Gar Alpervitz is a historian, political economist, activist and author, and is currently the Lionel R. Bauman Professor of Political Economy at the University of Maryland. His articles have appeared in leading American publications including the New York Times and Washington Post. He has served as legislative director in both houses of Congress and as special assistant in the State Department; is the president of the National Center for Economic and Security Alternatives; and a founding principal of the Democracy Collaborative, a research institution focused on initiatives that promote the democratization of wealth. His latest book, "America Beyond Capitalism," is described by Noam Chomsky as providing “concrete and feasible ways to reverse the ominous course of the past several decades and to open the way to a vibrant democracy with a sustainable economy that can satisfy human needs.”His background includes consultation in both the public and private sectors including consultation for working capital and small business expansion. MCA Companies that provide business funding and financing include the following located here, here, here and here. He will enlarge on that topic at the conference, with a focus on public banking as a means to achieving a sustainable economy.

After finishing her doctoral dissertation on the state-owned Bank of North Dakota, Rozanne worked as Gov. Jerry Brown's deputy director of California's Pension Investment Unit and as a legislative economist for U.S. Senator Mark Andrews (R-ND). She is now the founding executive director of First Graduate, an organization that helps young people finish high school and become the first in their families to graduate from college. She is the author of The Bank of North Dakota: An Experiment in State Ownership (1989) and is featured in the half hour video “The Bank of North Dakota” (prairiepublic.org). Video links are here, here, here and here. Her conference presentation will address the questions: how has the BND managed to survive politically, and what difference has it made to the economic well-being of the state?

Ellen Brown, J.D., is an attorney, president of the Public Banking Institute, and the author of 11 books, including Web of Debt, which traces the evolution of the current private banking system and how it has usurped the power to create money from the people themselves. She has also written over 100 articles on this subject. She will give an overview of public banking and its evolution and suppression, here and abroad; and will speak on the banking crisis, how it has robbed us of our homes and livelihoods, and how it can be remedied.

John Fullerton is the Founder and President of Capital Institute, a collaborative space working to transform finance to serve a more just, resilient, and sustainable economic system. Through the work of Capital Institute, his syndicated “Future of Finance” blog, regular public speaking engagements, and university lectures, John has become a recognized thought leader in the New Economy space generally, and the financial system transformation challenge in particular.

I'll use the metaphor of "edges" in nature, known as ecotones... "life" is regenerative because of the creative tension of the ecotones... leading to my point of view that the question is not public vs private, but rather, we need both in creative and constructive "tension" (meant in a good way) to sustain "life" in the real economy...

The Hon. Paul Hellyer, former Canadian Minister of National Defence and founder of the Canadian Action Party, dedicated to Canadian monetary reform. He will team up with Canadian money reformer Jerry Ackerman to present Canada's strong history of public banking, what it did for the country in its heyday, and how it got suppressed by private international financial interests.

Michael Sauvante is executive director and co-founder of Commonwealth Group (CG), which promotes triple bottom line (social, environmental and economic) approaches to business, banking, financial markets and economic development. He will speak on the possibilities and promise of city and county public banks, land banks and eminent domain.

Hazel Henderson's revolutionary economic ideas have successfully challenged traditional economic views, convincing governments to adopt more sustainable environmental and people-friendly economic policies.

Today, Dr. Henderson is a world-renowned futurist, evolutionary economist, environmentalist, and television producer with 8 published books and a globally syndicated newspaper column, with editorials appearing in more than 400 newspapers in 27 languages.

Hazel Henderson has actively promoted ethical investing as a way to transform the current economic system, co-founded via3.net a British online alternative sustainable commerce portal and has developed an index which more accurately measures the quality of life than traditional economic indicators.

Bill Still is a former newspaper editor and publisher, best-selling author and award-winning documentary writer/director. He has written for USA Today, The Saturday Evening Post, the Los Angeles Times Syndicate, OMNI magazine, and produced the first syndicated radio “shorts” program, Health News. He has written 20 books, including his latest, No More National Debt; and three feature-length documentaries, including The Money Masters (1995), one of the most-watched films in Internet history; and The Secret of Oz (2010), winner of Best Documentary of 2010 at the Beloit International Film Festival. In 2012, Bill Still is running as a candidate for the Libertarian Presidential ticket.

Byron Dale is an author and lecturer on the monetary system and has been qualified in several courts as a monetary expert in North Dakota, Minnesota, Illinois and Missouri. He is the author of the Minnesota Transportation Act" (MTA), which would mandate Minnesota's Transportation Department and State-chartered banks to enter into an agreement providing that the banks would advance funds for legislatively-approved transportation projects in the same way that banks make commercial loans – simply by "monetizing" the projects themselves. He will speak on the forgotten needs of farmers, how the current system works against them, and the obstacles he has faced in Minnesota to getting legislators to consider alternatives for handling the taxpayers’ money.

Thomas Greco, author of The End of Money and the Future of Civilization, is a preeminent scholar, educator, writer, networker, and consultant. His mission is to develop and implement innovative approaches that promote social justice, economic equity, personal freedom, social harmony, and world peace. He will be speaking on the need to address two main fronts. One is the organization of moneyless exchange mechanisms; the other is the direction of our money resources away from Wall Street and toward Main Street. We need to stop feeding the cancerous system of established banks and finance and put our financial resources into institutions that provide liquidity to productive local enterprises. State- and community-owned banks are an essential part of the latter, if not the former.

Samuel Giles is a registered U.S. patent agent and has developed comprehensive technology relating to the use of university-owned banks across the American Higher Education landscape, and is arguably one of the most informed people on how large institutions are managing their banks through the difficult financial environment of today. He will share information he has gathered on the 13 highly regarded public and private institutions of higher education that operate their own banks, why these banks exist, what purposes they serve, what benefits are being derived from them, and how they could revitalize local economies with massive regionalized credit generating power.

Listed by Money Magazine as one of the top financial planners in the nation, Mark Pash has 40 years’ experience as a Certified Financial Planner. He has founded a number of financial organizations, has served as an officer of various industry corporations and associations, and is the author of “Economic Theory of Relativity” and many articles. He has long been active in politics, including serving on a Presidential Campaign Economic Advisory Committee and running for a Congressional seat. He will speak on Progressive Economics, the need for diversification in monetary delivery systems, and how the public banking movement can be a catalyst for change.

Frank Nuessle is Affiliated Faculty, Organizational Dynamics, and Managing Partner of Global Performance Institute EPayments Global, a consulting firm specializing in helping organizations to accelerate performance through the use of systems thinking and idealized design.

Mr. Nuessle has had a 30-year career in cable television, publishing, and corporate consulting. His primary interest relates to the issues of global sustainability and large system change. With expertise in sales, marketing and strategic planning, he has worked in recent years with HP, Unisys, Fujitsu Computer Systems, Harris Corporation, and Siemens Medical to assist leadership to generate greater productivity from existing resources and to accelerate revenue growth. He holds an Economics Degree from Princeton University, an M.B.A. from the University of Rochester and has studied organization design in the Organizational Dynamics Program at Penn.

Rodney Shakespeare is Visiting Professor of Binary Economics at Trisakti University, Jakarta. He is a Cambridge MA, barrister of the Middle Temple, broadcaster with Press TV, and co-founder of the Global Justice Movement. He will talk on binary economics, the massive burden imposed by interest, and how this hidden cost can be eliminated.