Just Money: Banking as if Society Mattered

Phil Thompson is an urban planner and political scientist. He received a B.A. in Sociology from Harvard University in 1977, a M.U.P from Hunter College in 1986, and a PhD in Politic Science from the City University of New York Graduate Center in 1990. Phil worked as Deputy General Manager of the New York Housing Authority, and as Director of the Mayor’s Office of Housing Coordination. Phil is a frequent advisor to trade unions in their efforts to work with immigrant and community groups across the United States.

Lily Steponaitis is a Post-Graduate Fellow at the MIT Community Innovators Lab. Her work focuses on banks that use capital as a tool to build economic democracy and support social and environmental wellbeing. She received her B.A. in Geography and Economics from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (2012) and her M.A. in City Planning from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (2014).

Dr. Katrin Kaeufer is a Research Fellow at the MIT Community Innovators Lab (CoLab) in MIT’s Department of Urban Studies and Planning, and research director at the Presencing Institute. Her research focuses on leadership, social transformation, and socially responsible banking. Kaeufer’s dissertation on Socially Responsible Banking was published as a book. She has consulted with mid-sized as well as global companies, non-profit organizations, the World Bank, and with the United Nations Development Program in New York. She is also a co-founding member of the Presencing Institute.

Alice Maggio is an advocate for non-profit, place-based currencies. From 2012 to 2017 she worked at the Schumacher Center for a New Economics, starting as an intern and growing into her subsequent role as the Director of Programs and the Executive Director of BerkShares, the Berkshire region’s local currency. Her work has focused on educating people in her own community and around the world about the potential of local currencies to serve as democratic tools for building more vibrant and resilient local economies. While deepening BerkShares’ ties to the local business and banking community she also created the BerkShares Business of the Month series and developed a business planning program for young people called Entry to Entrepreneurship. Alice has been interviewed by Paul Solmon for the PBS NewsHour and by Henry Rollins for the History Channel. She represented BerkShares and the Schumacher Center at the 2nd and 4th International Conferences on Complementary Currency Systems in the Hague and Barcelona, the Left Forum in New York City, and the Local Prosperity Canada conference in Nova Scotia. Alice grew up in Berkshire County, Massachusetts and completed her B.A. in Sociology and French Studies at Wesleyan University. She is currently pursuing a graduate degree in Urban and Environmental Policy and Planning from Tufts University.