On November 22nd, 2025, the Schumacher Center gathered key leaders of the contemporary Bioregional movement in Great Barrington, MA to discuss strategies for financing the New Economy. Samantha Power and Tyler Wakefield, Co-Founders of BioFi Project, delivered the 45th Annual E.F. Schumacher Lecture, “The Promise of Bioregional Economies,” followed by a Q&A led by Schumacher Center board member, Alex Forrester.
Samantha Power is a Co-Founder and the Director of The BioFi Project. A regenerative economist, systems futurist, and bioregionalist, she co-authored the book Bioregional Financing Facilities: Reimagining Finance to Regenerate Our Planet. Her work focuses on building a new layer of global financial architecture: place-based institutions designed to serve rapid, radical regeneration. For over a decade, Samantha has pursued one central question: “How do we change where money flows so it supports, rather than destroys, life?”
Today, Samantha and her team are collaborating with bioregional organizing teams across the Americas—from the Amazon Headwaters to Salmon Nation—to prototype this next generation of financial infrastructure for a regenerative future. The BioFi Project aims to seed a new category of financial institutions rooted in place, reciprocity, and planetary repair.
Samantha holds a Masters in International Affairs and International Economics from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and a Bachelors of Science in International Economics from Louisiana State University.
Tyler Wakefield is a Co-founder and Co-steward of The BioFi Project, a think-and-do tank supporting bioregions to design, build, and implement Bioregional Financing Facilities that connect financial resources with the regenerators implementing community-determined strategies for long-term economic transformation and resilience. He is also a fellow at The Nectary, an ongoing series of extended residential research and teaching gatherings aimed at restoring our human capacity for intimacy, cooperation, and interdependence with the broader web of Life.
Tyler holds a BA from Duke University, where he studied the nexus of climate, ecology, economics, energy, policy, and culture. After graduating in 2017, he immersed himself in cleantech business development and policy, climate justice community organizing, and alternative currency and governance design. He recently served as the founding Associate Executive Director of the Energy Policy Design Institute (EPDI), where he helped design and facilitate processes for cohering multistakeholder alignment on perplexing state and federal policy challenges.
Please note: registration is for in-person attendance only. The conversation will be filmed and shared via our eNewsletter shortly after the event.
The price of tickets ranges from $5 to $100. Please self-select the amount that best matches your ability to pay.
Doors will open at 2:45PM. A reception will follow the lecture with books for sale.
