Journey To Regeneration

Chris Marquis
  • 5.0 (1)
  • Business
  • Updated Biweekly

Journey to Regeneration explores how forward-looking companies create long-term advantage by repairing the ecological and social systems they rely on. Hosted by Cambridge professor Christopher Marquis, the show features CEOs, sustainability strategists, climate innovators, and scholars who turn big ideas into actionable moves—unpacking what “net positive” really looks like, the policies accelerating the shift, and the practical hurdles leaders face on the ground. It’s a show for decision-makers who want to create resilient growth without greenwashing.

  1. 6d ago

    Steward Ownership: Redesigning Business for Long-Term Purpose

    In this episode of Journey to Regeneration, Christopher Marquis speaks with Esther Welles, co-founder of We Are Stewards, an organization advancing steward ownership as a new approach to business governance and long-term purpose. Steward ownership challenges the assumption that companies must ultimately be controlled by financial owners seeking maximum returns. Instead, it separates voting rights from economic rights so that control remains with people committed to protecting the company’s mission. Esther explains why ownership structures are often overlooked in sustainability discussions, even though they determine whether regenerative commitments can survive changes in leadership, investment, and market pressures. The conversation explores examples including Patagonia, Bosch, Novo Nordisk, and steward-owned companies in Denmark and the Netherlands, as well as different models such as foundation ownership, shareholder foundations, and golden shares. Esther also discusses the challenges entrepreneurs face when transitioning ownership, the importance of mission-aligned investors, and the need to educate lawyers, financial advisors, and other ecosystem actors about alternative ownership models. The discussion highlights a broader question for regenerative business: if companies are meant to create long-term value for society and the planet, how should ownership itself be redesigned to support that purpose? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

  2. Aug 6

    True Pricing: Making the Hidden Costs of Business Visible

    In this episode of Journey to Regeneration, Christopher Marquis speaks with Michel Scholte and Claire van den Broek from True Price, an organization working to transform how businesses and societies understand value by accounting for the hidden social and environmental costs embedded in products and supply chains. We discuss the concept of true pricing — a methodology that identifies impacts such as carbon emissions, water use, soil degradation, poverty wages, and labor exploitation, and what products would cost if these impacts were prevented, repaired, or compensated for. Drawing on examples like bananas, coffee, chocolate, textiles, and other products, Michel and Claire explain how true pricing can reveal risks that companies often overlook and help reshape procurement, consumer choices, and public policy. They explore how businesses can move beyond sustainability reporting toward changing the economic systems that create environmental and social harm, while also addressing important questions around responsibility, affordability, and collective action. The conversation offers a deeper look at how pricing mechanisms can support a more regenerative economy by aligning markets with the real costs of production. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

  3. Jul 30

    Giving Nature a Voice: Brontie Ansell on Building a Legal System for Nature

    In this episode of Journey to Regeneration, Christopher Marquis speaks with Brontie Ansell, Managing Director and co-founder of Lawyers for Nature, about how legal systems can be transformed to recognize nature as more than an object of regulation. Brontie explains the foundations of the rights of nature movement, arguing that traditional environmental law has often focused on human interests rather than recognizing ecosystems as having intrinsic value and the need for representation. The conversation explores how this perspective can reshape decision-making in governments and businesses, including Lawyers for Nature’s work introducing nature representatives into corporate governance through initiatives such as Faith in Nature’s appointment of nature as a board director. Brontie also discusses the practical challenges of adapting rights of nature principles across different legal systems, the influence of Indigenous perspectives, and the importance of changing cultural understandings of humanity’s relationship with the natural world. Rather than framing regeneration as a conflict between business and environmental protection, she highlights how bringing nature into decision-making can help organizations consider new possibilities, manage long-term risks, and create more resilient systems. This conversation offers a compelling perspective on how law, governance, and business can evolve to reflect our deeper interdependence with the living world. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

  4. Jul 23

    Rethinking Who Owns the Value a Business Creates with Hans van den Broek of The Shore

    In this episode of Journey to Regeneration, Chris Marquis speaks with Hans van den Broek, founder of The Shore, a surf school and organic café in Scheveningen, and a participant in the Netherlands’ Sleipnir network of steward-owned businesses. Van den Broek traces The Shore’s unlikely development from a tiny seasonal surf operation into a valuable year-round beach business, explaining how public permits, real estate, and investor interest forced him to confront questions about where business value comes from and who should benefit from it. Rather than sell equity and create pressure to recover the purchase price through higher margins, cheaper inputs, or reduced labor costs, he transferred the company’s capital into the Sleipnir Foundation. The structure preserves entrepreneurial autonomy while preventing the business from being sold for private gain. The conversation examines ownership as a frequently overlooked constraint on sustainability, as well as the implications of steward ownership for financing, succession, profit, and governance. Van den Broek describes Sleipnir as a form of “business permaculture,” in which independent companies share capital, advice, and practical resources while returning surplus value to the social and ecological systems that enable their success. His experience suggests that regenerative business may depend not only on changing what companies produce, but also on redesigning who owns them and where the value they generate is allowed to flow. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

  5. Jul 16

    Ocaquatics, Employee Ownership, and the Ripples of Impact

    In this episode of Journey to Regeneration, Christopher Marquis speaks with Miren Oca, founder and CEO of Ocaquatics Swim School, a Miami-based company that has taught more than 3.2 million swim lessons while building a business around safety, employee development, environmental responsibility, and community access. Oca reflects on how a company she began in survival mode as a 19-year-old student evolved into a certified B Corp and, more recently, an employee-owned company through an employee ownership trust. The conversation explores what it means to build regenerative capacity in a service business with a real environmental footprint, from solar panels and pool covers to formalized employee loan programs and impact measurement. It also examines swimming as a public-safety and equity issue in Miami-Dade County, where access to lessons can shape whether children and families are safe around water. At its heart, this episode is about succession, stewardship, and redefining ROI—not only as financial return, but as the ripples of impact a business creates for workers, customers, communities, and the places it calls home. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

  6. Jul 9

    Ruth Andrade of Lush on Earth Care, Circularity, and Designing Business for Regeneration

    In this episode of Journey to Regeneration, Christopher Marquis speaks with Ruth Andrade, Earth Care Strategy Lead at Lush, about how one of the world’s most recognizable ethical cosmetics companies translates an aspirational purpose—leaving the world “lusher than we found it”—into operational choices across sourcing, product design, packaging, ownership, and culture. Ruth explains why Lush uses the language of Earth Care rather than sustainability, and how principles such as earth care, people care, and fair share shape its approach to business. The conversation explores Lush’s vertically integrated model, its partnerships with forest communities, women-led cooperatives, and conservation organizations, and its focus on the most material ingredients in its supply chain. Ruth also discusses the company’s closed-loop “bring it back” packaging system, their Green Hub in Poole, UK and the decision to open-source innovations such as solid shampoo bars rather than protect them as proprietary advantage. Together, the episode shows that regenerative business is not a single practice or certification, but a set of design choices about responsibility, relationships, and the long-term health of the systems a company depends on. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

  7. Jul 2

    Hans Stegeman on Making Money Work for System Change

    In this episode of Journey to Regeneration, Christopher Marquis speaks with Hans Stegeman, Chief Economist and Group Director of Impact and Economics at Triodos Bank, about the role finance can play in transforming the economy rather than simply greening the status quo. Drawing on his journey from conventional economics and Rabobank to Triodos, Hans argues that money is never neutral: it is always a social relationship, shaping what gets built, scaled, protected, or phased out. The conversation explores Triodos’ dual mission to “finance change” and “change finance,” including its focus on the real economy, impact-first lending, exclusion of harmful sectors such as fossil fuels and fast fashion, and efforts to influence broader banking practice through coalitions, advocacy, and new financial system visions. Hans also challenges the limits of mainstream sustainable finance, arguing that ecological and social boundaries require an economy less dependent on growth and more oriented toward wellbeing, resilience, and sufficiency. At a time when many sustainability commitments are under pressure, this conversation reframes finance not as a technical service industry, but as one of the central arenas in which the future of business, society, and regeneration will be decided. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

  8. Jun 25

    Norrsken House Brussels and the Politics of Building a Regenerative Economy

    In this episode of Journey to Regeneration, Christopher Marquis speaks with Sophie Dembinski, Head of Norrsken House Brussels and former policy lead at Ecosia, about how climate action moves from individual companies into wider systems of capital, policy, technology, and market design. Drawing on her background in international relations, European policy, and climate entrepreneurship, Sophie reflects on the Paris Agreement as a turning point in her career, Ecosia as an example of mission-locked regenerative business, and Norrsken’s work connecting founders, investors, thinkers, and policymakers across Europe and beyond. The conversation explores why governance and ownership structures matter, how Brussels can help clean tech entrepreneurs gain access to European institutions, and why policy should be understood not only as a constraint on innovation but as a force that creates markets. Sophie also discusses the current shift from sustainability as hype to climate action as resilience, infrastructure, competitiveness, and energy security. At a time when climate ambition faces political and economic headwinds, this episode shows why regenerative business depends on ecosystems that can connect solutions to power, capital, and demand. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Journey to Regeneration explores how forward-looking companies create long-term advantage by repairing the ecological and social systems they rely on. Hosted by Cambridge professor Christopher Marquis, the show features CEOs, sustainability strategists, climate innovators, and scholars who turn big ideas into actionable moves—unpacking what “net positive” really looks like, the policies accelerating the shift, and the practical hurdles leaders face on the ground. It’s a show for decision-makers who want to create resilient growth without greenwashing.

Information

  • Creator
    Chris Marquis
  • Years Active
    2025 - 2026
  • Episodes
    50
  • Copyright
    © Chris Marquis