Co-operatives UK secretary general Ed Mayo has been nominated for a new award aimed at fresh economic thinkers and doers for the 21st century.
The Not the Nobel Prize award is given by Promoting Economic Pluralism, a UK registered charity looking to develop strategic activities and projects that influence economic analysis, teaching and thinking.
It hopes the award will promote economic solutions for today’s global challenges. As the name suggests, the award was designed as an alternative to the Nobel Prize, which, the charity argues, has given authority to economic ideas at the heart of the current economic system and its problems.
The charity runs an online platform where users can nominate, discuss and vote for those providing the thinking and action needed for the 21st century.
Mr Mayo has been nominated for his current role at Co-operatives UK, where he is working to boost the co-operative economy, as well as his former involvement at the New Economics Foundation (NEF), where he focused on ethical market activity, local economies and public service reform and co-ordinated the Jubilee 2000 campaign, an international drive to cancel debt in developing countries.
Mr Mayo was also part of the team which started the Fairtrade Mark and was on the board of the Fairtrade Foundation between 2004 and 2010. He is currently on the board of AccountAbility, War on Want and the Fairtrade Foundation.
The winner of the award will be announced at in London on 3 October, after a panel discussion of the finalists which will be live streamed around the world.
