Lindsay Owens, Ph.D.

Lindsay Owens, Ph.D., is President and CEO of Groundwork Collaborative and a nationally recognized expert on consumer protection, market structures, corporate power, and the driving forces behind the rising cost of living. Under Owens’ leadership, Groundwork has emerged as one of the country’s most influential economic policy organizations, combining rigorous research with sharp communications to shape the national debate over the economic challenges facing working families. She is also the bestselling author of Gouged: The End of a Fair Price—And What That Means for Your Wallet.

Her work has been hailed by Jon Stewart as “music to my ears,” digital-rights activist Cory Doctorow called her “your rabbi” on surveillance pricing, and consumer advocate Ralph Nader described her as “a burst of new energy in the civic community in Washington, D.C.” Washingtonian Magazine has repeatedly named her one of the “Most Influential People Shaping Policy.”

Owens has been a prominent critic of corporate America’s reinvention of the ripoff. Alongside her team at Groundwork, she has spearheaded a yearslong effort to investigate and expose the ways that corporations have weaponized the latest pricing technologies to empty consumers’ wallets. As a groundbreaking researcher, she is widely credited with sparking a national conversation about the role of “greedflation” and corporate profiteering in accelerating inflation. In late 2025, Groundwork, in collaboration with Consumer Reports and More Perfect Union, published a blockbuster report exposing Instacart’s secret pricing experiments, spurring intense public backlash, an FTC probe, and an eventual reversal by Instacart. State officials have cited the report as the catalyst for new consumer protections, and it has spawned dozens of legislative proposals across the country targeting personalized algorithmic pricing and new laws in Maryland, Connecticut, New Jersey, and Seattle. The Instacart report and the strategic media campaign behind it earned national recognition, winning a 2026 Telly Award for its social video series promoting civic and social impact.

And days before Gouged hit shelves Walmart’s CEO John Furner released an open letter to shoppers in response to Owens’ sharp criticisms of Walmart’s AI-enabled pricing tactics.

Lindsay regularly testifies before Congress and advises government officials, candidates for elected office, and federal policymakers on economic policy. Most recently, Owens testified in the first ever congressional hearing on surveillance pricing, a practice she helped bring to light and describes as the intersection of two things Americans hate – being spied on and being ripped off.

Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and Rolling Stone, and she is a frequent contributor to CNN, CNBC, CBS News, Bloomberg, The Wall Street Journal, Marketplace, Planet Money, PBS NewsHour, and other national media. Beyond traditional news outlets, Lindsay regularly appears on new media platforms, including Pod Save America, The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart, Smart Travel presented by NerdWallet, and  Fast Politics with Molly Jong-Fast.

Before joining Groundwork, she served as a senior economic policy adviser to Senator Elizabeth Warren and as deputy chief of staff and legislative director to Representatives Keith Ellison and Pramila Jayapal. Lindsay holds a Ph.D. in sociology from Stanford University and a bachelor’s degree from the University of Pennsylvania.