Alexa Clay

Alexa leads the RSA US - overseeing research, Fellowship, and thought leadership development across key U.S. cities and regions on topics related to inclusive growth, universal basic income, economic democracy, the future of work, and creativity and education. She is helping to accelerate cross-city and regional collaboration and grow a distributed network of Fellows for collective impact.

 

An economic historian and ethnographer by background, Alexa is a leading speaker and expert on subculture and innovation from unlikely places. She is the co-author of the Misfit Economy (Simon & Schuster 2015), a book that explores underground and informal innovation. She is passionate about formalizing insights and learning from social change practitioners and has contributed to theory that has pushed for the application of open source thinking in the social sector.

 

Previously, Alexa led Wisdom Hackers, an incubator for philosophical inquiry and co-founded the League of Intrapreneurs, a movement to create change from within incumbent systems and big organizations. Alexa has previously held positions heading up research and learning at Ashoka working with leading foundations and social entrepreneurs and as a consultant at SustainAbility Ltd working with Fortune 500 companies.

 

Alexa has written and appeared in Fast Company, Forbes, Wired, Dazed and Confused, VICE, Harvard Business Review, The New York Times and MTV. She is a regular commentator on topics related to economic transition, misfit subculture, social innovation and technology angst. She received her BA from Brown University and a MSc. from Oxford University.

 

Alexa is based in western Massachusetts. She has a love of hermits and Walden Pond.

 

Twitter: @alexaclay