Team
Dil is a vocational architect and designer, always; a pragmatic utopian who thinks the perfect world will (should) never exist, but we must never stop working towards it. He looks for the most effective point at which to employ his capacities. Dil values kindness between beings, and ruthlessness towards institutions.
Dave founded Lowimpact.org in 2001, and Noncorporate.org in 2018. He was a director of the Ecological Land Co-operative from 2015 to 2018. He’s interested in developing co-operative economic institutions that build community resilience and prevent the wealth extraction and concentration that is so damaging to democracy.
Oli runs The Open Co-op which produces an annual conference to encourage the development of the collaborative economy. He wrote his thesis on ‘Encouraging Environmentally Responsible Behaviour’ and delivers marketing strategies for ethical brands through his consultancy DefactoDesign.com
Advisors
We are proud to have the input and encouragement of some of the most experienced people in the alternative finance sector.
Tom is a community economist who has been working at the leading edge of transformational restructuring for more than 35 years. He is widely regarded as a leading authority on moneyless exchange systems, community currencies and credit clearing. His latest book ‘The End of Money and the Future of Civilization’ provided the inspiration which led to the initiation of The Open Credit Network.
Matthew Slater is a ten year veteran of complementary currencies, his free software used by LETS and timebanking projects around the world. He is an authority on monetary theory and mutual credit, having co-authored the Money & Society MOOC with professor Jem Bendell and run numerous workshops. In 2016 he co-authored the Credit Commons white paper which OCN has adopted as its blueprint.
Pat is a Fellow at New Economics Foundation and an Associate of Co-operatives UK. His work in the 1990s led to the development of the Community Development Finance movement. He has been instrumental in developing Community Land Trusts and is co-author of ‘The Resilience Imperative – Co-operative Transitions to a Steady-state Economy’ (2012) and ‘Commons Sense – Common Wealth’ (2014).
Marloes Nicholls is Head of Programmes at the Finance Innovation Lab, a charity which supports the people, ideas and movements building a financial system that serves people and planet. An economist by training, she has a wealth of experience working in social change, including co-founding the campaign Move Your Money UK. She’s passionate about facilitating collaborative processes that enable people to understand and have a say over the future of finance.
Angela is a Reader in Cybernetics, (Hull University, UK and Latin-America Universities), with more than 30 years’ experience teaching, consulting and publishing extensively about Stafford Beer’s approach to systemic change and self-governance. ‘A complexity approach to sustainability: Theory and Applications (2017) (with Jon Walker) summarise their approach to systemic change towards sustainability, from individuals to institutions, communities, and networks.
Chris has been involved in the legal design and regulation of markets and financial instruments for 25 years, including six as a director of a global energy exchange. Since 2011 he has been a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for Strategy, Resilience & Security at University College London. As a Director of the Nordic Enterprise Trust, Chris has been prototyping complementary means of financing community development and long term funding of community assets.
Trevor set up one of the first ICT training department in 1977, then moved into systems programming. He has worked for a timesharing bureau, pioneered the use of microcomputers in business, writen one of the first database systems to run on the IBM PC, and has managed a host of ICT projects. Trevor learned Systems Thinking from Professor Stafford Beer and applies it to solving complex problems with carefully selected small teams of people.
David is head of policy at Positive Money, which campaigns for reform of the money and banking system to enable a fair, democratic and sustainable economy. He is a regular media commentator on the future of money and payments, and has written for the FT, Independent and Open Democracy. He previously worked for ShareAction, where he helped to secure legislation clarifying that pension funds can consider ethical factors in their investment decisions.
Parmjit has 30 years of experience working for local authorities on health inequalities and community development. She has worked strategically and as a mental health commissioner for Warwickshire County Council, and is a trained executive coach. She has researched concepts related to resilience in communities, and has found the need for fiat money a limiting factor. She is involved in our co-design process for local mutual credit networks.
Gary worked at the Open University, where he pioneered online courses using collaborative learning techniques. He helped set up Diss Community Farm and was on the Board of Trustees of the Transition Network for 4 years. In his books, papers and conference contributions, he has developed detailed visions of a collaborative, sustainable future, especially in his book, eGaia, Growing a peaceful, sustainable Earth through communication.
Hugh studied chemistry at Imperial College then spent 40 years in computing. He has worked for the EU Commission, the EU Parliament and for various tech companies. He has been been involved in community currency software and the debate about new forms of currency since 1997. Hugh is semi-retired and working on community currencies. He has an MSc in computing from the Open University and recently finished a philosophy BA at Birkbeck.
Les is an expert in community currency and has developed open money protocols across Europe. He has over 20 years of experience within community currencies, having set up and run LETSystems and incentive programmes. Les also broadens the interest in Sociocracy and practices the techniques of sociocratic governance methods during facilitation and workshop sessions. He facilitates strategic and operational working circles of Sociocracy UK.
Endorsements
The Open Credit Network is endorsed by the following organinsations:
We also have the support of the Finance Innovation Lab, having been accepted onto their Fellowship programme.
If you or your organisation are interested in partnering with us on this project please get in touch.