E. F. Schumacher Society Executive Director
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Houston)
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Susan Witt has served as executive
director of the E. F. Schumacher Society since its founding
in 1980 and has led the development of its programs.
In his book, Small Is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered, Dr. Schumacher argued for a system of diverse regional
economies based on social and ecological principles. The
Schumacher Society was organized to implement these ideals.
It
maintains a research library, organizes lectures and seminars,
publishes papers, develops model economic programs, and
provides technical assistance to groups working to build
sustainable local economies by linking people, land, and community.
While overseeing the national educational programs of the Schumacher Society, Susan Witt remains deeply committed to applying Schumacher's ideas in her own region of the Berkshires. She is the founder
and administrator of the Community Land Trust in the Southern
Berkshires, and in that capacity has been responsible for
many of the innovative financing and contracting methods
that the Land Trust has implemented to create more affordable
access to land for the residents of its region. She is founder of the newly formed BerkShare local currency program and of its predecessor organization
the Self-Help Association for a Regional Economy (SHARE)
a micro-lending program for small businesses. In 1992 she was elected
the first woman president of the Great Barrington Rotary
Club. She is a board member of the Great Barrington
Land Conservancy and an advisory board member of
The Orion
Society publishers of Orion magazine, of WAMC Northeast
Public Radio and of the Business Alliance for Local Living Economies (BALLE).
Her essays appear in Rooted in the Land edited by William
Vitek and Wes Jackson (Yale University Press, New Haven,
CT, 1996); People, Land, and Community: Collected E. F.
Schumacher Society Lectures edited by Hildegarde Hannum
(Yale University Press, New Haven, CT, 1997); A Forest of
Voices: Conversations in Ecology edited by Chris Anderson
and Lex Runciman (Mayfield Publishing Company, Mountain
View, CA, 2000); Environmental Activists edited by John
Mongillo (Greenwood Publishing Group, Westport, CT 2001);
The Money Changers: Currency Reform from Aristotle to E-cash edited by David Boyle (Earthscan Publications, London, UK,
2002); in the 1999 edition of Small Is Beautiful: Economics
As If People Mattered by Ernest Fritz Schumacher (Hartley
and Marks Publishers, Point Roberts, WA and Vancouver, BC,
1999); and The Essential Agrarian Reader edited by Norman
Wirzberg (University Press of Kentucky, 2003). Ms. Witt
speaks regularly on the topic of citizen responsibility
for shaping local economies. Her work has been described
in various radio, TV, book, magazine, newspaper, and on-line
interviews.
Susan Witt received a B.A. in English Literature from Boston
University and an M.A. in English Literature from the University
of New Hampshire. She studied Waldorf Education at Emerson
College in England.
She names among her primary influences: Jane Jacobs, Leo
Tolstoy, Simone Weil, Martin Buber, Robert Swann, Rudolf
Steiner, her co-workers, and the board and members of the
E. F. Schumacher Society. She loves her hillside home, her
garden, her Great Barrington community, and she loves to
travel.
Archive
of Susan Witt's articles and essays
To contact Susan Witt:
E. F. Schumacher Society
140 Jug End Road
Great Barrington, MA 01230 USA
(413) 528-1737
efssociety@smallisbeautiful.org
www.smallisbeautiful.org
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