NextBillion - A WDI Publication

Reform, Transformation, and the Road Ahead

Something is shifting in the mainstream conversation about capitalism. After decades in which shareholder primacy was treated as economic law rather than ideological choice, a growing chorus of voices from within the financial establishment is acknowledging what impact entrepreneurs have long understood: the extractive model is failing on its own terms. Rising inequality, climate disruption, the hollowing out of community—these are not isolated policy challenges but interconnected symptoms of a system that externalizes costs and concentrates power. The question is no longer whether the current economic paradigm must change, but whether reform from within is sufficient—or whether genuine transformation requires the deeper structural reimagining that the regenerative economy represents.

In this Luminarias webinar and audience Q&A, Impact Entrepreneur’s Laurie Lane-Zucker welcomes award-winning journalist and author Elizabeth MacBride for a wide-ranging exploration of these questions. MacBride’s work—spanning Forbes, The Atlantic, CNBC, and BBC, and most recently the USA Today bestselling book Capital Evolution: The New American Economy (co-authored with venture capitalist Seth Levine)—has consistently investigated the gap between economic narratives and economic reality: the distance between what institutions say they value and what their structures actually produce. Her concept of “Dynamic Capitalism” offers a framework for understanding the emerging post-neoliberal landscape that is both intellectually serious and provocatively different from the regenerative vision our community is building.

The conversation will move across the most pressing questions facing the impact economy today: whether climate can be addressed in isolation or only as part of systemic transformation, how ownership structures must evolve to distribute rather than concentrate power, what distinguishes genuine accountability from sophisticated rebranding, and what it actually takes to move from extraction to regeneration. This is an opportunity for our global community of impact entrepreneurs, investors, and field-builders to engage with a sharp, well-informed voice from the mainstream economic reform conversation—and to test where the common ground lies and where the real disagreements begin.

Featured Guest

Elizabeth MacBride is a journalist, author, and entrepreneur whose reporting and commentary on finance, innovation, and global economic change have reached millions of readers worldwide. She is the co-author of three books, including the national bestseller Capital Evolution, which examines the future of capitalism and outlines principles for a more equitable, dynamic form of capitalism; The New Builders (Wiley, 2021), which helped reshape how policymakers understand entrepreneurship in America and informed $250 billion in U.S. pandemic-era aid; and The Little Book of Robo Investing (Wiley, 2024), on how technology is transforming personal finance. Her work has consistently championed people excluded from the global economy by structural barriers and social norms. As a reporter and editor, she has broken stories at the intersection of finance, technology, and policy for outlets including The New York Times, Quartz, Forbes, MIT Technology Review, The Atlantic, and the BBC, reporting from places ranging from the Arkansas Delta and Silicon Valley to Kenya, Cambodia, the West Bank, and Gaza. More recently, she has focused on narrative change and information disorder and how they shape markets, democracy, and the future of work. A graduate of Johns Hopkins SAIS, she is a single mother of two daughters and lives in Alexandria, Virginia.