Marjorie Kelly

Marjorie Kelly is Distinguished Senior Fellow at The Democracy Collaborative, a nonprofit working to catalyze the creation of a democratic economy. She is a leading theorist in democratic economy design, including next generation enterprise, place-based impact investing, and a next system of capital. Her first book, The Divine Right of Capital, was credited with inspiring the creation of the B Corporation movement; that 20-year-old book is still used in MBA classes and was named one of Library Journal’s 10 Best Business Books of 2001. Her new book, Wealth Supremacy (Sept. 12, 2023, Berrett-Koehler), builds on that classic and promises to launch a national conversation about the ways the wealthy extract from the rest of us, and how that overblown extraction (driven by the myth that no amount of wealth is ever enough) helps to drive economic injustice, society-wide fragility, and planetary-scale crisis. Wealth Supremacy is written to reach a large audience. It is not a business or economics book but instead a public affairs book, speaking directly to the many crises of our day and unpacking for the general reader how wealth extraction invisibly feeds, benefits from, or exacerbates these crises. Kelly comes from a business family and decades ago cofounded Business Ethics magazine, where she served as president for 20 years. Her aim was to celebrate only good businesspeople and ethical investors, who she believed could change the world. But she came to see that voluntary efforts aren’t enough, that the problems we face are systemic. She illustrates in Wealth Supremacy how the extractive system hurtles forward regardless of anyone’s intention. She shows how the democratic political-economic system we now so desperately need is already emerging all around us and explores how we can advance it. Kelly’s other books are Owning Our Future: The Emerging Ownership Revolution (2012), winner of the Silver Nautilus Award, and The Making of a Democratic Economy (2019), co-authored with Ted Howard. Her writings have appeared in many publications, including Fast Company, Stanford Social Innovation Review, Harvard Business Review, Chief Executive, Boston Globe, Yes! and San Francisco Chronicle. At TDC, Kelly’s work has focused on advancing employee ownership, working with her team to design and help launch the Fund for Employee Ownership at the Evergreen Cooperatives in Cleveland. Her team also led research in “next generation private enterprise,” studying and convening 50-plus companies that are employee-owned B Corporations, delivering superior social and environmental impacts. She has convened leaders building a next system of capital; helped community foundations do place-based impact investing; and led The Learning/Action Lab for Community Wealth Building, helping Native American organizations build wealth in Indigenous communities. Previously Kelly was a Fellow at the Tellus Institute, where she co-founded Corporation 20/20, a multi-stakeholder initiative to envision enterprise designs integrating social, environmental, and financial aims. She has advised private businesses on enterprise design for social mission. She served with the Ford Foundation project WealthWorks, building wealth in Appalachia and the Deep South. Kelly has received the following awards for her writing: • Inducted into the honorary portrait gallery of “Americans Who Tell the Truth.” • Named by Fast Company as one of “15 people at the forefront of reinventing our economic system.” Oct. 26, 2019. • Divine Right of Capital named “One of 10 Best Business Books of 2001” by Library Journal. • Owning Our Future, winner of Silver Nautilus Award.