Dr. Katherine Gibson

Katherine Gibson helped us see economies we didn’t know existed.

For over 30 years, this economic geographer has worked with communities to map and build alternatives to wealth extraction. Her approach is simple but revolutionary: what if the economy isn’t one thing controlled by billionaires and corporations, but thousands of different economies already happening around us?

“The economy is not a machine that exists outside of us. We make the economy through our everyday actions.” -KG

With her late colleague Julie Graham, writing as J.K. Gibson-Graham, Katherine showed that cooperatives, community gardens, time banks, and care work aren’t marginal activities. They’re proof that community wealth already exists and works. We just need to see it, support it, and connect it.

Her books—The End of Capitalism (As We Knew It), A Postcapitalist Politics, and Take Back the Economy—aren’t academic theory. They’re practical guides showing communities how to recognize and strengthen the wellbeing economies already operating in their neighborhoods.

Katherine’s work matters because she gave people permission to stop waiting for billionaires or the government to save us and start building community wealth right now. She proved that regular people creating local economies aren’t fighting extraction—they’re making it irrelevant by building something better.

More on Dr. Gibson here.
See the J.K. Gibson-Graham Wikipedia entry.