Alisa Gravitz is the executive director of Co-op America, a nonprofit sustainable economy advocacy organization that helps consumers, businesses, and investors use their economic power to create a socially just and environmentally sustainable society. In a recent conversation with Leverage Points editor Vicky Schubert, she talked about her organization's focus on speed and scale in responding to climate change.

LP: When I first heard of Co-op America I thought of food co-ops, but your work is much broader than that.

AG: Yes, Co-op America advocates economic strategies for a more just and sustainable society. Our name comes from the idea that people in their economic roles as consumers, investors, business leaders, and workers can cooperate with each other to create a more sustainable economy--the foundation for a more sustainable society.

LP: Starting on the individual level, can you give us some examples of how you help consumers adopt greener ways of living and working?

AG: In the consumer arena we hold green festivalsand provide publications and web-based resources, such as our National Green Pages directory, to help people make more sustainable household choices.

As a first step, we advise people to make consumer choices that support a life of elegant simplicity. If you're lonely, don't go out and buy three new dresses and then stress out about the growing balance on your credit card. Instead, think about joining a civic organization, or go for a walk with a friend and sit outside with a cup of tea and talk.

The second thing we ask people to do is to buy from companies that are shifting towards sustainability. Everybody needs to buy real things, obviously; you have to wear clothes, and you have to buy food. We have a whole program to help people make sustainable choices and green purchases. Real Money, our consumer newsletter, looks at everything from beer and wine to clothes and furniture to carbon offsets.

Next we ask people to take the money they've saved in step one and make socially and environmentally responsible investments. And we ask them to use the time they've saved in step one--since they now have a more elegant and simple life--to engage in community and civic life. Wherever their passion lies, whether it's in education, or the environment, or human rights, there are lots of opportunities to connect with communities working locally, nationally, and internationally to create positive change.

Debra Meyerson, Van Jones, and Boeing panel to Join Peter Senge and Otto Scharmer in Leading the Conversation.

As diverse in their interests as the cross-sectoral Pegasus Conference community, this year's keynote speakers are sure to engage our growing capacity for learning together across boundaries.

Peter Senge, author of The Fifth Discipline and founding chair of the Society for Organizational Learning

Otto Scharmer, co-author of Presence and primary architect of Theory U, a process for facilitating profound innovation and change

Debra Meyerson, author of Tempered Radicals and an associate professor of education and organizational behavior at Stanford University

Van Jones, founder of the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights in Oakland, California

Peter Weertman, vice president of Technical Customer Support, along with other innovators from Boeing's Commercial Aviation operation, who will share the story of their launch of a state-of-the-art "Ops Center".

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by Bill Harris

As a professional systems thinker and system dynamicist, I've observed something important about promoting simulation models for learning and insight. By presenting a range of approaches and inviting clients to view them as alternatives rather than pushing one technique, we can help them to view systems thinking in all its forms, including simulation, more positively.