Janelle Orsi

Janelle Orsi is a lawyer, advocate, writer, and cartoonist focused on cooperatives, the sharing economy, urban agriculture, shared housing, local currencies, and community-supported enterprises.She is Co-founder and Executive Director of the Sustainable Economies Law Center (SELC), which facilitates the growth of more sustainable and localized economies through education, research, and advocacy. Janelle has also worked in private law practice at the Law Office of Janelle Orsi, focusing on sharing economy law since 2008. Janelle is the author of Practicing Law in the Sharing Economy: Helping People Build Cooperatives, Social Enterprise, and Local Sustainable Economies (ABA Books 2012), and co-author of The Sharing Solution: How to Save Money, Simplify Your Life & Build Community (Nolo Press 2009), a practical and legal guide to cooperating and sharing resources of all kinds.

Principles for a True Sharing Economy
Principles of equity must become embedded into the legal DNA of tech platforms. As tech platforms rapidly become a new means of production for nearly every industry—from domestic work to taxis and far beyond—we have a window of opportunity to decisively reject “business-as-usual” in the tech industry and, instead, build platforms designed to create a just, equitable, and democratic society. At this conference, we can start to gather consensus around some basic principles for the legal, governance, and financial design of tech platforms built more genuinely on sharing.