Marjorie Kelly

Marjorie Kelly is currently a Senior Fellow and Director of Consultancy Services at The Democracy Collaborative, a nonprofit research and consulting organization that specializes in community wealth building, a new paradigm of community development focused on creating ecosystems of support for place-based community owned enterprises that are both sustainable and inclusive. Among the projects she heads up is a Learning/Action Lab assisting a half-dozen Native American nonprofits launch social enterprises and employee-owned companies. She is author of the new book, Owning Our Future: The Emerging Ownership Revolution, released 2012 by Berrett-Koehler, which explores which explores the emergence of a generative economy characterized by values-based enterprises. She visits many of these across the US and Europe and explores their key design elements. The book has been published in three international editions and is winner of a Silver Nautilus Award. As a Fellow at Tellus Institute, Kelly led a variety of consulting and research projects in corporate social responsibility, rural development, and impact investing for organizations like the Ford Foundation and Rockefeller Foundation. She was co-founder and for 20 years president of Business Ethics magazine, best known for its listing of the 100 Best Corporate Citizens. Her first book, The Divine Right of Capital, was named by Library Journal as one of the 10 Best Business Books of the Year and was translated into three languages. Kelly was co-founder of Corporation 20/20 (www.corporation2020.org), a multi-stakeholder initiative to envision and advocate enterprise and financial designs that integrate social, environmental, and financial aims. She has been inducted into the portrait gallery of Americans Who Tell the Truth. She is a board member of Salem Alliance for the Environment and on the advisory board of the Sustainable Business Academy, and speaks and publishes often on new economy topics.

She attended Earlham College and the University of Missouriand holds a bachelor's in English, cum laude, and a master's in journalism. At the School of Journalism, Kelly received the Penney-Missouri Award for Most Promising Young Magazine Journalist. Read her publications at www.MarjorieKelly.com.