About The Stakehold

The Stakehold is a weekly newsletter on employee ownership, the ownership economy, and more. If you’re new, welcome! Here are some posts to get you up to speed:

• What is the Ownership Economy?

• Getting at the ‘Why’ of Shared Ownership

• Shared Ownership 101

• Plus the industry Events, Newsletters, and Podcasts you should know

Supporting The Stakehold

The Stakehold is brought to you by the generous support of our readers and sponsors, including:

• Sponsors

  • The National Center for Employee Ownership

  • The Rutgers Institute for the Study of Employee Ownership and Profit Sharing

  • Dedman College Interdisciplinary Institute (2021-2022)

  • Schmidt Futures (2021-2023)

• Individual contributors (the Barnraisers)

  • John Abrams

  • J. Junk

• … and our dozens of paid monthly subscribers, whose support keeps all our content free for others.

For information about becoming a sponsor, reach out at sponsorships@thestakehold.com, or:

Upgrade today

People at The Stakehold

• Mark C. Hand, Editor & Publisher, is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Texas at Arlington.

• Colin Birkhead, Contributing Editor, is an Assistant Professor of Management at Willamette University.

• Michael Palmieri, Contributing Editor, is the Associate Director of the Ohio Employee Ownership Center and the host of the Owners at Work podcast.

• Kate Tully, Research Fellow, is an entrepreneur and community development finance expert.

The Stakehold Advisory Board

• Jenny Everett is a board member and advisor at the Purpose Trust Ownership Network and former Managing Director of the Aspen Network of Development Entrepreneurs (ANDE), a program of the Aspen Institute.

• Daniel Goldstein is President & CEO of Go ESOP, LLC, and former CEO of Folience, an ESOP holding coompany.

• Melissa Hoover is the Managing Director of Ownership Culture at Apis & Heritage Capital Partners, a Senior Fellow at the Rutgers Institute, and the Founding Executive Director of the Democracy at Work Institute.

• Tim Garbinsky is the Communications Director at The National Center for Employee Ownership (NCEO).

The rest of our team is made up of whip-smart, thoughtful students and alumni from SMU, UTA, and more. Check out their bios below!

Some History

In 2022, Mark Hand cofounded the Research Cluster on Employee Ownership and Workplace Democracy (EO+WD) with SMU’s Grant M. Hayden, who writes about workplace democracy as codetermination—the participation of employee representatives on corporate boards. SMU student Megan Garvey started a weekly EO+WD newsletter which we renamed The Stakehold in 2025.

We are grateful to our early donors and sponsors, including the Dedman College Interdisciplinary Institute, a fellowship from the Rutgers Institute for the Study of Employee Ownership and Profit Sharing, and Schmidt Futures.