I have spent 20 years exploring broken economic systems, starting from the ground up (refugee camps and the agencies that serve them), moving into the middle layer (building the largest bartering system in the world run by a virtual currency to allow those left out of the traditional economic system an opportunity for prosperity, and ultimately now disrupting the most traditional systems of capital and power from the inside out via working to prove that you can do even private equity in an ethical, human-centric way. My theories of change have evolved greatly over the years, at times focused on the most bottom-up and at times on the most top-down. I have been a thought leader in the social entrepreneurship & international development space, a thought leader in the alternative economies/currencies space as a Top Writer in Technology on Medium (for example, https://medium.com/public-market/the-future-of-network-effects-tokenization-and-the-end-of-extraction-a0f895639ffb), and now am approaching PE and alternative acquisitions in a heart-centered way (see: https://www.ft.com/content/7eaa42f1-6301-45e3-8468-2e22e666cf11 and https://arisingventures.notion.site/10-Principles-High-Performance-With-Heart-b24c8b3691674ef3a8c02933510bb9c3). My academic training is in Economics & Public Policy (BA, Stanford) and Social Entrepreneurship & Finance (Skoll Scholarship, Oxford MBA). My thesis was a regression analysis of the variables impacting the cycles of conflict on the African continent, exploring the inextricable ties between economic well-being and the ability of a country to maintain peace after war (spoiler alert: in countries with a history of instability, average rainfall levels dropping just 10% leads to a 50% increase in the probability of a new conflict cycle). As a Guidestar fellow, I've also done deep philosophical work on theories of change in philanthropy, have led campaigns redefining the importance of overhead spend in nonprofits (The Overhead Myth Campaign, 2013), and built products to educate donors on how to align their giving with their highest values. I would bring these diverse experiences and viewpoints to the Crossing, hopefully helping to establish a holistic understanding of issues faced at all levels of our global economic system.