Margrit Kennedy , born in 1939, is an architect and an urban and regional planner with a doctorate in public and international affairs. As the head of the Research Department Ecology and Energy at the International Building Exhibition in Berlin from 1979–1984, and in her teaching and research as a professor for "Building Technology and Resource-Efficient Construction" at the University of Hanover from 1991–2002, she came to understand that the monetary system is a primary cause of our ecological and economic problems. In 1987, she wrote the bestseller "Interest and Inflation Free Money," which has been translated into 23 languages, revised and updated in 1991 and in the expanded German version in 2006. Her book Regional Currencies: A New Path to Sustainable Prosperity , 2004, written in cooperation with Bernard Lietaer, has become a standard of the regional money movement in Germany. It has also become a point of entry for such models in other parts of Europe, owing to its translation into Spanish and French. Triarchy Press in the UK (triarchypress.com) is publishing the first English-language edition, edited and abridged by John Rogers, in 2012.

For almost 30 years, Margrit Kennedy has been explaining in lectures and seminars how to overcome "economic illiteracy" so that money can finally serve people rather than vice versa, as is the case today. Currently her work focuses on introducing and testing complementary payment media.