David Korten
Main profile
David Korten (MBA, PhD) is an internationally known author, speaker, and engaged citizen. He is founder and President of the Living Economies Forum, co-founder and board chair emeritus of YES! Magazine, and a full member of the Club of Rome.
He is best known as the author of When Corporations Rule the World; and The Great Turning: From Empire to Earth Community. His other books include: The Post-Corporate World: Life After Capitalism; Agenda for a New Economy: From Phantom Wealth to Real Wealth; and Change the Story; Change to Future: A Living Economy for a Living Earth.
A holder of earned MBA and PhD degrees from the Stanford University Graduate School of Business, he served for five years on the faculty of the Harvard Business School, teaching in its MBA, PhD, and middle management programs and serving as its advisor to and dean of the MBA Program at the Central American Management Institute. He then headed a Ford Foundation funded Harvard Institute for International Development project to strengthen the organization and management of the national family planning programs throughout the world and taught a course on family planning management at the Harvard School of Public Health.
With his wife, Fran Korten, he set up the College of Business Administration in the Haile Selassie I University in Ethiopia. He completed his military service during the Vietnam War as a captain in the US Air Force with duty at the Special Air Warfare School, Air Force headquarters command, the Office of the Secretary of Defense, and the Advanced Research Projects Agency.
He lived and worked in international development in Africa, Asia, and Latin America for 30 years. In 1994, he participated in the formation of the International Forum on Globalization (IFG) and was an IFG associate for nearly 10 years. In 2001, he participated in founding the Business Alliance for Local Living Economies and served as a founding board member through 2012. He co-founded and co-chaired the New Economy Working Group (2008 – 2016).
He now works to raise global consciousness of the social and environmental devastation of unrestrained abuse of power by transnational corporations. And advance humanity’s transition to an Ecological Civilization grounded in strong local communities supported by institutions, technology, and infrastructure dedicated to the wellbeing of people and Earth. He is currently framing a life-centric ecoʹ-nomics to displace the money-centric egoʹ-nomics that celebrates potentially terminal economic dysfunction.