Allison Pyburn founded the Institute for Currency Studies in order to provide context to the global narrative concerning the nature of debt-based, or fiat, currency, and how it is a projection of the human mind.

Her inspiration to study the nature of debt and debt currency was the 2008 financial crisis. Through her experiences as a journalist and editor closely following both the run-up to the crisis and its aftermath, she realized deep fragility within the global financial system. Debt — itself a derivative — was leveraged many, many times over, through the use of derivative vehicles. All of this leverage resulted in the dramatic, global, decline in debt valuation we witnessed in 2008.

When she realized the pattern would replay itself on an even larger scale — and the cost to humanity and earth — she focused on learning everything she could about the system in order to empower the world to create a new one. She believes that we cannot change that which we cannot see.

Prior to founding the Institute for Currency Studies, Pyburn was editor-in-chief of a proprietary global news service focused on asset-backed securities. Her work has appeared in Forbes and the Financial Times, the Financial Crisis Inquiry Report, Congressional testimony, and has served as the impetus for several private sector lawsuits concerning the use of private mortgage-backed securities to settle wrongful mortgage origination claims. Prior to the news service, Pyburn was the only journalist to excusively cover collateralized debt obligations backed by asset-backed securities. She ran a newsletter for subprime mortgage executives and studied the roll-out of global anti-money laundering and anti-terrorist financing rules, in addition to the collection of private transaction data, in the wake of the USA Patriot Act of 2001. Pyburn was the first investigative reporting intern at The Oregonian, where she produced a series of reports concerning the human health implications of EPA policy on the land application of human sewage sludge. She was editor-in-chief of Oregon State University’s daily student newspaper, The Daily Barometer, which was awarded the Society of Professional Journalist’s second-place all-around best student newspaper in the nation. She was one of a handful of student editors to study the Middle East conflict with the Anti-Defamation League and the first student recipient of the SPJ’s First Freedom Award.

While she finds the cognitive-relational structure of debt fascinating, her greatest inspiration is her love for her children and for humanity and earth.