Stacy Mitchell is a writer, strategist, and policy advocate. Her work focuses on dismantling concentrated corporate power and building thriving communities and a healthy democracy. She is co-executive director of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, an organization that for five decades has challenged the wisdom of neoliberalism and championed local, community-oriented models — from municipal broadband to distributed solar power, community banks, family farms, and local businesses. Stacy has played a leading role in today’s growing antimonopoly movement, helping to popularize its ideas and secure its embrace by the Biden Administration. Her insights about the importance of small, independent business have shaped the thinking of a wide range of policymakers, scholars, and advocates.
Stacy has written for The New York Times, The Atlantic, The Nation, The Washington Post, and many other outlets, both popular and academic. She is the author of Big-Box Swindle: The True Cost of Mega-Retailers and the Fight for America’s Independent Businesses, which was named a best business book of 2007 by the American Library Association’s Booklist. In 2016, she co-authored Amazon’s Stranglehold, an influential report that “provided a road map for a new, more critical approach to the e-commerce colossus,” the New York Times noted in a profile of her in 2020. Congress cited her research on Amazon’s monopolization strategy in its investigation of Big Tech’s dominance in 2021 and her work informed the Federal Trade Commission’s antitrust lawsuit against the company in 2023.
Through her advocacy, Stacy has championed policies that expand community self-determination and build happier, more prosperous, and more sustainable places. In 2022, the political strategy firm Baron named her to its list of the top ten “antitrust super influencers” for her role in shaping federal policymaking and discourse. She has also worked extensively at the local level, helping communities craft policies that support local entrepreneurship and vibrant commercial districts. A close collaborator of both small business leaders and progressive organizers, Stacy has co-founded many campaigns and coalitions, including Athena and Small Business Rising. She also serves on the board of the Maine Center for Economic Policy.
Stacy holds a B.A. in history from Macalester College. She lives in Portland, Maine.
Issue Brief: How Amazon Exploits and Undermines Small Businesses, and Why Breaking It Up Would Revive American Entrepreneurship
Amazon claims that it has “a mutually beneficial relationship” with the small businesses that depend on its platform. This fact sheet tells the real story.
ILSR investigates how dollar store chains are using predatory tactics to kill off grocery stores and other local businesses, harming rural and urban communities alike.
