Welcome to The Stakehold!
The EO+WD Weekend Newsletter gets a glow-up. Vol. 101
💥 Welcome to The Stakehold!
Your trusted EO+WD newsletter has a new name, a new look and big plans for the second half of 2025. Thank you for your readership.
Send us links and ideas, keep an eye out for an announcement about our new sponsors, and—one small favor—can you spare a moment to follow our new LinkedIn Page?
In This Issue
🙋One Big Thing
Multiple readers of The Stakehold have new and soon-to-be-published books:
John Abrams’ From Founder to Future is a guide for business owners to future-proof their business via shared ownership. Get your copy today
Brenna Davis’s Leading Through Fire offers a blueprint for resilient leadership in These Times. Sign up for an early look
Many of you are authors of a chapter of Retaining and Transitioning Businesses in Communities—Dr. Hand and Tiffany included! It’s now available for pre-order
🥃 Top Shelf News
Daniel Aronowitz promises to end the Department of Labor’s “war on ESOPs” if confirmed to the Employee Benefit Security Administration (EBSA)
A new law in Colorado adds in new tax deductions and credits for employee-owned businesses
Slovenia’s new ESOP Act is now in public consultation
Dennis Price is now CEO of ImpactAlpha coverage. Kevin Burns is the new Executive Director of the Alabama Center for Employee Ownership (ALCEO). Congrats both!
There’s a new employee ownership newsletter in town, EOSector, reporting on employee ownership trusts in the UK
🌇 Events & Opportunities
Here’s what’s up this week. If you’re going, write it up on LinkedIn or as a guest post!
June 17: NCEO’s Successful Corporate Governance for ESOP Companies (virtual, members only)
June 18: Michigan Center for Employee Ownership’s Introduction to Employee Ownership (virtual)
June 19: Capital Institute hosts Natalie Reitman-White for Fitting Form to Function: Exploring ownership & governance for a regenerative economy (virtua
June 22-24: The Future of Equity: Silicon Valley Employee Ownership Symposium (Palo Alto, CA)
June 26: Transform Finance’s Exploring Alternative Ownership Enterprises Globally: Lessons and Models for a More Just Economy (virtual)
The Texas/Oklahoma Chapter of The ESOP Association is looking for presenters for their next conference
Project Equity is hiring a Business Development Lead; Ownership Works is hiring for a Grants and Impact Manager
For a full list of events, see this page.
🔍 Analysis and Opinion
👉 On employee stock ownership plans (ESOPs)
Lauren Lawley Head writes about the rise of ESOP-owned construction companies for Dallas Business Journal
Sorry we’re a little thin here this week, ESOPistas! All love.
👉 On worker cooperatives
Immigrant entrepreneurs in Canada are launching an increasing number of worker co-ops, according to Ken Farrell at rabble.ca
👉 On purpose trusts and employee ownership trusts (EOTs)
Graeme Nuttall OBE highlights new evaluation findings on EOT effectiveness and performance metrics (in the UK)
21 Hats hosted Ari Weinzweig to talk about Zingerman’s perpetual purpose trust (h/t David Billstrom)
Jesse Finfrock explores how AI companies are embedding purpose missions into governance structures
The Exit Whisperer podcast host Miren Oca, selling owner of Ocaqautics, a Florida-based, EOT-owned swim school:
👉 All other (alternative) business
Music news site Hearing Things is now 100% worker-owned, though we’re sure yet how (h/t Curt L.)
Elle Griffin has a plan for getting to 120 million employee owners
Check out EOX’s May dispatch and Ownership Capital Lab’s latest newsletter
In New York, (it looks like?) a community-led nonprofit will get a major ownership stake in a high-profile new development (h/t Evan Casper-Futterman)
Nathan Schneider recommends a book on the economic democracy of Pope Leo XIII, the new Pope’s namesake
Aspen Economic Opportunities program has a new podcast series, Elevating Job Quality
Brookings offers a set of policy prescriptions for place-based tax incentives (h/t Kevin Jones)
Marianne With reports out from the film premier of PURPOSE – A Wellbeing Economy
📚 Academic News and Opportunities
AMLE has issued a call for papers on Management Learning and Education as Drivers of Fundamental Alternative Forms of Organizing
June 30 is the submission deadline for Kellogg College at Oxford’s Nigel Mason Award for Employee Ownership Research
Are you a junior scholar or a doctoral student interested in organizational purpose? Apply to this Professional Development Workshop (PDW) at the Academy of Management Annual Meeting in Copenhagen later this year
Andy Farquharson interviews John Guzek about his new paper, Overcoming Barriers to Employee Ownership
The Rutgers Institute and ESCA (Employee-owned S Corporations of America) published Ownership Beyond Borders, showing how U.S.-based S ESOP companies extend their ownership culture internationally
⏪ ICYMI
IN 2014, Mike Miesen wrote for SSIR about foundation ownership of social enterprises, a type of what today is called steward ownership
The Owners at Work podcast hosted Expanding ESOPs in early May:
Natalie Reitman-White and Ellen Harrison’s presentation to the American Bar Association on purpose trust and steward ownership is available for purchase