Employee Ownership Ideas Forum: Closing Remarks — Gwyneth Galbraith, JPMorgan Chase

and now for our last speaker it's um really my great pleasure um uh to introduce uh Gwyneth galbreth um Gwyneth is a vice president of global philanthropy at JP Morgan Chase where she helps lead strategic initiatives to accelerate business growth for underserved entrepreneurs prior to joining JP Morgan Chase a year ago grth spent 25 years working in strategy development and Communications roles focused on community and economic development financial inclusion and education gwineth holds a ba from the University of Pennsylvania which I heard somebody rather uh admiring earlier today um and an MBA from UC Berkeley proud to live in Berkeley a hot bed of employee ownership soth uh welcome and uh Mike is all yours thank you um when Sarah did the closing remarks yesterday she noted that she was all that stood between the audience and the end of the day and I'm in the same position but I'm all that stands between you and drinks on the really beautiful Rooftop Bar so or rooftop Lounge so I'm going to try and keep this quick um uh this has been such an interesting um and engaging two days I want to start by just saying thank you to all the panelists um and the participants and especially the companies who came and shared their stories uh it's been such interesting thoughtful informative and really inspiring series of conversations um I also want to thank ruers and the Aspen Institute um JP Morgan Chase has a long-standing relationship and partnership um with with the Asen Institute um but but we're new to coming and being in the room um in the conversation around employee ownership so it's really um a privilege to to be here um with you um however uh we're not new to employee ownership um earlier today somebody asked so where are all the big Banks um and my colleague Regina Carl who leads our ESOP Advisory Group uh noted that uh JP Morgan Chase actually has the oldest and largest dedicated ESOP group um among Banks it's been around for 17 years and has done um more than a half more than 5 billion dollars in transactions um so this is something that um is is very important to um to our our work around business growth and Entrepreneurship um and and that that that volume has been growing every year which is really exciting but we see um employee ownership as part of a larger issue of succession planning we've talked a lot about um the silver tsunami the fact that the majority of small business owners don't have a succession plan um often because they don't have access to the advising the resources um the professional networks and frankly just the capacity to to put one in place um and we feel very strongly that succession planning is a key component of business growth and continuity and the earlier you start the better off you are and that employee ownership can and should be a critical component of succession planning um and that's why we're really proud to be supporting some of the leaders in the field um who are here today so project equity and ownership works and eox and the Lafayette Square Institute did I get that right yeah okay um and I'm really excited to be able to um to be part of this employee ownership conversation you know over the past two days there's been a number of themes that that have come up again and again um the importance of employee ownership in rural communities and preserving jobs and creating opport in those communities um Innovations around things like Equity compensation and holding companies and um caregiver co-ops um and the impact through building a culture of ownership a culture of agency in addition to the wealth building opportunities that um I think I Come Away with so much of a deeper understanding when um people are talking about creating millionaires um the thing that I really want to call out though is just the sense of momentum um there's on the policy side there's just there's so much activity on the Innovation side there's so much activity in financing and programming um and there's just seems to be an increase in Awareness so just EO is popping up in different places and um as a as a proud Alum of UC Berkeley um when UC Berkeley played Texas Tech at the football bowl last December um it was the uh Radiance Technologies Independence Bowl in treport Louisiana um Cal lost miserably but employee ownership got its moment in the spotlight um at at a sporting event um for me I first learned about employee ownership over 20 years ago uh I was working as a development director in what was then a very small cdfi based in the San Francisco Bay area and um I was writing a grant report and I got to include a story of a borrower um and it was a loan that had gone to Emma's Echo clean which was a co-op a worker Co-op of Latina housekeepers who would come together with support from wages now prospera really wonderful organization that supports worker co-ops and they come together to create better jobs for themselves so it's really exciting um and I feel very privileged to be here many many years later wearing a different hat to be able to share JP Morgan Chase's real commitment um to increasing access to and raising awareness of employee ownership in partnership with all of you so thank you so much for for being here thank you so much for having me here um class dismissed or maybe not quite thanks so much that was great so I just want to say a brief thank you to all of you for being here um uh and for all of your engagement I I do think that this is a really exciting moment so thank you for for closing with that gwth um I also have to reup the phone question uh there is still this missing Samsung phone so if you've picked up an extra Samsung phone you find out it's not yours please let us know um uh we are try still trying to recover the phone um I also uh just want to want to um um close the way I I opened yesterday with some very deep and heartfelt thanks uh both to our partners at Ruckers and I will again uh name the sort of Ruckers team uh Jack Mor arti Adria sharp Melissa Hoover Chris Michaels and Bethany Dennis who did so much work and my huge thanks to my my team here at Aspen um you've gotten to meet them all you've gotten to figure out how amazing they are Matt hel Meritt Sten Tony mria Norah Hein Maxwell Johnson Francis modar and joy Moore um you've probably gotten to meet also some of our Aspen AV folks around and some other colleagues and so I'm just so grateful it takes so much work from all of so many people to manage these events super um grateful to all of them so if we could give them all a round of applause okay and now I guess I get to invite all upstairs to join us for a reception thank you all so much