Alice Maggio
Alice Maggio is a Brooklyn-born and Berkshire-raised community developer passionate about building economic institutions that distribute power and create community wealth. She currently works as Senior Project Officer for the Working World, a non-profit that helps build cooperative businesses in low-income communities. From 2012 to 2017 she worked at the Schumacher Center for a New Economics, educating people in her own community and around the world about the potential of local currencies to serve as democratic tools for building more vibrant and resilient local economies, and has been especially engaged with the Berkshire region’s local currency, BerkShares.
As Director of the Berkshire region’s own local currency, BerkShares, she developed an annual membership drive, signed up more than 100 businesses to accept BerkShares, spearheaded multiple BerkShares events, launched, wrote, and produced a monthly BerkShares Business-of-the-Month column in local media, developed an entrepreneurial training program for youth, and deepened BerkShares ties to the local banking community.
In the media, Maggio has been interviewed by Paul Solmon for a story on the PBS NewsHour, as well as stories by Al Jazeera America and Truthatlas.com. In 2014 she was interviewed by Henry Rollins for an episode of his History Channel show called “Ten Things You Don’t Know About Money.” She represented BerkShares and the Schumacher Center at the 2nd and 4th International Conferences on Complementary Currency Systems in the Hague and Barcelona, respectively, the Left Forum in New York City, and the Local Prosperity Canada conference in Nova Scotia, among others. In 2019, Maggio gave a TEDx Talk using the metaphor of an apple tree to describe the various factors that make up a healthy, sustainable economy.
Alice has a BA in Sociology and French from Wesleyan University and an MA in Urban and Environmental Policy and Planning from Tufts University, where she has co-authored Soil in City: Urban Farming on Community Land Trusts and The Meaning of Mutuality in the 21st Century. She grew up in Berkshire County, Massachusetts, and graduated from Mount Everett Regional High School in Sheffield.
She has served on the Board of Trustees for the Berkshire Children’s Chorus, the Board of Directors for the Berkshire United Way and the Board of Directors for the 1Berkshire Strategic Alliance. In 2017 she became a corporator for Lee Bank, a community bank in the Berkshires.