About
Denise Hearn is a writer, applied researcher, and advisor focused on how economic power and paradigms shape our world.
She advises governments, financial institutions, companies, and nonprofits on antitrust, economic policy, and new economic thinking. She is currently a Resident Senior Fellow at the Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment, a joint center of Columbia University Law School and Columbia Climate School.
Denise co-authored The Myth of Capitalism: Monopolies and the Death of Competition with Jonathan Tepper — named one of the Financial Times’ Best Books of 2018. She is the 2024 McGill University Max Bell School of Public Policy Lecturer, and co-authoring a forthcoming book with Vass Bednar on changing market dynamics in Canada.
Denise’s writing has been translated into 9 languages, and featured in publications such as: The Financial Times, Bloomberg, The Globe and Mail, Stanford Social Innovation Review, and The Washington Post. She currently authors the Embodied Economics newsletter.
She has helped catalyze a number of initiatives across sectors, including: the Antitrust and Sustainability initiative at Columbia University, Access to Markets, the Antimonopoly Summit, and the First Principles Forum.
Denise is Advisory Board Chair of The Predistribution Initiative — a multi-stakeholder project to improve investment structures and practices to address systemic risks like inequality, biodiversity loss, and climate change. And she has an MBA from the Oxford Saïd Business School and a BA in International Studies from Baylor University.
Get to Know Denise Personally
I’m committed to maintaining curiosity and wonder at this vast, complex, and enchanting place that we call home – the earth and all its many inhabitants. I feel immense gratitude to be alive, right now, in all our collective challenges and opportunities.
Growing up, I moved every few years internationally. This made me appreciate that reality can often only be – at best – triangulated between many worldviews, perspectives, and data points. For this reason, I’m drawn to systems thinking, and also to mystical spiritual traditions which make ample room for paradox, complexity, and a deep understanding of our collective interbeing. We all unequivocally belong here.
I am curious about what biological and natural ecosystems might have to teach us about human-made systems, and I love learning about small creatures like nudibranchs, diatoms, and tardigrades.
I enjoy scuba diving, backpacking, singing and songwriting (I released a CD in college), reading and writing poetry, appreciating beauty in small things, and hanging out with my seven nieces and nephews. I am currently learning to drive a motorcycle, which everyone tells me is a bad idea.
