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EO+WD Weekend Newsletter, Vol. 57
Happy Saturday!
🏡 In which Dr. Hand takes a break from packing to get out your weekend newsletter.
What We’ve Been Writing
Dr. Hand explores ownership culture, drawing from conversations with John Block, co-founder of Unity Partners, a Dallas-based private equity fund.
Tiffany writes about how Colorado’s new legislation will impact employee ownership.
What We’ve Been Reading
New Programs, New Faces, New Research. SmallCapital has new funding to help Colorado companies convert to employee ownership. The Employee Ownership Expansion Network has a new Director of Operations. Project Equity has a new report on the employee ownership pipeline and a new partnership on Black employee ownership.
Texas, Y’all. An op-ed from El Paso advocating employee ownership for an aging workforce. A post on the Texas/Oklahoma Let’s Talk ESOPs event. An upcoming Common Trust event includes a Texas employee ownership trust, ACP International.
Stories about companies. We learned this week that Just Futures used a purpose trust to establish its Movement Ownership model; and Meta (Facebook) uses one for its Oversight Board. Chef Irene Shiang Li revolutionized her restaurant, Mei Mei in Boston, by implementing open book management.
New Podcasts. The first episode of Peter Boumgarden’s new Owner’s Box podcast features Zingerman’s Deli, whose intellectual property is purpose trust-owned. Angela Glover Blackwell’s new podcast examines how we can reimagine democracy in a multiracial America. Common Trust’s new podcast, Assets in Common, builds on the launch of their new book on shared ownership models.
New Policy and Legislation. Colorado Governor Jared Polis signed HB24-1157, expanding tax credits for ESOPs and making the employee ownership office permanent in law. The Department of Defense launched a new program for employee owned vendors. The SBA is expanding its 7(a) program; how that will impact employee ownership we don’t know yet.
Reports from the Conference Circuit. Jon Shell presented on Canadian EOTs at the Canadian Employee Ownership Conference. New video is up from EOX’s Steve Storkan April interview with Assistant Secretary of Labor Lisa M. Gomez.
What’s Next
June 9-11: Dr. Hand will be in San Jose, CA this week attending the Rutgers Institute’s Future of Equity Symposium on employee ownership in Silicon Valley.
June 26: Common Trust’s forum on business succession, highlighting purpose trust-owned, Utah-based Clegg Auto.
June 24: The Catholic Impact Investing Collaborative hosts Transform Finance and the Employee Ownership Catalyst Fund for The Evolving Landscape of Employee Ownership Investing: A Conversation for Investors and Investment Advisors
June 25: Common Trust’s panel with the CEOs of three purpose trust-owned manufacturing companies: Optimax, ACP International, and ShopBot Tools.
June 25: The Global Alliance of Impact Lawyers’s webinar on Values-Driven Governance Models
July 24: The Aspen Institute’s Economic Opportunities Program hosts the Talent Pipeline Management Network for a conversation on worker voice.
Sep 4: Aspen EOP and Workshop’s webinar, Seizing the Moment on Worker Rights: A Toolkit for Organizers and Practitioners
ICYMI
Watch Armin Steuernagel’s 2018 TEDx Talk on steward ownership and this 2022 Sifted article on its use in European tech startups.
This ImpactAlpha article from February offers a helpful introduction to neighborhood trusts.
The Employee Ownership + Workplace Democracy Research Cluster (EO+WD) is a joint project of UT-Arlington professor Mark Hand and students at UTA and SMU.