The 45th Annual E.F. Schumacher Lecture was give by Samantha Power and Tyler Wakefield
“We have entered a form of ‘runaway’. There is no conceivable strategy in the fantasy of energy blindness. In the coming decades, we need to prepare for the next phase of strategies for financing the New Economy.”
Tyler Wakefield, Co-Founder of The BioFi Project
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.
From 1981 to the present, the Schumacher Center for a New Economics (formerly, the E. F. Schumacher Society) have hosted an annual lecture, which has captured some of the most visionary voices regarding the urgent need to transform our economic, social, and cultural systems in a way that supports both the planet and its citizens.
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?”
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.
Samantha, Tyler and their team are collaborating with bioregional organizers 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.
