The EPSI’s mission is to help a New Economy paradigm prevail in practice, in the shortest possible timeframe.
Founded in January 2026, its sole focus is on gaps in the New Economy field that are widely recognised as limiting the field’s collective impact. The EPSI will not launch standalone policy proposals, frameworks, or coalitions.
The EPSI’s Workplan currently has three projects, developed through an iterative process including regular feedback from New Economy organisations and researchers. Please see the Workplan page for an overview including background paper.
Team
Founder and Coordinator
The EPSI founder and coordinator is Max Heywood, previously Head of Policy & Advocacy at the Transparency International (TI) secretariat in Berlin. Over 11 years in non-profit advocacy, Max worked both with national and international initiatives like the Financial Transparency Coalition and the C20.
Max was a regular speaker at panels and roundtables, including at the IMF and OECD, as well as a media spokesperson for TI with appearances on Deutsche Welle and CNN.
He was also elected by his colleagues to chair the TI secretariat’s first works council (Betriebsrat), representing the interests of 190 staff.
A continuous search for root causes led to an independent New Economy incubation project and the EPSI’s founding in January 2026.
The EPSI process has benefited greatly from input and questions from Abi Nokes, Ann Pettifor, Felicia Wong, Gillian Tett, Henri Schneider, Henry Leveson-Gower, Iacopo Gronchi, Juha Lepannen, Katja Witte, Larry Kramer, Natasha Yorke-Edgell, Rohan Sandhu, Samuel Decker, Thomas Duermaier, Till Kellerhoff, Will Davies and Will Stronge. The standard disclaimers apply.
Strategic advisors
Adinda van Hemelrijck is the founder of Collaborative Impact. With over 28 years’ of research, strategy and evaluation experience in international development, her expertise is in forming and steering teams to help organisations and partnerships effectively navigate and measure their change pathways from start to finish.
Andre Ling has over two decades of international development experience, specialising in Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning (MEL), and knowledge management. He has collaborated with a diverse range of clients, including private foundations, bilateral agencies, UN agencies, research institutions, international and national NGOs. Andre’s particular focus is on developing and implementing mixed-methods MEL frameworks that harness data for learning and transformative change.
Aydin Shahidi has been working as an Strategy, Evaluation and Learning expert in international development since 2018, particularly within the peacebuilding sector. He specialises in designing and implementing adaptive, inclusive, and holistic learning and evaluation ecosystems that empower organisations to deepen their understanding of impact, engage in adaptive management, and foster portfolio-level learning.
Contact
Max Heywood
Mobile/WA/Signal: +49 (0) 176 8033 0926
E-Mail: mheywood@eps.institute
The Economic & Political Systems Institute is hosted in Germany by WE AID gGMBH as fiscal host, under initiative number 60060.