson-Declève

Sandrine Dixson-Declève is an environmental scientist and an international climate change, sustainable development, sustainable finance, and complex system thought leader. She is Co-President of the Club of Rome and divides her time between leading the Club of Rome, advising on non-Executive corporate and academic Boards, lecturing, and facilitating difficult conversations. She is a TED global speaker and was recognised most recently by Reuters as one of 25 global female trailblazers and by GreenBiz as one of the 30 most influential women across the globe driving change in the low carbon economy and promoting green business.

Episode 12: Salmon Nation: Bioregional Scale Regeneration

Spencer Beebe, a Founder and Managing Partner of Salmon Nation Trust, has been recognized as an unconventional champion of the environment for nearly a half a century, typically operating at the “edge of chaos”. He was the founding President of Conservation International in 1987 and then shifted his focus to bioregional regeneration with the founding of Ecotrust in 1991, long before that term was even a “thing”.

On Thursday, July 25th at 12pm EDT, John Fullerton welcomed Spencer for a rich dialogue with a true elder statesman of the Environmental movement, and a tireless champion of action-driven work on the ground. Few demonstrate the principles of regenerative economics as lived experience more practically than Spencer Beebe, a longtime friend and teacher of the Capital Institute.

Meet Spencer Beebe

Spencer B. Beebe, Ecotrust Founder and Board Chairman, earned his M.F.S. (Forest Science) degree in 1974 from Yale University’s School of Forestry and Environmental Studies and a B.A. in Economics from Williams College in 1968. He served with the Peace Corps in Honduras from 1968-71 and, after serving 14 years with The Nature Conservancy as Northwest representative, Western Regional Director, Vice President and President of the Nature Conservancy’s International Program, he was the founding President of Conservation International in 1987. In February 1991, Spencer founded Ecotrust; with Shorebank Corporation of Chicago he helped found ShoreBank Pacific, the first environmental bank, now Beneficial State Bank. And ShoreBank Enterprise Pacific, now Craft3. He is the author of Cache: Creating Natural Economies. Currently a Founder and Managing Partner of Salmon Nation Trust.

Episode 11: Bioregional Financing Facilities: Connecting Financial Resources to Regeneration

A global regenerative economy will be built on a foundation of bioregional place-based and place-sourced initiatives. However, there is no infrastructure within current financial markets to catalyze this essential regenerative development to heal degraded ecosystem function. On Thursday, June 27th at 12pm EDT (New York) John Fullerton welcomed Samantha Power, Regenerative Economist, Futurist, and Bioregionalist, for a discussion on Bioregional Financing Facilities, the missing link to catalyze capital flows toward landscape scale regeneration.

Meet Samantha Power

Samantha Power is a Co-Founder and the Director of the forthcoming BioFi Project and the Founder and Principal Consultant of Finance for Gaia. She is a Regenerative Economist, Futurist, and Bioregionalist based in Oakland, CA on the ancestral land of the Ohlone people. She is a co-author of the book, Bioregional Financing Facilities: Reimagining Finance to Regenerate Our Planet. Samantha believes we need to build a new layer in the global financial architecture to halt the sixth mass extinction and she is dedicating her life to doing just that.

For 15 years now, Samantha has been asking “How do we change where money is flowing so that it supports, rather than destroys, life?” This question has taken her to many different geographies, communities, and institutions — from rapidly disappearing rainforests across Southeast Asia, women’s community lending circles in Myanmar, the US Treasury Department, the UN, the World Bank, as well as the ecological and social impact investing community.

Ultimately, it landed her amidst the redwoods in the San Francisco Bay Area, where Samantha took stock of what she had learned trying to change financial flows from the top down. She began deepening her listening to the people she saw doing the most urgent work in the world right now: regenerating the Earth’s lands and waters. She learned that the Indigenous land stewards, regenerative farmers, community builders, and regenerative systems designers from around the world were not able to access the financial resources needed to support their critical work, and imagined a set of new bioregional-scale financial institutions and infrastructure, strategically coordinated to change ecosystems and economic systems at scale.

Samantha channeled what she learned into a new book: Bioregional Financing Facilities: Reimagining Finance to Regenerate Our Planet. The book makes the case for, and explains how to build systems and infrastructure to shift capital to place-based regenerators to achieve global climate and nature-related goals, while enabling the transition to regenerative economies. To turn this vision into a global movement, Samantha co-founded the BioFi Project — a collective of experts supporting bioregions around the world to design, build, and implement BFFs inspired by the templates laid out in the book.

Episode 10: Landscape Scale Regeneration: 100 MM Hectares by 2024!

Our collective future depends upon our ability to restore the Earth’s degraded land: our common land. On Thursday, April 25th at 12pm ET (New York) John Fullerton welcomed Willem Ferwerda, Founder, Commonland for a hope filled dialogue on a practical and holistic approach towards restoring and regenerating 100 million hectares of the world’s degraded landscapes by 2040. They discussed the challenges and opportunities of scaling a regenerative approach that reconnects entire ecosystems, including people, communities, and businesses, with life.

Meet Willem Ferwerda

Willem Ferwerda is Founder of Commonland, a nonprofit foundation that supports local actors to develop long-term solutions at a landscape scale on biodiversity, carbon, regenerative agriculture, business and communities and is active in more than 20 countries, using the 4 Returns framework, a holistic approach to integrated landscape management and restoration.

Ferwerda studied biology, tropical ecology and agriculture at the University of Amsterdam and Universidad Nacional Colombia. In Colombia he lived and worked with poor farmers on the impact of agriculture and recovery of natural vegetation. After finalizing his studies, he organized expeditions to remote nature areas in Latin America and Europe.

From 1995 Ferwerda set up Dutch funded Rainforest Grants Program at the Netherlands office of IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature) to support rainforest conservation NGOs and indigenous people. From 2000-2012 he served as Executive Director of IUCN Netherlands: setting up ecosystem grants programs on wetlands, rainforests, and grasslands in more than 40 countries, suporting 1,500 projects.

In 2005 he founded together with Egon Zehnder and McKinsey a business network to enable a dialogue on nature and business between CEOs and conservation leaders in four countries. In the Netherlands this resulted in an agreement on biodiversity between the Confederation of Netherlands Industry and Employers (VNONCW) and 35 nature organizations in 2010. In India this resulted in a business and nature programme led by IUCN India and the Confederation of Indian Industries (CII).

In 2012 he developed a practical way to restore large landscapes, the 4 Returns framework, that was inspired by the Ecosystem Approach of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity. It was published by IUCN and Erasmus University. In 2013 he founded Commonland to build proof of concept on the ground by using the framework.

Episode 9: Escape from Overshoot: Managing the Great Transformation

On Thursday, March 28th, 2024 at 12pm ET (New York) John Fullerton welcomed Peter Victor for a dialogue on the blaring fact that Earth is in overshoot, but does it really need to be this way? We are using more material than the earth naturally regenerates, and the human economy is overloading the planet with our increasing volume of waste. Climate change is but one of the deadly symptoms, and political debates over abstractions such as Net Zero, ESG are a distraction. The immense complexity of managing our way out of overshoot demands rigorous analysis and fresh imagination. Join two celebrated non-conventional economists in an enriching dialogue on some of the key questions and insights into how we might escape overshoot.

Meet Peter Victor

Peter A. Victor is a Professor Emeritus at York University. He received his Ph.D. in economics from UBC in 1971 and has worked for over 50 years in Canada and abroad on economy and environment as an academic, consultant and public servant. His work on ecological economics has been recognized through the award of the Molson Prize in the Social Sciences by the Canada Council for the Arts in 2011, the Boulding Memorial Prize from the International Society for Ecological Economics in 2014, and election to the Royal Society of Canada in 2015.

Peter was the founding president of the Canadian Society of Ecological Economics and is a past-president of the Royal Canadian Institute for Science. Prior to becoming Dean of the Faculty of Environmental Studies at York University in 1996 he was Assistant Deputy Minister for the Environmental Science and Standards Division in the Ontario Ministry of the Environment. Currently Peter is a member of the Honorary Board of the David Suzuki Foundation, the Chair of the Science Advisory Committee of the Footprint Data Foundation and has served on many advisory boards in the public and private sectors.

Peter maintains an active research program as a co-investigator in the Centre for Understanding Sustainable Prosperity and through the Ecological Footprint Initiative at York University. His next book, Escape from Overshoot: The Economics of a Planet in Peril, will be published in early 2023.

Episode 8: Energy Matters: How Could We Be So Blind?

On Thursday, February 29th, 2024 John Fullerton welcomed Nate Hagens for an exploration of how our energy blind economists, policy makers and business leaders have undermined our prospects for a smooth energy transition. We discussed the implications of energy blindness across the intersection of geopolitics, economics, climate policy, and – of course – energy, and how a regenerative perspective can help us discover fresh potential presently unseen as the source of genuine transformation to a more prosperous future.

Meet Nate Hagens

Dr. Nate Hagens is the Director of The Institute for the Study of Energy & Our Future (ISEOF), an organization focused on educating and preparing society for the coming cultural transition.

Formerly in the finance industry at Lehman Brothers and Salomon Brothers, since 2003 Nate has shifted his focus to understanding the interrelationships between energy, environment, and finance and the implication this synthesis has for human futures. Allied with leading ecologists, energy experts, politicians and systems thinkers, ISEOF assembles road-maps and off-ramps for how human societies can adapt to lower throughput lifestyles.

Nate hosts the podcast The Great Simplification with Nate Hagens, in which he has conversations with experts in energy, ecology, human behavior, geopolitics, technology, and the economy to provide a systemic view of the world around us, inform more humans about the path ahead, and inspire people to play a role in our collective future. As a backdrop for The Great Simplification podcast, Nate produced a short animated film by the same title.

Episode 7: The Daily Grind is a Double Bind: Living in the Polycrisis

On, Thursday, November 30, 2023 at 12pm EDT John Fullerton welcomed Nora Bateson (featured Introduction to Regenerative Economics Thought Leader), to discuss the pitfalls of conventional fixes when we are trying to re-awaken ourselves to a new way of seeing, being, leading and thinking in the 21st century. This conversation challenged us to rethink the essence of human discernment and decision making if we are to successfully navigate and transcend the polycrisis.

Meet Nora Bateson

Nora Bateson is an award-winning filmmaker, writer and educator, as well as President of the International Bateson Institute, based in Sweden. Her work asks the question “How we can improve our perception of the complexity we live within, so we may improve our interaction with the world?”. An international lecturer, researcher and writer, Nora wrote, directed and produced the award-winning documentary, An Ecology of Mind, a portrait of her father, Gregory Bateson. Her work brings the fields of biology, cognition, art, anthropology, psychology, and information technology together into a study of the patterns in ecology of living systems. Her book, Small Arcs of Larger Circles, released by Triarchy Press, UK, 2016 is a revolutionary personal approach to the study of systems and complexity.

The IBI integrates the sciences, arts and professional knowledge to create a qualitative inquiry of the integration of life. As President, Nora directs research projects at the IBI that require multiple contexts of research and interdependent processes. Asking, “How can we create a context in which to study the contexts?”, an impressive team of international thinkers, scientists and artists have been brought together by the IBI to generate an innovative form of inquiry, which Nora coined “Transcontextual Research”.

Episode 6: Climate Heroes

Meet Bill McKibben

Bill McKibben is a contributing writer to The New Yorker, and a founder of Third Act, which organizes people over the age of 60 to work on climate and racial justice. He founded the first global grassroots climate campaign, 350.org, and serves as the Schumann Distinguished Professor in Residence at Middlebury College in Vermont. In 2014 he was awarded the Right Livelihood Prize, sometimes called the ‘alternative Nobel,’ in the Swedish Parliament. He’s also won the Gandhi Peace Award, and honorary degrees from 19 colleges and universities. He has written over a dozen books about the environment, including his first, The End of Nature, published in 1989, and his latest book is The Flag, the Cross, and the Station Wagon: A Graying American Looks Back at his Suburban Boyhood and Wonders What the Hell Happened.

Meet Gus Speth

Gus Speth now serves as Distinguished Next System Fellow at the Democracy Collaborative and as an Ambassador for the Wellbeing Economy Alliance. In 2009 Speth completed his decade-long tenure as Dean, Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, now the Yale School of the Environment. From 1993 to 1999, he was Administrator of the United Nations Development Programme and chair of the UN Development Group. Prior to his service at the UN, he was founder and president of the World Resources Institute; professor of law at Georgetown University; chairman of the U.S. Council on Environmental Quality (Carter Administration); and senior attorney and cofounder, Natural Resources Defense Council. He served on the faculty of the Vermont Law School as Professor of Law from 2010 to 2015 and is now a fellow of the Tellus Institute and VLS and an honorary director at NRDC and WRI.

Episode 5: Banking Crisis: Patterns and Principles

Meet Peter Blom

41-year career with Triodos Bank NV, since the foundation in 1980, acting as the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) and Chair of the Executive Board since 1997. Triodos Bank has grown into a mid-size (Balance Sheet Total: EUR 23 billion and 1,500 employees) European, fully licensed bank with a strong environmental and social mission. The bank serves through its network in 5 European countries over 700,000 customers. The bank has become a globally recognized successful frontrunner in sustainable, social-inclusive banking and the management of 20 high-rated investment funds.

Personally, I had a strong and high-level involvement over decades in developing ‘sustainable finance’ on a visionary/system-level as well in the day-to-day banking and finance practice. And more importantly: how to connect them. In that context, I founded and built a successful movement for value-based banking worldwide (GABV) with more than 75 member banks and co-founded the Sustainable Finance Lab in the Netherlands, now a highly influential academic Think Tank. The ‘red thread’ in all this is ‘Finance Change, Change Finance’ – Peter Blom

Episode 4: Getting Real about Artificial Intelligence

On Thursday, May 25, 2023 John Fullerton welcomed Jessica Groopman and Jeremy Lent (featured Introduction to Regenerative Economics Thought Leader) to discuss the realities of artificial intelligence as we shift from the machine age to the regenerative age.

Episode 3: ESG Dust up: Confusion and Conflation

On Thursday, March 23, 2023 John Fullerton welcomed Clara Miller, Raj Thamotheram, and Bill Baue for a Dialogue on “ESG Dust Up: Confusion and Conflation.”

Clara Miller

Clara Miller writes and speaks about social sector finance and impact investing. She founded the Nonprofit Finance Fund and was its President/CEO from 1984-2011. She is President Emerita of the Heron Foundation, having served as President from 2011-2017.

Miller is an advisory board member for the U.S. Impact Investing Alliance, the Song Cave and the Sustainability Advisory Board at the University of New Hampshire. She is a corporator of Walden Mutual Bank. Miller served as a board member of the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (2012-2019) and was a Bridgespan Fellow 2018-2020.

In 1996, Miller was appointed to the U.S. Treasury’s first Community Development Advisory Board for the then-newly-created Community Development Financial Institutions Fund and later became Chair. She chaired Opportunity Finance Network’s board for six of her nine years as a member and served on the Community Advisory Committee of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York for eight years.

Miller was named seven times to the Nonprofit Times “Power and Influence Top 50,” (2006-2017), to Inside Philanthropy’s “50 Most Powerful Women in U.S. Philanthropy for 2016 and 2017 and as Social Innovator of the Year by the University of New Hampshire in 2017. In 2015 she was named “Investor of the Year, Small Foundations,” by Institutional Investor Magazine, received the Prince’s Prize (Monaco) for Innovative Philanthropy and the Shining Star Award from Performance Space 122 in New York City. She was awarded a Bellagio Residency by the Rockefeller Foundation in 2010.

Ms. Miller has been published in Alliance, Financial Times, Medium, The Atlantic Blog, Stanford Social Innovation Review, Nonprofit Quarterly and Chronicle of Philanthropy. She has spoken at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, Edinburgh International Culture Summit, Yale School of Management, Dartmouth’s Tuck School, Stanford Graduate School of Business, Columbia Business School, Aspen Ideas Festival, Sciences Po, Oxford Said Business School, Bloomberg L.P., and SoCap.

Bill Baue

As an internationally recognized expert on Sustainability Context (Thresholds & Allocations), Thriveability, and Online Stakeholder Engagement, Bill Baue catalyzes systemic transformation. As a serial social entrepreneur, he has co-founded and instigated several enterprises: r3.0, Science Based Targets, Sustainability Context Group,Sea Change Radio, and Currnt.

Baue currently serves as Senior Director of r3.0 (Redesign for Resilience & Regeneration), a not-for-profit common good that networks a global community of Positive Mavericks focused on transcending incrementalism to trigger necessary transformations that enact living systems principles. In this role, he serves as the Systems Convener for the Connecticut River Valley Bioregional Collaborative of the Capital Institute’s Regenerative Communities Network.

Baue has worked with prominent organizations across the sustainability ecosystem, including Audubon, Cabot Creamery Coop, Ceres, GE, Harvard, several United Nations agencies (UNCTAD, UNEP, UNGC, UNRISD, etc…), Walmart, and Worldwatch Institute. He serves on the Board of Co-op Power and as Senior Advisor to Preventable Surprises, and he is a certified Prosocial facilitator.

He lives near the Connecticut River Valley bioregion, where his daughters Clara, Emma, and Aoife periodically visit. He is a diehard Deadhead who enjoys camping, hiking, mountain climbing, kayaking, yoga, meditation, and dancing contact improvisation.

Dr Raj Thamotheram

Dr Raj Thamotheram is a globally recognized pioneer and author in the field of long-term and sustainable investment.

His roots are in medicine and the NGO community and he has taken this public health and system change experience into the investment industry where he has worked as head of responsible investing at one of the UK’s biggest pension funds (USS) and then at a global fund manager (AXA IM).

He has played a founding role with several sustainable finance initiatives (including Managing Pension Funds as if the Long-Term Matters competition, Institutional Investor Group on Climate Change, Enhanced Analytics Initiative, Pharma Shareowners Group, Pharma Futures), he was part of the core group that designed the UN Principles of Responsible Investment and he is on the board of or advises several non-profit think-tanks including the Council on Economic Policies, Preventable Surprises and the Shareholder Commons.

Episode 2: A Non-Newtonian Response to Inflation

In Episode 2 of Capital Institute’s Discovery Dialogue Series, John Fullerton welcomed L. Randell Wray for a Dialogue on “A Non-Newtonian Response to Inflation (Recorded February 23, 2023).

L. Randall Wray

L. Randall Wray is the 2022-2023 Teppola Distinguished Visiting Professor at Willamette University and Professor of Economics at the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College. He has also taught at Bard College, the University of Missouri-Kansas City, and the University of Denver. He is one of the developers of Modern Money Theory and his newest book is Making Money Work for Us (Polity, November 2022). A companion illustrated guide to MMT is forthcoming in March: Money For Beginners (with Heske Van Doornen, Polity).

Other recent books include Why Minsky Matters (Princeton, 2016), A Great Leap Forward (Elsevier, January 2020), and Handbook of Economic Stagnation (Elsevier, 2022 with Flavia Dantas). Wray is the author of a textbook, Macroeconomics (with Mitchell and Watts; Red Globe Press, 2019).

Wray has been a visiting professor at the Universities of Paris, Bologna, Bergamo, Rome, UNAM in Mexico City, UNICAMP in Brazil, and Tallinn University in Estonia. He is the 2022 Veblen-Commons Award winner for lifetime contributions to Institutionalist Thought.

Episode 1: From Cryto Winter to Refi Spring

In Episode 1 of Capital Institute’s Discovery Dialogue Series, “From Crypto Winter to Refi Spring – Steering technology toward the service of life,” John Fullerton welcomed special guests Jessica Groopman & Charly Kleissner (Recorded January 26, 2023).

Charly Kleissner

Charly Kleissner is a former Silicon Valley senior technology executive and is now an impact investor. He was the CTO at Ariba, worked for Steve Jobs at NeXT, and is associated with the Silicon Valley Blockchain Society. He believes that the real meaning of wealth is to make a positive contribution to humanity and the planet. He is a leader of the deep impact movement which is not only treating the symptoms of our failing economic system, but its root causes – with a level of awareness and consciousness that is non-anthropocentric, acknowledging that humanity is part of the evolutionary process, not outside of it. He sees impact investing not as an intellectual exercise, but as an expression of who he really is.

Jessica Groopman

Jessica Groopman has spent her career researching how emerging technologies impact humans, business, and broader ecosystems. For more than 15 years, she has advised innovation leaders around the world on digital transformation, market trends, and how to unlock new value through humane and regenerative technological design. Her current research focuses on how organizations can combine cutting edge technologies and business models to achieve net positive outcomes for a wider range of stakeholders. In her current role as Director of Digital Strategy & Innovation at Intentional Futures, Jessica works with organizations to develop long-term innovation strategies that align economic, societal, and environmental benefit.

Prior to IF, she founded and ran research firm, Kaleido Insights, and has been principal analyst with Tractica, Harbor Research, and Altimeter Group where she led research practices in artificial intelligence, IoT, blockchain, automation, robotics, mixed reality, data privacy, and more. Past clients range from large brands including Google, Microsoft, Cisco, AARP, Technicolor, Intel, Pandora, to an array of think tanks, media companies, and several start-ups she advises.

Jessica is a regular keynote speaker and panelist at emerging technology industry events. She is also a frequent contributor to numerous media outlets. She has also served as contributing member of the CalState CX Advisory Board, International IoT Council, the IEEE’s Internet of Things Group, and FC Business Intelligence’s IoT Nexus Advisory Board. Jessica was also included in Onalytica’s list of the 100 Most Influential Thought Leaders in IoT. When she’s not ideating about the future, Jessica can be found on a hike, playing drums, cooking, and spending time with her partner in the Bay Area. Learn more about Intentional Futures here, or about Jessica on her LinkedIn, connect on Twitter or at these upcoming events, and find all past research at jessgroopman.com.

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