Category Archives: Blog

I was prompted to write this after watching the closing keynote address Dr. Ibram X. Kendi gave at UnboundEd’s July 2019 Standards Institute conference. A video of his lecture, “An Argument Between Racist and Anti-Racist Ideas, can be viewed here. Dr. Kendi is a professor of history and international relations at American University. He received […]

In a previous post, When We’re The Packages, I discussed the role the Annie E. Casey Foundation (UPS $) played in developing the field of human capital impact investing. One infrastructure element developed and promoted by the foundation is data collection across multiple-generations. Their two-generation approach expands opportunities to profit from impoverished families, because the […]

We finally got a new computer with enough memory for me to be able to edit the talk I gave at Wooden Shoe Books on May 9, 2019. It’s two hours long and covers quite a bit of ground. We had a couple dozen folks attend in person and many wanted to stay after and […]

It was time to say good-bye to the chinstrap penguin. The paper mache model had kept watch over a corner of my sewing room for years, but with our child moving on to college and evidence of flour-beetles impossible to ignore, its time had come. It was an endearing second-grade project, now a decade old. […]

I have the exciting opportunity to participate in a panel discussion with members of the Poor People’s Economic Human Rights Campaign at the Left Forum Conference coming up this weekend June 28-30 in Brooklyn, New York at Long Island University. The focus of our two-hour workshop will be building a Poor People’s Army. Here is […]

I watched the video of Helen Alford’s talk months ago, and I still can’t get it out of my head. A Dominican nun trained in “human-centered technology” who holds a PhD in engineering management from Cambridge regaling a room full of aspiring impact investors on how the Catholic church plans to be the conscience of […]

I wrapped up my previous post about the Alice.si blockchain social impact platform noting that digital identity is THE KEY element required to make speculative markets in human capital data function. The game of gambling on life outcomes requires: 1) unique personal identifiers 2) predictive analytics protocols to set the odds 3) constant monitoring of […]

At the end of my previous post I introduced Alice.si, an Ethereum Blockchain software platform investors developed to automate payments to “charitable” projects that prove “measurable impact.” The platform employs a “pay for results” structure, an approach adopted by numerous governments including ones in the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada and Australia. After years […]

It seems the United Way is planning for a future inhabited by a mass underclass of precarious labor. In fact, this “future” may already be here, it’s just not evenly distributed as the quote attributed to William Gibson suggests. For the past few years United Way chapters nationwide have been mobilizing awareness campaigns around ALICE. The […]

The Annie E. Casey Foundation, the United Way, and the Aspen Institute are in the process of rolling out a “two-generation,” coordinated program of data exploitation designed to enmesh poor families in ongoing systems of digital monitoring. In order to secure their most basic needs for survival, families in need will be expected to demonstrate […]