Michelle Long is the Founding Executive Director of BALLE—the Business Alliance for Local Living Economies. Previously Michelle was the founding executive director of Sustainable Connections, an organisation that prompted NPR Marketplace to call Bellingham, WA, the “epicentre of a new economic model.” A regular keynote speaker, she is also the co-author of Local First: A How-to Guide. Michelle is an adviser to the Schumacher Center for New Economics, was named one of the West Coast’s “top five leading ladies of sustainability” by the Sustainable Industries Journal, and in 2014 was named one of The Purpose Economy 100 for North America.