About

Denise Hearn is an author, 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 is the 2024 McGill University Max Bell School of Public Policy Lecturer, and co-author of The Big Fix: How Companies Capture Markets and Harm Canadians with Vass Bednar. Denise also 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.

Denise’s writing has been endorsed by Nobel prize-winning economists, former governors of central banks, and elected officials across political parties. Her writing has been translated into 10 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. She has an MBA from the Oxford Saïd Business School and a BA in International Studies from Baylor University. ​