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Keynote Speaker Announcement!
We are excited to announce that Anthony Flaccavento will join us as our Tuesday keynote speaker!
Anthony Flaccavento is an organic farmer near Abingdon, Virginia, in the heart of Central Appalachia. He has been working on community environmental and economic development in the region for the past 27 years.
In 1995, Flaccavento founded
Appalachian Sustainable Development
and now serves as the president of
SCALE, Inc.
, a private consulting business that supports ecologically healthy economies.
The author of Healthy Food Systems: A Toolkit for Building Value Chains, Flacavento has also published articles on sustainability and rural development in the Washington Post, the Huffington Post, and Solutions Journal.
In his new book, Building a Healthy Economy From the Bottom Up: Harnessing Real-World
Experience for Transformative Change, Flaccavento
introduces readers to the innovators who are creating thriving, locally based economies and provides a road map for others who are interested in doing the same. He demonstrates that, despite the success of local initiatives like farmers' markets and clean energy cooperatives, true and lasting change of this type stalls without the appropriate discussion and implementation of public policies that define their lasting impact. He shows how active citizens can spur essential changes, generate community capital, increase civic dialogue, and foster sustainability efforts.
Flaccavento skillfully combines economic analysis and public policy recommendations with practical solutions. His call to collective action will appeal to scholars, entrepreneurs, policymakers, community activists, environmentalists, and all citizens passionate about the health of their communities.
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