I was raised vegetarian by a mother who marched with MLK. I know what it means to stand up for your values, even when it costs you.

In 2008, it cost me everything. I lost over $1 million through fraud and system failure. The shame nearly destroyed me. The anxiety. The grief. That vicious cycle of denial and despair where you can't move forward but you can't accept what happened either.

It forced me to question everything I'd been taught about investing. Those questions led me to a realization.

I was scrolling social media in 2016 and saw a Mr. Robot meme. The characters on the show call E Corp "Evil Corp" like it's some comic book villain. I laughed. Then something clicked. Corporations aren't evil. They're doing exactly what they were designed to do. Maximize profits for shareholders.

Every quarterly report, every cost-cutting measure, every heartless decision. Just programming. The problem wasn't morality. It was design. And my entire retirement account was running on that programming.

That same year the SEC quietly changed the rules. Regular people could now invest directly in community companies through Regulation Crowdfunding — the first public market for productive investing in 90 years.

Suddenly I could fund solar installations, worker cooperatives, regenerative farms, affordable housing. Not Evil Corp. Different design entirely.

So I ran a 366-day public experiment to show it works. It did. The industry even gave me an award.