Kate Raworth

The economy has a shape problem. For decades, it has been drawn as a single upward line — GDP climbing endlessly toward the top of the page — as if growth itself were the destination. Kate Raworth drew a different shape.

Her model, the Doughnut, is a ring. On the inside sits a social foundation: the minimum every person needs to live with dignity. On the outside, a planetary ceiling: the ecological limits we cannot breach without consequence. The goal of any economy, Raworth argues, is not to grow forever. It is to thrive within that space.

Kate Raworth began her career in the villages of Zanzibar, working alongside micro-entrepreneurs in markets that orthodox economic theory barely acknowledged. She then co-authored the Human Development Report for the UNDP in New York, before spending a decade as Senior Researcher at Oxfam. There, she watched campaigns for food security, education, and healthcare collide daily with the inadequacy of how economists were keeping score.

That experience drove her 2017 bestseller, Doughnut Economics; a direct challenge to the entire discipline. The book translated into over 20 languages, drew praise from figures as varied as Pope Francis and Extinction Rebellion. Most strikingly, it moved from academic shelves into city halls. Amsterdam embedded the Doughnut into its urban policy in 2019, and more than fifty cities globally have since followed.

Today, Raworth holds a Senior Teaching Fellowship at Oxford University’s Environmental Change Institute and a Professorship of Practice at Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences. Her 2018 TED Talk has surpassed five million views.

Many economists have questioned GDP. Few have replaced it with something cities can actually use. Kate Raworth’s framework draws on both human rights and earth science. Practical enough for a city council, yet radical enough to unsettle a curriculum. In an era of ecological and economic crisis, that combination is both timely and necessary.