From Models to Mindsets: Inside the 2025 Ownership Economy Summit
What the Summit revealed about the ownership economy’s next chapter
At the 2025 Ownership Economy Summit in New York, I spent two days with people redesigning capitalism from the inside out.
I attended this summit wearing two hats: one as the Interim Executive Director of the Tennessee Center for Employee Ownership, and the other as the founder of the consulting firm Good Future, which builds strategies and stories to make complex systems simple. Here is what I experienced in New York, translated into accessible insights for practitioners, funders, policymakers, and builders who could not attend in person.
A Laboratory for the New Economy
If employee ownership was once articulated as a succession planning tool and financial ownership structure, the Summit used the language of systems innovation, creativity, and inclusion. Unlike most convenings focused on the technical “how” of employee ownership, this event brought together builders, investors, and entrepreneurs who are reimagining why and how ownership can work in entirely new ways.
What made the summit so energizing was the mix of perspectives: worker co-op pioneers, ESOP practitioners, blockchain innovators, housing entrepreneurs, and creative-economy founders. It was a gathering of people not only maintaining the field but actively evolving it. As John Abrams, author of From Founder to Future, put it during one session, we are witnessing a “petri dish of ideas,” where dozens of experiments are happening at once, and the field is alive with curiosity, risk, and reinvention.
Not Fragmentation, but Fertile Ground
That experimentation matters. For years, some have worried about fragmentation within the employee ownership space (which I most occupy). There’s a fear that the field is scattering, that we are losing a unified voice or organized approach. But I would argue that we need some fragmentation. We need new entrants to spin off, test ideas, and see what happens.
Rather than fragments, let’s re-frame and consider fractals: iterative, innovative experiments that help refine our collective strategy to grow ownership in America and beyond. The goal is not to hold everyone together, and certainly not to stifle innovation through institutional power arcs that risk replicating the very systems we seek to evolve.
Now the task is to align around shared purpose without losing the creative, entrepreneurial energy that makes this work so dynamic. We need platforms where new ideas and independent builders can share their experiments, learn from one another, and be supported by the institutional players and funders who have been so foundational in shaping the field early on. The Ownership Economy Summit offered a glimpse of how that can begin to take shape.
A Call to Democratize Field Knowledge and Participation
Not everyone can afford to travel to high-cost conferences, even those working full time to advance this movement. That reality is part of why I wrote this brief: to democratize field knowledge. If the ownership economy is going to reach scale, it must not only unify the institutions, it must also broaden participation, making space for the scrappy founders, independent creators, and local champions whose ideas might just spark the next breakthrough.
The Brief in Brief
Across eight sessions, leaders explored how ownership is evolving beyond ESOPs and co-ops into housing, governance, crypto, and creative industries. Here I provide a high level summary and key insights for the 8 sessions I attended. Other sessions included deeper explorations of housing, data, and AI.
The full Ownership Economy Summit 2025 Field Brief includes a 1-2 page summary of each session in more detail, expanding on the insights below.
Session: Beyond ESOPs and Toward Shared Prosperity
Speakers: Daniel Pianko (Achieve Partners), Tim Garbinsky (NCEO), Alison Lingane (Ownership Capital Lab) Moderator: Bill Castellano (Rutgers Institute for the Study of Employee Ownership and Profit Sharing)
This session explored what comes next for the employee ownership movement: how to make it faster, more inclusive, and built for the realities of today’s workforce.
Key Insights:
Employee ownership is often treated as a legacy or retirement strategy. This session reframed it as a real-time economic model that can strengthen companies and working families long before succession is on the table.
Investors should develop capital instruments that make shared ownership deals as frictionless as private equity transactions.
Practitioners need to translate the language of equity into concepts that workers already understand: pay, participation, and pride.
Session: Tech & Innovation in Housing
Speakers: Domingo Valadez (Homebase), Rowland Hobbs (Stake Rent), Cliff Johnson (PadSplit) Moderator: Dr. JaNay Queen Nazaire (BLK GRVTY)
This session tackled a question at the heart of economic security: why are renters excluded from ownership, and how can technology change that?
Key Insights:
Housing costs have outpaced wage growth for decades. When 30% of Americans cannot qualify to rent a studio apartment in their own city, housing is not just a market failure, it is a structural block to mobility.
This session reframed renters not as passive participants but as potential wealth-builders. The emerging models such as cashback programs, fractional investing, and cooperative housing signal that renter inclusion could become the next wave of the ownership economy.
As long as housing is treated as an investment first and a public good second, innovation risks deepening inequality. The opportunity lies in reimagining ownership so that renters, communities, and small investors can all share in the upside.
Session: Scaling Employee Ownership by Every Means Possible
Speakers: Kevin Clegg (Clegg Auto), Jen Bao (BMO), Katie Lyon (Common Trust), John Abrams (Author, From Founder to Future)
Scaling employee ownership will not come from policy or funding alone. It will come as employee-owners prove that this works in practice and by any means possible.
Key Insights
Employee ownership is reaching a point of cultural maturity. What was once a fringe idea is now viewed as a practical path for small businesses seeking succession and long-term stability.
Kevin Clegg: “There is no easy button for employee ownership - because ownership isn’t easy.” That sentiment captures what is happening across the field: a shift from theoretical advocacy to applied entrepreneurship - including all of the ways we need to be rolling up our sleeves and doing the good, hard work.
Ownership builds better businesses and better citizens. When people spend their days in environments that value collaboration, they carry that mindset into their communities.
Session: Reinventing Corporate Governance for Good
Speakers: Matt Mroczek (Organically Grown Company), Greg Curtis (Holdfast Collective) Moderator: Robin Wood Sailer (Le Labs Group)
This session examined how new governance structures like Purpose Trusts and hybrid nonprofit models are changing the architecture of (and options for) corporate ownership.
Key Insights
This session captured a broader shift in capitalism. Companies are increasingly questioning who they serve and how to embed purpose into ownership and governance itself.
By separating control rights from profit rights, hybrid structures allow companies to prioritize long-term mission over short-term gain.
For the employee ownership field, this conversation provides a complementary lens: ownership is not only about who holds the equity but how decisions are made and whose interests are protected - including historically unlikely shareholders like our planet.
Session: Scaling the Ownership Economy Platform
Speakers: Martin Smith and Jahed Momand (Common Share)
This discussion focused on how to operationalize the ownership economy through technology, data, and certification systems that make shared ownership visible and verifiable.
Key Insights
Martin and Jahed introduced the work of Common Share, a platform building a comprehensive and credible directory of ownership-economy enterprises.
Global supply chains now face scrutiny over who owns and controls production, not just where goods are made. A transparent database of ownership, governance, and control could become as essential as financial audits in assessing ethical sourcing.
As public and private institutions face rising pressure to prove integrity, ownership transparency is emerging as the next frontier of accountability. The field needs common data standards that allow investors, governments, and consumers to see who benefits from economic activity.
Session: Making Crypto Boring
Speaker: David Pakman (CoinFund) Moderator: Jahed Momand (Cerulean Ventures)
David Pakman, a venture investor at CoinFund, described how crypto must evolve from hype to infrastructure. The most promising development, he argued, is the rise of stablecoins, which are now facilitating more transactions than Visa and Mastercard combined.
Key Insights
Crypto has been celebrated and vilified in equal measure, but its real promise lies in replacing outdated financial plumbing with systems that are transparent and accessible. Stablecoins and decentralized finance (DeFi) could democratize yield and efficiency in global transactions.
Blockchain networks allow people to own a small piece of the financial infrastructure itself. The more wealth that moves “on-chain,” the more users can benefit directly from the systems they sustain
The next phase of crypto is not about wealth creation through speculation. It is about ownership and participation in a new, open financial system - that you could own a piece of.
Session: Case Studies in Innovation Across the Economy
Speakers: Dr. Jen Horonjeff (Savvy Coop), Austin Robey (Subvert.fm), Jessica Van Meir (MintStars)
This session highlighted real-world examples of how ownership models are transforming creative and professional ecosystems.
Key Insights
From patients to musicians, creators and workers are seeking autonomy and dignity through ownership. These experiments expand the ownership economy beyond traditional labor and manufacturing sectors into cultural and intellectual domains.
The case studies presented reveal a new playbook for hybrid governance, combining cooperative values with investment flexibility. The result is a spectrum of ownership models that can fit many types of enterprises without compromising mission or sustainability.
The creative economy is often the testing ground for broader systems change. These experiments signal what a more participatory capitalism could look like when broadly adopted.
Session: Organizational Design, Case Studies, and Approaches to Shared Ownership
Speakers: Brendan Martin (The Working World, Seed Commons), Delilah Rothenberg (The Predistribution Initiative), Julian McKinley (Democracy at Work Institute), Kate Khatib (Seed Commons)
This discussion brought together some of the most experienced practitioners building cooperative communities and community-based financing models.
Key Insights:
This session reframed cooperatives not as moral alternatives, but as structurally sound models that can deliver both economic and social returns when properly capitalized.
Building shared ownership at scale requires legal, financial, and organizational scaffolding that centers community voice and control.
The shared ownership field is evolving from isolated experiments into a coordinated movement. The challenge now is building systems that match the scale of its vision.
Read the Full Brief
The full Ownership Economy Summit 2025 Brief expands on the insights above across a 16-page document for those who want all the details. Each session includes notes from inside the conversation, what it means for the field, and signals to watch if you want to dig deeper and engage. I also link out to each organization listed.
You can download the full brief here:
Keeping the Dialogue Going
Thanks for reading. If you want to stay connected around this work, here’s where to find me!
LinkedIn, where I write about employee ownership, workforce strategy, and good-jobs innovation.
YouTube, where Good Future unpacks the ownership and good jobs movement.
- Rachel Eva Merfalen, Good Future
A Note on How I Use AI in My Writing
When writing on LinkedIn, I never use AI for posts or comments. For this post I used AI as an editorial tool to craft section headings and fine-tune a few sentences.
In the full field brief, I used ChatGPT to organize and condense my original session notes (800-1900 words from each session!) into a clear, consistent format, including a 10-minute voice memo on key insights and memorable moments. This allowed me to share insights with you from an intensive one-day summit that might otherwise have stayed stuck in my notebook.
Great job on creating and sharing this resource for those of us who couldn't attend--gratitude!
Wow, the description of the summit as a 'petri dish of ideas' really stood out to me. I just love how you've captured this sense of a living laboratory for new economic models. It's truly inspiring to hear about people reimagining fundamental structures, moving past old paradigms. Your insights make me wish I could of been there!