Welcome back
We hope the month of September was good to you. Can you believe it’s almost October‽
📨 In This Issue
🥃 Top Shelf News
The Rutgers Institute for the Study of Employee Ownership and Profit Sharing invites applications from Ph.D. students and junior/senior scholars for its 2026–2027 research fellowship
NCEO’s Matt Licina posted a recap of the workshop on employee ownership trusts at the 2025 NCEO Forum
🌇 Events + Opportunities
Events in next two weeks + events we just learned about. If you’re attending, please report back!
October 2: TXECO and The Texas/Oklahoma Chapter of the ESOP Association celebrate Employee Ownership Month at Chicken N Pickle
October 4: The 2025 NY Cooperative Summit in, Albany, NY
October 6-7: Lafayette Square Institute’s Working Class Insights Forum in Middleburg, VA
October 6-7: Employee-Owned S Corporations of America’s 2025 Pacific Regional Policy Seminar in Marina del Rey, CA
October 7: Ownership Economy’s Reinventing Corporate Governance for good
🆕 l October 9: The Ownership Initiative at Berkeley Haas School of Business’s panel on new approaches to growth, capital, and impact featuring Natural Investments and Apis & Heritage
October 9: Purpose Economy’s SO:25 conference on steward ownership in Berlin
October 9: Peter Koehler interviews author John Abrams in Portland, OR
🆕 | Nov 12-14 The International Comparative Labor Studies (ICLS) program at Morehouse College’s Vision and Victory conference in Atlanta
For more background on employee ownership in Georgia, see the report from our event in Georgia last summer and this recent event by our partner Kindred Futures
🚨Job Alerts!
The Washington Center for Employee Ownership is looking for a Strategy and Operations Lead
Ownership Capital Lab is hiring a consultant on comms, marketing, and grantwriting
For a full list of upcoming ownership economy events, see our Events page.
🔍 Analysis + Opinion
On employee stock ownership plans (ESOPs)
Tej Gonza encourages his audience to submit feedback to the EU to help researchers better understand the crucial differences between ESOPs and stock options
Expanding ESOPs tells the story of an employee-owner pushing for greater shared ownership across his home state of Iowa
The National Center for Employee Ownership has published research on the critical role ESOPs could play in our impending retirement savings crisis
Expanding ESOPs interviews Russ Cooper, retired employee owner of Menke & Associates
On worker cooperatives
The sale of a co-owned shopping center resulted in a significant return on investment for local investors
In Georgia, Kindred Futures hosted an event on cooperatives in the care economy
The ICA Group also hosted a panel highlighting the impact and importance of Black-owned home care cooperatives
Rocky Mountain Employee Ownership Center shares the story of a founder whose sale to his workers preserved the company’s legacy and local roots
On employee ownership, generally
Apis & Heritage’s Co-Managing Partner Philip Reeves spoke at the Clinton Global Initiative Annual Meeting on the panel entitled “An Economic Future That Works for All” and was highlighted on the Skoll Foundation blog
Health-care start up Meroka has raised $6 million to help struggling private practices transition to more resilient employee-owned models
Writing for The Boston Globe, Jessica David and Josh Daly argue the need for new economic development strategies (including employee ownership) in Rhode Island
Rocky Mountain Employee Ownership Center shares the story of a brewery whose move to employee ownership led to improvements in both their business and culture
The sale of insurance company ISC resulted in a significant payout for its employees
NCEO shares a Q&A with Drew Mousetis, the executive director of the Tandem Center for Shared Business Success, where he talks about the journey from employee-owner to advocate
On the ownership economy
Texas-based entrepreneur Alfredo Matthew launched a new Substack on shared prosperity
Ownership Capital Lab published their September newsletter
Impact investing leader Antony Burg-Levine highlights the importance of community banks
Writing for ImpactAlpha, Kevin Jones shares his journey within the neighborhood economics space, and the scaleable phase the movement has entered
📚 Academic Updates
Richard B. Freeman and Huanan Xu released a working paper on the impact of working at an employee owned firm on job satisfaction
Kalash Jain and Dian Jiao published a paper finding that long term company ownership leads to better performance (h/t Peter K)
The Rutgers Institute for the Study of Employee Ownership and profit sharing recently shared their August & September E-News! Here are some academic highlights.
The Centre on Mutual and Co-Owned Business at Kellogg College announced Andrew Pendleton and Andrew Robinson as the winners of the inaugural Nigel Mason Award for Employee Ownership Research. Both were honored for their paper, Employee ownership trusts: an employee ownership success story and for their sustained contribution to research on employee ownership
A new Applied Research Lab at the Rutgers Institute will be led by Adria Scharf. Its first major contribution will be the launch of a Research-to-Practice Hub website—a resource unlike anything Rutgers has previously offered, coming early next year!
Earlier this year, the Institute re-released its award-winning film We the Owners, which showcases the journeys of three companies committed to employee ownership
The Journal of Participation and Employee Ownership (JPEO) publishes original empirical and theoretical research in the broad areas of employee participation, shared capitalism, and more. Be sure to check it out!
⏰ In Case You Missed It
Manosphere podcaster Theo Von’s conversation with Dirty Jobs’ Mike Rowe turned to… employee ownership and the story of Groundworks, an Ownership Works company (h/t Drew B):