What If the Economy Were Built on Care?

What if everything you’ve been taught about economic progress is wrong?

In this episode, Stacey Edgar — social worker turned social entrepreneur and now executive director of the International Folk Art Market — shares her journey through the “career jungle gym” of the social impact sector. We unpack her concept of artisan economics, a radically human approach to commerce rooted in care, dignity, and connection.

From surviving U.S. customs mishaps to rewriting economic theory from a feminist perspective, Stacey challenges the status quo and shows what a purpose-driven economy really looks like — on the ground, in the marketplace, and in our communities.

If you’ve ever wondered whether mission can truly coexist with margin, or how to lead with care in a world of burnouts and bans, this episode is for you.

Episode Highlights

• [00:00] Introduction
  Challenging the paradox of progress and introducing artisan economics
• [02:06] Stacey’s Nonlinear Path
  From social work to fair trade founder to nonprofit ED
• [03:43] Turning $2,000 into a Movement
  The surprising spark behind Global Girlfriend
• [05:35] Lessons from the Early Days
  “Just ask.” The power of invitation in purpose-driven business
• [07:30] Teaching Business with Purpose
  From MBA metrics to artisan-led projects across the globe
• [10:26] Leading a Legacy Nonprofit
  The cultural shift from founder-led to stakeholder-centered leadership
• [12:08] Resilience Under Pressure
  What happens when “women” becomes a banned word in federal grants
• [16:27] Building a Purpose-First Economy
  Stacey’s upcoming book and why care must be central to the future of work
• [20:26] Defining the Culture of Care
  From feminist economics to Bhutan’s “gross national happiness”
• [23:18] The Loneliness of Leadership
  Where Stacey finds strength during tough times
• [24:35] What’s Lighting Her Up
  Authentic creativity in a world obsessed with AI and performance
• [26:19] Digital Disconnection
  Why real person-to-person connection still matters most
   

Notable Quotes

“There is no career ladder. There is a career jungle gym. Go from playground to playground, following your curiosity.” — Stacey [02:06]

“Once you tell people what you’re doing, it’s not a sale… You’re inviting someone to be part of a bigger movement.” — Stacey [05:35]

“In the artisan economy, creativity builds on itself… It’s about building forward and retaining tradition.” — Stacey [19:58]

“Our biggest personal poverty at the moment is disconnection.” — Stacey [27:23]

“When purpose becomes your marketing, it’s gone past its core.” — Stacey [17:15]

P.S. — Feeling the disconnect between your mission and your message? I help social impact leaders build trust through story-rich brands, compelling campaigns, and values-aligned strategy. Let’s talk about how to elevate your impact.

Full Interview:

For centuries, our economy has been guided by a few core beliefs. One is the idea of creative destruction: that for something new to be born, the old must be destroyed. Another is the paradox of progress: the quiet assumption that for society to move forward, some people will inevitably be left behind.

It’s brutal logic. And it’s logic that deserves to be challenged.

What if there’s another way? A different economic model, one that doesn’t see tradition as something to be destroyed but as a foundation to build on. A model that refuses to accept that leaving people behind is the cost of doing business. It’s an economy built not on destruction, but on care.

You might call it artisan economics.

To explore what that looks like in practice, I wanted to talk with someone who has dedicated her life to proving this counter-model can work.

My guest today is Stacey Edgar. She has been a social worker, founded a multi-million-dollar fair trade social enterprise, and is now the Executive Director of the International Folk Art Market — the world’s largest folk art market. She’s seen firsthand that a more humane, more connected, and more sustainable way of doing business isn’t just a theory of the future. It’s already happening all over the world, and it has been for quite some time.

In our conversation, we explore what artisan economics can teach us about building a more equitable and connected future.

Interview

Eric Ressler:
Your career has been anything but conventional. You grew up in small town Illinois, and now you’re leading the world’s largest folk art market. You’ve been in social work, founded a social enterprise, taught at the university level, and are now a nonprofit executive director. How did that trajectory happen, and how has it shaped your experience in this sector?

Stacey Edgar
It’s funny because I don’t think anyone would ever plan a career path like mine. When I taught at the University of Colorado at the Leeds School of Business, I used to tell students there is no career ladder — there’s a career jungle gym. You go from one piece of playground equipment to another, following your curiosity.

That’s what happened to me. I was a social worker working with women and children, helping moms in welfare-to-work programs around the time Bill Clinton’s TANF program was in place. Meanwhile, my father-in-law was a two-time governor in Illinois, and when he left office, he and my mother-in-law joined boards with the UN World Food Program. She met women selling handcrafts while visiting food distribution sites and brought their work back for me and my sister-in-law. I thought, I know women who would love this stuff — and want to support these entrepreneurs. That’s how I started Global Girlfriend.

Seventeen years running a social enterprise was like an MBA. After that I ended up teaching, and eventually I came to IFAM — an organization I had admired for many years.

Eric Ressler:
Was there a specific story or encounter that made you take the plunge and turn a $2,000 tax refund into a multimillion-dollar social enterprise?

Stacey Edgar:
It was really two stories combined. After 10 years in social work, I had worked with so many women in the child welfare system who were young mothers flagged for neglect. But often, they didn’t have childcare, job opportunities, or training. It wasn’t neglect — it was lack of safety nets.

Meanwhile, my mother-in-law was meeting women entrepreneurs abroad facing the same challenges. Across Africa, 76% of women still work in the informal sector — no protections, no safety net. One story that stuck with me came from the Gemini Trust in Ethiopia, which supported moms of twins. At the time, famine meant many mothers were losing one of their babies because they couldn’t feed both.

Those experiences — in the U.S. and abroad — lit the spark for Global Girlfriend.

Eric Ressler:
When you were growing Global Girlfriend, what were some of the key lessons, obstacles, or mistakes? What do you wish you had known starting out?

Stacey Edgar:
One of the biggest joys was how open people were to the idea. We partnered with Whole Foods, West Elm, Target.com, even Neiman Marcus — all because people wanted to support artisans. My first advice is: just ask. You’re not making a sale, you’re inviting someone to be part of a movement. That was really fun. It was really fun to see how many people wanted to join in that.

On the flip side, there were hard lessons. Social workers don’t know much about importing. My first large shipment wasn’t tagged correctly and U.S. Customs said they would burn it. They didn’t — but gave us three days to relabel everything. There were lots of basic business learnings like that. Today, there are far more resources available, whether or not you’ve gone to business school.

Eric Ressler:
After Global Girlfriend, you shifted into academia. How did your social enterprise experience influence your teaching? And how did teaching change your perspective as you moved forward?

Stacey Edgar:
I guest lectured for eight years in a class called Business Solutions for the Developing World (since renamed). When I was leaving my brand, they asked me to teach it. The course didn’t fill that semester, so they offered me another one instead — BASE — a hands-on business practicum. Students worked on things like internal rate of return and weighted cost of capital. Social entrepreneurs don’t always dive into those details, but they matter. Profit is the fuel for purpose.

I went on to teach the Business Solutions course, where students worked with companies worldwide — artisan groups, agriculture projects, tech. Seeing them apply business knowledge to real-world contexts was amazing, both for students and entrepreneurs.

I also taught World of Business, an intro to political economy. That course revealed how few women, people of color, and Indigenous voices are included in core economic texts. If we want people to see the world as a whole, we have to look at the whole world. That realization is a big driver for me now — including in the book I’m working on, which looks at what gets discounted in the global economy, like care.

Eric Ressler:
Tell me about your transition into IFAM. This is a nonprofit with a 20-year legacy and a different model than your past work. What surprised you about stepping into this role?

Stacey Edgar:
I’ve always thought of myself as collaborative, but when you run a small brand you’re flexible and do what you want. Running a nonprofit with a board is different. IFAM has nearly 50 board members plus 1,500 volunteers. Becoming a better listener and managing diverse stakeholders was a learning curve. I used to teach stakeholder vs. shareholder theory, but now I live it. At IFAM, stakeholders include artisans, community, volunteers, board, donors, and shoppers. It’s a lot to balance — but the collaboration is worth it.

Eric Ressler:
You’ve talked about resilience in leading organizations. How do you think about resilience in this moment, when the sector is under pressure from funding cuts and political scrutiny?

Stacey Edgar:
Running an international market is always challenging. This year we had 57 invited countries — meaning visas, shipments, customs. On top of that, there were country bans and tariffs. Some artists were afraid to travel or worried about detention at customs.

Despite that, volunteer numbers went up, and we hit record sales — $3.88 million in three days and three hours, with over 20,000 visitors. The economy isn’t great, inflation is high, there was a 10% tariff. But people still showed up. Not because they needed to consume, but because they cared about person-to-person diplomacy. That resilience — from staff, volunteers, and artists — was inspiring.

Eric Ressler:
You’re working on a new book, Artisan Economics. What themes are you exploring, and how do you see the state of purpose-driven business today?

Stacey Edgar:
When purpose and mission become your marketing, you go past the core — which is doing the right thing for the right reason. Artisan Economics isn’t a how-to-build-a-business book. It’s about choices we all make, and how the artisan economy works opposite the mainstream economy.

Joseph Schumpeter talked about creative destruction — the idea that progress requires destroying the old. But in the artisan economy, creativity builds on itself. It doesn’t discard tradition, it builds forward. He also talked about the paradox of progress — that some people will be left behind. But artisans don’t leave people behind.

A story I love: Mercedes and Nati, a mother-daughter team in Peru, run a cooperative employing 800 women in the Andes. When one small community they worked with was suffering from anemia due to a poor harvest, they didn’t wait for someone else to fix it. They carried vegetables up the mountain through storms until the community recovered. That’s a culture of care — and it’s what we need more of across the economy.

Eric Ressler:
“Culture of care” is a phrase I’m hearing more often in movements. What does it mean to you?

Stacey Edgar:
From a feminist perspective, and in my PhD research reflecting on 17 years of social enterprise, one thing is clear: there is no country that treats women equally. And for anyone who is transgender or non-binary, it’s not even close. Until the 1970s, women’s labor wasn’t even recognized in the global economy. The women-in-development movement began when a researcher pointed out that women were doing most of the work in Africa and India and no one noticed.

Still today, 76% of women across Africa work informally — with no recognition or credit. Add to that all the unpaid care work globally. Some countries, like Norway or Denmark, are better — high taxes but strong cultures of care. Bhutan was eye-opening: gross national happiness is their measure of development, 60% of land must remain forested, and if you build a house you must replant the trees used. That’s care for the environment, the ecosystem, and the people.

Eric Ressler:
Leadership can be lonely. Where do you turn for inspiration and strength when things get hard?

Stacey Edgar:
It does get tough, and you don’t always do the right thing. You do what you think is best, and sometimes there are unintended consequences and you have to shift. That happened when I merged with a larger company. For me, resilience comes from peers — other leaders in the artisan space. I lean on their expertise and friendship. I also rely on my family and friends. And I try to take care of myself through reading and yoga — though not always as well as I should.

Eric Ressler:
We’ve talked about social media becoming more performative, less connective. How do you think about showing up digitally in ways that create authentic connection?

Stacey Edgar:
We all get on social platforms because we want to connect. And they do give us global reach. But I feel like our biggest personal poverty at the moment is disconnection — from the things we buy and how they’re made, from one another in the rat race of work. Finding ways to connect more authentically is something I think about a lot, and it’s what artisans want too.

At IFAM, you meet the person behind the work. That’s my favorite part of my job — I’m not always the intermediary. It’s person-to-person connection. Platforms like Substack are meant to do that too, but they can get performative. We all need to be more intentional — reaching out to people we find interesting, having real conversations. That’s where connection happens.

Eric Ressler:
As we wrap up, what are you most excited about in the near and medium term?

Stacey Edgar:
I’m excited about the book, though it won’t be out until 2027. And I’m excited about where IFAM is going. We’ve been grassroots for 21 years, but we’re at a peak moment to show the world the importance of this space. At a time when people worry about an AI-driven future and loss of authenticity, I think global creativity and cultural exchange matter more than ever. The more authentically we can represent those, the better.

Eric Ressler:
Where can people follow you and IFAM?

Stacey Edgar:
Visit folkartmarket.org to learn about our organization. Follow IFAM on Instagram and Facebook. Personally, I spend most of my time on LinkedIn for professional updates. If you want family news — like wedding pictures of my kids — that’s on Instagram.

Takeaways

1. Connection as wealth: Poverty isn’t just lack of money, it’s disconnection — from each other, from culture, from the story behind what we consume.
2. Artisan economics as an alternative: Instead of creative destruction, artisans build forward while preserving heritage and including everyone.
3. Resilience as practice: It’s not about perfection, but adapting to challenges while staying true to purpose.
4. Values over Cause Marketing: Mission and marketing aren’t separate. Lived values create deep trust and loyalty.
5. Women at the center: Empowering women artisans transforms not only individual lives but entire communities.

Stacey Edgar’s journey proves that another economic model is not only possible — it already exists. One built on care, connection, and creativity. One where no one is left behind.