Events Everywhere All At Once
Weekend Newsletter • Vol. 110
📨 Welcome Back!
In this issue:
Top Shelf News
Events + Opportunities
Analysis + Opinion
On employee stock ownership plans
On worker cooperatives
On employee/purpose trusts + steward ownership
On the ownership economy
Academic News + Opportunities
In Case You Missed It
🥃 Top Shelf News
Registration is open for the Purpose Trust Ownership Network’s first conference. Sign up today to meet us in Austin!
Miles Mudzviti of EO Sector reports out from last week’s Oxford Symposium on Employee Ownership, where James Bonham announced plans to form an International Federation of Employee Ownership
Morehouse announced its upcoming Vision and Victory Conference: Expanding Black Employee Ownership, from Nov 12–14 in Atlanta, Georgia
For more on our related work in Georgia, Building an Ecosystem Around Shared Ownership
🌇 Events + Opportunities
September is just packed with employee ownership events. For a full list of those and other upcoming events, see this page. But first, the August itinerary:
August 19 & 26: The ESOP Association’s Employee Ownership Month virtual miniseries
August 20: The ICA Group’s MassHire Business Resource Seminar in Lawrence, MA
August 26: The Family Enterprise Center at Kennesaw State University’s A Tax Advantageous Ownership Transition Strategy for Family Business (virtual)
August 24-26: The ESOP Association’s Annual CEO Summit in Jackson Hole, WY
August 27: NCEO’s EOT One-Day Workshop on employee ownership trusts in Philadelphia, part of its annual Forum
🆕 | August 28: Common Trust hosts the founders of The Ready, a new employee ownership trust, in its next Owner’s Session (virtual)
August 30: The 3rd annual Rutgers-Oxford Employee Ownership Research Symposium in Oxford, UK
🚨Project Equity is hiring a Business Development Lead in their Employee Ownership Acquisitions Department
🔍 Analysis + Opinion
On employee stock ownership plans (ESOPs)
Metro Services Group, a Bay Area services firm, launched its ESOP
In Deseret News, Kevin Barrow shares how Utah-based Steel Encounters’ employee ownership program has changed his work and life
Kerry Siggins and Sheila Bangalore of StoneAge, and Daniel Massey from Expanding ESOPs), write about the power and profit of ESOPs in the Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance
Texas-based Hines Pool & Spa shared their employee ownership story on the podcast Journey to an ESOP & Beyond:
On worker cooperatives
Putney Mountain Winery in Vermont is now worker owned
San Francisco’s Rainbow Grocery Cooperative is celebrating 50 years of worker ownership and democratic governance (and for our SF readers — join their celebratory block party this weekend!)
The Baltimore Beat covered the first national convening of cooperative-owned restaurants in the United States; over three dozen restaurants took part
The Cooperative Development Foundation hosted a meeting to discuss the role shared equity can play in solving the housing crisis in Florida and the US
On employee/purpose trusts + steward ownership
Common Trust’s newest case study covers Text-Em-All, the first SaaS company to in the US to be employee-owned through an employee ownership trust
Garrett Andrews of Oregon Business interviews Jill Hedrick, CEO of Vernier Science Education, a perpetual purpose trust
The Washington Center for Employee Ownership published a new page on employee ownership trusts highlighting Seattle-based Metis Construction
In the UK, Go EO launched EOT Explorer, a tool for business owners to explore the possibilities of an employee ownership trust
Also in the UK, the town of East Devon announced a pilot program to fund employee ownership transitions locally
On the ownership economy
The Small Biz Flash podcast hosted GACEO’s Marie Davis to talk employee ownership
Certified Employee Owned asks: does granting employees an ownership stake result in lower turnover and greater loyalty?
Will Friedman makes the case in Washington Monthly that high civic engagement doesn’t have to pose a threat to strong state capacity
The key question of the ownership economy, writes Syed Hussain, is who owns AI?
For the Harvard Institute for Business in Global Society, Esther Schrader interviews the CEO of Endeavor Fire Protection about the Ownership Works-style employee ownership program during the company’s ownership by Building Industry Partners, a private equity firm
In The Nation, Osita Nwanevu argues that to make democracy work, we need to give more it to workers
In Canada, Cenovus Energy Inc. partnered with Indigenous groups in a C$2 billion bid for ownership of MEG Energy Corp
📚 Academic News + Opportunities
The Sep 1 deadline for the ILRR Special Issue on employee ownership is coming up quick (h/t Cynthia R.)
The Rutgers Institute is accepting nominations until Sep 15 for the 2026 Joyce Rothschild Book Award on economic democracy
The Cooperativismo & Desarrollo Magazine put out two calls for papers; one in English, one in Spanish, and both due Sep 23:
Jean-Paul Gagnon, Benjamin Abrams, and company published The Sciences of Democracies
They argue democracy can occur “a state institution, an electoral system, a workplace, a financial instrument, a school, a legal system, a club, a household – even a self."
⏰ In Case You Missed It
Cooperative owner and advocate John Abrams joined the Scaling Employee Ownership podcast to talk about his experiences and the foundational principles of employee ownership
Ari Weinzweig, co-founder of the Zingerman’s Community of Businesses, on the power of dignity at work
Evan Edwards, CEO of Project Equity, shares how employee ownership can help correct shareholder primacy and lead to more sustainable decision making