Our Steering Committee

Ruth Caplan, Co-chair
Ruth comes to Boston from Washington DC where she co-chaired the campaign for a public bank.  She has campaigned for economic and environmental justice for more than four decades from local fights opposing nuclear plants in upstate New York, to lobbying for safe energy in Congress, to creating the Economics Working Group with economists and social policy experts to imagine a just, sustainable economy grounded in local communities. As director of Environmental Action, a national grassroots organization, she appeared on the Today Show as well as national news networks and authored Our Earth, Ourselves, published by Bantam. She was elected the first co-chair of the Alliance for Democracy in 1996 and continues to serve on their national council. 

Barbara Clancy, Co-chair
Barbara is national coordinator for the Alliance for Democracy. Her interest in public banking is rooted in her longtime concern with community development, affordable housing, and food insecurity in small city and exurban settings, especially in communities outside the Boston area. She lives in Stow.

Richard Krushnic, Treasurer
Richard is a community economic development professional, doing financial management and housing and business projects financial restructuring at Boston’s Department of Neighborhood Development. He has a good deal of experience in Latin America, and works with several Latin American support groups. He also does research and writing about the Deep State and Deep Politics–the semi-secret state behind the state in the U.S. He brings his expertise in public housing and business financing to the public banking issue.

Chuck Grigsby
Chuck began as an international banker at Bank of Boston and then moved into community development and small business finance as manager of a new state loan fund. He later started and managed a minority enterprise venture capital fund. Subsequently, he served for fifteen years on the Board of Boston Private Bank, including six years as Chair of the Loan Committee. He also invested five years as the Director of the City of Boston Department of Neighborhood Development. As Fund Manager, Chuck started up a $100,000,000 community investment fund capitalized by Massachusetts life insurance companies. His last position was President of Mass Growth Capital Corp., a state fund structuring loan packages for un-bankable businesses. In addition to working with Massachusetts Public Banking he is on the advisory board for the Public Banking Institute.

Joanna Herlihy
Please see our appreciation here.

Dr. Timothy F. Havel
Tim is a scientist and cleantech entrepreneur, who became interested in banking and finance following the crash of 2008. He learned about “system dynamics” modeling while studying the management of technology at MIT, and has begun to apply it to the emerging vision of a new economy and its implementation via monetary reforms such as public banking.

Steve Snyder
Steve joined the movement for public banking in 2010, after interviewing homeowners facing foreclosure in Roxbury and Dorchester. Steve’s thesis in Community Economic Development found that mortgage companies, banks and some owner-investors committed fraud but not owner occupants. A member of City Life/Vida Urbana, Steve is also an avid community gardener, writer and poet.

Our Advisory Group

Jeffrey D. Beck
Jeffrey D. Beck brings many years of banking experience to the campaign to establish public banks.  He serves on the advisory board of the Pennsylvania Public Bank Project in addition to being a member of the Hub Public Banking advisory group. His long career in banking includes executive, planning and treasurer positions with Advanta Bank Corporation, Colonial  National Bank, Industrial Valley Bank, Wilmington Trust and Fidelity Bank.

Christina A. Clamp
Christina A. Clamp is a professor of sociology and Director of Cooperatives and Community Economic Development at Southern New Hampshire University where she has been on the faculty for over 30 years. Dr. Clamp serves on the board of the ICA group in Boston and the Food Cooperative Initiative. In her approach top economic development, she advances the concept of social entrepreneurship—business activity that is locally owned and builds social assets in contrast to entrepreneurship only for private gain. She has published extensive research on the Mondragon Cooperative Corporation, a model for collectively owned and managed industry.

Van Hardy
Van Hardy is a member of the Board of the Somerville Community Corporation. As a community activist in Somerville, he advocates for community involvement in economic development taking place as new subway lines spur local economic growth. He seeks to ensure that opportunities created by economic development in Somerville benefit local residents by creating jobs and affordable housing.

Curdina Hill
Curdina Hill is a transformative learning and systems change practitioner and community activist. As an organizational development consultant and coach, she consults to national networks, coalition groups, non-profits and public agencies committed to social justice and social change. In her work, she addresses issues of affordable housing, poverty, equity and inclusion, youth development, people of color and women’s economic empowerment.

Marjorie Kelly
Marjorie Kelly is a Senior Fellow and Director of Special Projects at The Democracy Collaborative. Through her books, articles and active participation in community education, she is a longstanding advocate for alternatives to a corporate dominated, profit driven economy. In her latest book, Our Ownership Future, she sees a “generative” economy emerging in five different patterns of social ownership of economic enterprise including public banks.

David Lewit
Dave is a social psychologist and system-change activist living in Boston. He is co-chair of the campaign on Corporate Globalization and Positive Alternatives for the Alliance for Democracy, a national non-partisan group working to end corporate domination over government and policy. His system-oriented BCA Dispatch is archived at www.newenglandalliance.org. He is active in organizing alternatives to global economic collapse for the Center for Process Studies in Claremont CA, and writes on liberation psychology, dealing with psychological principles and the societal macrosystem.

Julie Matthaei
Julie Matthaei is a professor of economics at Wellesley College, a board member of the U.S. Solidarity Economy Network and Co-Coordinator of the Boston Area Solidarity Economy Network. She is co-editor of Solidarity Economy: Building Alternatives for People and Planet. In her advocacy of a solidarity economy, she promotes social and economic democracy over against the unfettered rule of the market and solely profit driven enterprise. Solidarity finance as part of a solidarity economy supports equity and sustainability in local community development.

Tom Sgouros
Tom Sgouros is a public policy researcher and writer. He has consulted with several states and city/county officials about banking, economics, budgeting and better ways for governments to manage citizens’ monies. He is the author of Checking the Banks: The Nuts and Bolts of Banking for People Who Want To Fix It. He sees public banks as a kind of public utility that can aid in generating productive economic activity in contrast to a “financialized” economy driven only by speculation and profit taking.

Paul Shannon
Paul Shannon is a staff member with the American Friends Service Committee. He helped initiate and organize the statewide Budget For All Referendum Campaign. For almost all of his adult life, he has been an activist, writer and speak in peace, union, prison reform, human rights and social and economic justice movements. As part of the Majority Agenda Project, he fosters collaboration among social movements and community organizations addressing current economic, environmental and foreign policy crises.

Chuck Turner
Please see our appreciation here.