Blake Jones of Namasté Solar receiving the EO Inspiration Award

[Applause] um so project Equity is proud to present our inaugural employee ownership inspiration award this year this award is designed to honor a business owner who has successfully transitioned their business to an employee-owned model um prior to 2020 and has been a champion in advancing the concept of employee ownership more broadly we had several amazing nominees this year including blae Keeler with electric violin shop Larry rhman with margaretville telephone company and Blake Jones with Namaste solar we appreciate the work of the nomination committee and selecting a recipient and I'm thrilled to invite our Committee Member uh Cameron madil to the stage to announce the winner of the inaugural employee ownership inspiration award [Applause] this is the award it's pretty heavy we don't know what it looks like um so yeah it's uh I've never done an award presentation so it's Blake Jones from Namaste solar I'm just going to like start with the punchline so I don't know if I should have kept you waiting Blake um but it's it's a real pleasure and honor Blake is someone who I've known for quite a while um he was quite literally my inspiration for converting our company to employee ownership and I think he's a person who uh his whole career has embodied the the double on Tandra behind project Equity right of equity in both senses of equity uh from from a racial standpoint from a social standpoint of all these systems uh and policies we have creating a world where inequality is you know keeps expanding but also Equity from the standpoint of ownership you know this belief that literally the more people who own things you know not in the like show it off on Instagram but in like a tangible ownership of an asset the better off we will be as a society um Blake's a pretty amazing person because I think of him as having the the energy and drive of some of the the sort of entrepreneurs that become like heroes in society Elon Musk maybe not so much anymore but we have these like you know Steve Jobs Elon Musk these figures who become so well known and to me Blake has all of that like that Brilliance and that drive and that passion um but he doesn't do it for himself um some of the things you could that you might not know about Blake he's basically like patient zero for the employee Cooperative um current effort in in I would say the US and I'm sure more broadly uh I remember when our now CEO this must have been a few years ago texted me she was reading Obama's book a Promised Land she'd like underlined some section and there was like this guy in Colorado who had a solar and I was like she was like is this Blake and I was like it's probably Blake if he's in Obama's book um and so Blake has he was the the founder of and he still actively Works in Namaste solar a 200 person plus employee Cooperative in Colorado um over a hundred of those employees are co-owners uh he also founded Amicus purchasing Cooperative which basically brought a bunch of solar companies together so they could increase their buying power which enabled them to deliver uh you know better lower cost uh results to their customers which allowed their customers to decrease their carbon footprint and improve their Roi on these solar panels they put on their houses Blake founded Clean Energy Credit Union which is I believe to my knowledge the only financial institution where you can put your money and know that all of those deposits will only be used towards loans uh to that support clean energy um and he's also the founder of katua investment uh Cooperative which is an amazing and Innovative model for impact investing but instead of sort of standard investing models it's built on a Cooperative structure um and Blake is not really driven by fame or money or if he is he's not very good at it it's probably the one thing I would say he's not not good at um and so I I think I wanted to to Center in that I know the best way to honor Blake is as I said a little bit this morning is in all this work that all of us are doing like that is Blake's cause and I think it's not just uh the award itself but you know centering ourselves and the importance of this work that we're all contributing to um and I think just lastly I'm sort of paraphrasing from things i' I've heard Blake say but Blake is just an avid believer in the idea that that ownership in all forms but especially employee ownership allows us to be our best selves it creates a more productive fulfilled engaged Workforce um it creates greater you know mental physical emotional well-being and I think ultimately it creates better citizens it allows all of us to to engage in the practice of democracy um so I guess with that I'd like to thank you all for the work that you're doing and let's give Blake a warm Round of [Applause] [Music] Applause congratulations you you want to say a few things I I think we're lucky to have project Equity aren't we um you know Nam solar like pixel spoke uh around I'm around 20 years old and um I remember when we started Nate solar we we didn't really know what we were doing we were naive about employee ownership naive about everything uh about starting a business and um we needed something like project Equity uh luckily we found the national Center for employee ownership but now fast forward uh you look at project way today you know 10 years later enormous team tons of impact and I'm just thinking about all the business owners who there's somebody to call there's somebody to uh reach out to to help them and give them all that technical advice they need for contemplating a transition so really really grateful for project Equity that they're here that there's a forum where a bunch of employee ownership enthusiasts can get together and talk shop and mired out on employee ownership U because it's one of my favorite subjects to talk about and yeah thanks to everybody here for the work that we're collectively doing to promote employee ownership um let's keep it up [Applause]