Back to D.C.
EO+WD Weekend Newsletter Vol. 92
(Oops! Dr. Hand forgot to update the title before emailing. We regret the error.)
🤗 Welcome Back! Good to see you again.
Dr. Hand just bought tickets to represent Purpose Trust Ownership Network at the Employee Ownership Ideas Forum in DC with Jenny E.
It was at the 2024 Forum that Rutgers Institute and Aspen EOP created space for us to host the first Purpose Trust Ownership Convening, which led to the creation of PTON (pronounced like the rock climbing tool, piton). What a year!
📢 Top Shelf News
The Skoll Foundation recognized the winners of the 2025 Skoll Award for Social Innovation—including Apis & Heritage, an employee ownership investment fund
David Kenney joined Project Equity as their new Employee Ownership Catalyst Fund Manager. Welcome, David!
⏰ Rutgers Institute Fellowship applications are due Tuesday
Kellogg College at Oxford seeks nominations for the inaugural Nigel Mason Award on employee ownership
Andrea Steffes-Tuttle’s Worker Equity Labs is recruiting workers from employee owned companies in Colorado to participate in a study
Two events this week
April 2: Unlock Ownership Fund’s webinar Catalytic Capital in Action: Unlocking Wealth Through Home & Employee Ownership
April 3: Latimpacto and Purpose LatAm’s webinar Propiedad Alternativa en Latinoamérica
💼 Job Opportunities
Project Equity is hiring a Director of Advancement and Partnerships
Certified Employee-Owned is hiring an Account Executive
🔍 White Papers, Op-Eds, and Other Analysis
👉 On Employee Stock Ownership Plans (ESOPs)
Expanding ESOPs interviews Leah Turnbull, Managing Director at BMO, on why banks like to lend to ESOPs. Also from Expanding ESOPs:
Philip Reeves, Managing Partner and Co-Founder of Apis & Heritage, discusses why employee ownership thrives in workplaces (h/t Steve S.)
The National Law Review highlights recent lawsuits against ESOP fiduciaries and what preventative actions individuals can take
👉 On Worker Cooperatives
Riva Han argues that worker cooperatives can address issues of economic inequality and enable economic justice (h/t ICA Group)
Minsun Ji highlights how Drivers Cooperative-Colorados’ social cooperative is unique from other worker cooperatives (h/t RMEOC)
The city of Saint Paul advocates for companies to transition to worker cooperatives through free business planning webinars
Extra Extra, a worker cooperative from Buffalo, shares how their worker ownership philosophy “Puts People First” (h/t The ICA Group)
👉 Workplace Democracy
Tom Malleson proposes legislation giving workers a legal right to workplace democracy
DemocracyNext explores whether workplaces are the next frontier for deliberative democracy
Joe Guinan opines on concentration of ownership and what economic democracy would look like
👉 On Everything Else
Grace Robbie explores employee ownership in law firms
Darren Walker and Pete Stavros argue for ownership as a path to the American Dream
Umesh Kumar covers employee-owned solar companies reshaping renewable energy
Private equity-owned Parts Town launched its Ownership Works-inspired employee ownership
Sharetribe reveals revenue increase after adopting the steward-ownership model
Project Equity explains why employee ownership works for Gen Z
🌇 Even More Events
🆕 | April 8: Democracy Collaborative’s webinar Introduction to Community Wealth Building
April 9-10: The Aspen+Rutgers Employee Ownership Ideas Forum in Washington, DC. Tickets will be released via the Aspen EOP mailing list
April 10: The 39th Annual Ohio Employee Ownership Conference in Akron
April 14-17: NCEO’s 2025 Annual Employee Ownership Conference in Salt Lake City
April 17: Common Trust’s webinar, Owners Session: The First Year of Employee Ownership with Brad Herrmann
April 22: Project Equity’s webinar Attract & Keep Top Talent-Why Employee Ownership is the Key
April 24: Ownership Capital Lab’s webinar NextGen investors for social impact: The power to scale EO
April 30: The Iowa Center for Employee Ownership’s webinar, Advisors’ Edge: Unlocking Employee Ownership for Your Clients
May 6-8: Community Spaces Network and Community Vision’s Social Purpose Real Estate Summit
May 8-June 19: Ownership Capital Lab’s four-part educational course for foundations and philanthropic institutions on addressing the racial and gender wealth gap through investments in the Ownership Economy
May 12-13: The Ownership Project at the Harvard Business School’s conference, Worker Ownership: Expanding Typology and Exploring Dimensions
May 13-16: The TEA National Conference on ESOP advocacy and education, in Washington, D.C.
May 14-15: ImpactPHL and SOCAP’s Total Impact Summit in Philadelphia
June 22-24: The Institute for the Study of Employee Ownership and Profit Sharing hosts its second 2025 Future of Equity Symposium in Palo Alto
July 8-11: The 5th Global Research Conference of the International Cooperative Alliance in Montreal
July 14: The National Center for Employee Ownership’s Ownership in Action Series in San Diego (Sign up before April 30th before price increases!)
July 14-15: The National Center for Employee Ownership’s Is an ESOP Right for You? event in San Diego (Sign up before April 30th before price increases!)
July 24-25: Employee-Owned S Corporations of America’s 2025 Midwestern Regional Policy Seminar in Chicago
August 5-8: The Oxford Symposium on Employee Ownership in the UK
August 30: The 3rd annual Rutgers-Oxford Employee Ownership Research Symposium, also in the UK
September 10-12: Employee-Owned S Corporations of America’s 2025 Federal Policy Conference & Lobby Day in Washington, D.C.
October 6-7: Employee-Owned S Corporations of America’s 2025 Pacific Regional Policy Seminar in Marina del Rey
October 23: The 3rd Annual Employee Ownership Conference in Ankeny
October 27-29: Social Capital Markets’s SOCAP25 in San Francisco
⏪ In Case You Missed It
Michael Santos, Shai Kalansky, and Daniel Irvin analyze what a steward-ownership structure for college athletics would look like
Marvin Reiff looks at mitigating wealth inequality through steward ownership
Purpose LatAm just completed their event, Futuros Posibles, that focused on company ownership to develop more participatory economic models. Watch recordings of day one and day two!
