By Design, not Disaster: Gaya Herrington on Business and the Limits to Growth

Gaya is an internationally known sustainability researcher and wellbeing economist, living in Washington, DC. A regular guest lecturer and keynote and TED speaker, Gaya has been shaping conversations at local and global levels with her message that true sustainability will not be achieved without transforming our economic system away from an obsession with perpetual growth to one that centers around human and ecological wellbeing. Gaya’s message first gained attention in 2021, when her peer-reviewed article in Yale’s Journal of Industrial Ecology went viral. She subsequently published an open access book with the same message, which even more than a warning, is a beckoning for something better: an economy that meets all physical, emotional, and spiritual human needs by design. Showcasing her multidimensional approach to effecting change, Gaya has held pivotal roles in both policy and the corporate world. She’s currently working as a vice president at Schneider Electric, a multinational company working on the energy transition, and voted most sustainable corporation in the world by Time Magazine in 2024. Gaya is a Member of the Club of Rome, a global think tank, and of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Working Group for a Wellbeing Economy in the US. She has one master’s degree in econometrics from the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, and another in sustainability from Harvard University.