Jon Alexander began his career in advertising, winning the prestigious Big Creative Idea of the Year, before making a dramatic change. Driven by a deep need to understand the impact on society of 3,000 commercial messages a day, he gathered three Masters degrees, exploring consumerism and its alternatives from every angle.

In 2014, he co-founded the New Citizenship Project with Irenie Ekkeshi to bring the resulting ideas into contact with reality. Since then, they have been on a mission to figure out how to use our skills — not just to sell stuff — to Consumers, and involve people in the decisions that affect their lives as Citizens.

In this engaging conversation, Jon shares some great insights from his latest book Citizens: Why the Key to Fixing Everything is All of Us. We also explore how we can move away from being a passive consumer to being an active agent, how collective power leads to exponential results, the responsibility we have to build our own systems, and what a Citizen democracy means for the government.

A full transcript of the episode can be found on our website: https://boundaryless.io/podcast/jon-alexander/

Find out more about the show and the research at Boundaryless at boundaryless.io/resources/podcast

Thanks for the ad-hoc music to Liosound / Walter Mobilio. Find his portfolio here: boundaryless.io/podcast-music

Recorded on 13 March 2022.