Joanna Cea

Research Co-Director and Co-facilitator of the Co-learning Community

Joanna Cea is an advocate, researcher and practitioner of funding practices that lift up the wellbeing of all. She has worked in community-driven efforts to stop destructive investments, as well as to build solutions that reimagine investment and the role we each play in defining the economic futures of our communities.

With Beloved Economies, Joanna serves as research co-director and co-facilitator of the co-learning community; was co-author of the book Beloved Economies: Transforming how we work; and currently serves as a member of the core team in the campaign’s final year. 

Beginning in 2006, Joanna led the human rights organization International Accountability Project for eight years, and she subsequently served as founding director of the Buen Vivir Fund with Thousand Currents. Alongside this work, starting in 2015 as a Visiting Scholar with Stanford University’s Global Projects Center, Joanna co-facilitated a research initiative with more than 200 collaborators to identify co-creative practices that build next economies. 

Joanna has been drawn to the interconnection of human and environmental wellbeing since childhood, and now as a mother herself, her awe at the interconnectedness of all life continues to deepen.