Community wealth building pioneer to speak at EDAS event
The pioneering social entrepreneur recognised internationally as the ‘godfather of community wealth building’ will share his experience with EDAS members at an eagerly-anticipated event this week.
Ted Howard, President of The Democracy Collaborative (TDC), based in the USA, will share a platform with Scotland’s Community Wealth Minister, Tom Arthur MSP, as the power of community wealth building to make a significant difference to our economy becomes ever clearer. This event is timely, given the advancement of Community Wealth Building by the Scottish Government as part of its wider National Strategy for Economic Transformation, with planned legislation later this Parliamentary term.
Ted Howard: A Visionary
Ted Howard is the Co-founder and President of The Democracy Collaborative, an action-orientated progressive think-tank for the democratic economy established 20 years ago in the United States.
TDC began at the University of Maryland College Park as an academic research centre within the College of Behavioural and Social Sciences. Today, it is an independent non-profit organisation.
Mr Howard has been named one of ’25 visionaries who are changing your world’ by the Utne Reader and identified by the Guardian newspaper as the ‘de facto spokesperson for community wealth building’ internationally.
He is one of the originators of the international movement among ‘anchor institutions’ – including health systems, universities, cultural and arts centres and others – to leverage their economic power, including their supply chains, hiring practices and investment policies, to benefit local communities.
He previously served as the Executive Director of the National Centre for Economic Alternatives and the Steven Minter Senior Fellow for Social Justice and The Cleveland Foundation where he led a team that developed the comprehensive job creation and wealth building strategy that resulted in the Evergreen Cooperative initiative. The Evergreen Cooperatives, in turn were an important inspiration for the community wealth building strategy now underway in Preston, Lancashire (widely reported as ‘The Preston Model’ ) and other cities in the UK.
Mr Howard lectures frequently about system change and community wealth building, including at major conferences such as the Clinton Global Initiative-America, the New Economics Conference of the UK Labour Party, the Salzburg Global Seminar, the National Community Reinvestment Coalition, the German Marshall Fund Brussels Forum, and the Co-operatives United World Conference (Manchester, England) as well as at numerous universities including the University of Pennsylvania, University of California Berkeley, MIT, Michigan State, Georgetown, University of Toronto, George Mason, University of Central Lancashire, and Yale.
He is co-author with Marjorie Kelly of ‘The Making of a Democratic |Economy: Building Prosperity for the Many, Not Just the Few.’ (July 2019, Berrett – Koehler) and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts in Great Britain.