About The Stakehold
The Stakehold is a weekly newsletter on employee ownership, the ownership economy, and more—purpose trust ownership, steward ownership, and workplace democracy, to name a few. If you’re new, welcome! Here are some posts to get you up to speed:
The industry Events, Newsletters, and Podcasts you should know
Supporting the Stakehold
The Stakehold is brought to you by the generous support of the National Center for Employee Ownership and the Rutgers Institute for the Study of Employee Ownership and Profit Sharing, along with our paying subscribers. Your support keeps all our content free for others. For information about becoming a sponsor, reach out at sponsorships@thestakehold.com.
People
Mark C. Hand, Editor, is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Texas at Arlington. His research investigates how employee ownership trusts differ from other forms of employee ownership; what drives family business owners to consider expanding ownership to employees (or not); and how employee ownership makes firms’ decision-making more democratic (or doesn’t).
Jenny Everett, Senior Advisor, supports The Stakehold’s outreach and ecosystem-building. Jenny has over twenty-five years’ experience in the private and non-profit sectors and currently works as an advisor to nonprofits and social impact organizations, including the Purpose Trust Ownership Network. She is the former Managing Director of the Aspen Network of Development Entrepreneurs (ANDE), a program of the Aspen Institute. In this role, she helped to grow ANDE from a fledgling idea to a robust network of over 300 organizations operating in 150 emerging market countries. She led the launch of Regional Chapters in the Andean region, Brazil, Central America/Mexico, East Africa, East and Southeast Asia, India, South Africa and West Africa and managed ANDE’s international team.
The rest of our team is made up of whip-smart, thoughtful undergraduate students from SMU, UTA, and beyond. Check out their bios below!
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.
