Employee Ownership Ideas Forum: Opening Remarks — Margot Brandenburg, Ford Foundation

all right good morning welcome everyone invite you to take your seats we're going to go ahead and get started um it's great to see everybody here today uh my name is Morin Conway for those of you who don't know me I'm a vice president here at the Aspen Institute an executive director of the Aspen institute's economic opportunities program and I am just delighted to welcome you all to day two of the employee ownership ideas Forum uh let's see uh this event is co-hosted by the Aspen institute's economic opportunities program and our partners at The ruers Institute for the study of employee ownership and profit sharing and we are incredibly grateful to the Ford Foundation Prudential Financial and JP Morgan Chase uh for their support of this event um it's great to see so many of you from yesterday it's great to welcome some of you uh new to being live with us today um it's great to welcome our live our uh virtual audience back and hopefully things work better for them today than they did yesterday um so uh so today um uh I I just uh I just wanted to pause a little to reflect on yesterday because I thought we just had a fabulous first day um the energy was really great I thought uh all the speakers really kind of Hit the notes we wanted them to hit we um had a a wonderful bipartisan group of um elected officials joining us um uh we had lots of um companies and and sort of practical advice about how this works um we had the government agencies talk about some of the specific things that they're doing to expand their support of employee ownership but I think the thing I reflected on you know the most that I thought animated all of the conversations was kind of the thing that that Dan Quarterfield started out with with the opening remarks and sort of and sort of really kind of thinking about the values that animate employee ownership and thinking about sort of how it's good for workers not just in terms of improving their paychecks or their retirement savings account but in terms of how they feel about their work it's good for communities and how communities work together it's good for people's participation at work but also in their in their public life and in their civic life so I thought there were so many things about the values that animate employee ownership and and sort of of the ways people shared that and and talked about that in sort of um in those terms but also in sort of the Practical realities of how it plays out in their lives so just really um that's kind of what I'm I'm I'm thinking about from yesterday and and we'll be interested in chatting with some of you uh later about what you are thinking about but on with the show uh so today we have three great panels covering Innovation and employee ownership uh New Frontiers and finance and the future of equity compensation we'll close out the day with sort of a five big ideas for employee ownership from a diverse set of perspectives on that question um and in between all that we have uh for our in-person attendees a number of opportunities for you to um talk with each other um I know this is a room full of folks who likes to talk with each other so um uh so I appreciate you sitting down for a moment um but uh but over lunch we'll invite you to join conversations we have 11 topics for you to choose from you're not required to to go to one of those but 's 11 really interesting topics that you can you can choose from to uh and explore um including how to expand the number of esops connections between ownership and Civic engagement uh the future of re of of research worker Cooperative Finance more things I shouldn't name them all uh more um we'll also have facilitated discussion groups this afternoon uh that we encourage you to join to join to get everybody's input on um and ideas for advancing the employee ownership agenda we will close our in-person experience with a reception at 5:30 on our rooftop um I'm thinking the weather will cooperate we will see about that uh but today we have an All-Star set of speakers uh with expertise and knowledge um so uh and the expertise and knowledge in this room is truly astounding so really excited to get going um uh I do want to say a few notes for our virtual audience uh we welcome you um all attendees uh virtually are muted we welcome your questions please do use the Q an a box on your screen we have a couple of folks in the room who will uh uh voice your questions on your behalf so please do do use that um we also know that our virtual audience also has a wealth of information so please share your views ideas examples resources and experiences um you can do that in the chat um we encourage you to post about this conversation goes for those of you in the room too uh on whatever your social preferred social media platform is our hashtag is talk ownership if you have any technical issues or need to contact us you can reach us at EOP program Aspen institute.org that is EOP program Aspen institute.org the form is being recorded um and will be shared via email and posted on our website um closed captions are also available for this discussion and now it is my great pleasure to get us started today to introduce Margot Brandenburg senior program officer at the Ford Foundation Margo is on the mission Investments team uh focused on building and strengthening the infrastructure of the impact investment Market with an eye to shaping broader Capital markets she's been a key leader in the field of impact investing co-authoring the book The Power of impact investing with former Rockefeller Foundation president Judith Rhoden Margot has an amazing bio so I can't read the whole thing um but there's more on our website about Margo she's uh really tremendous and we're so grateful that she's here to open up our day too so thank you Margo [Applause] you good morning everyone uh maren thank you for the generous introduction and for not reading my full bio that would have been really embarrassing um but more so Marine Matt the team at Aspen thank you for Gathering us today and yesterday thank you to the team at ruers for teaching so many of us so much about broad-based employee ownership both today but for the past decades I know I have learned an enormous amount and and so have so many others um the Ford Foundation is an 80 plus year old foundation with a mission to address inequality in all its forms we are honored to be one of the sponsors of today's event and especially grateful to be in a room with so many of you and the opportunity to learn so much um as Meen mentioned my team Mission Investments um invests part of the foundation Capital into companies and funds that Advance our social justice Mission including um those that focus on broad-based ownership and as a grant maker we try to find Opportunities to build the field of impact investing and of inclusive capitalism more broadly and I'm joined today I'm joined here today by my colleague Livia lamb who's from our future of workers program uh with whom we collaborate a lot and so we're both bringing our respective lenses to this work and I think broad-based ownership ship encapsulates a number of the foundation's um aspirations and values in a really sort of elegant way um I should say to be honest uh for those of us that are still learning about employee ownership I think it can be pretty intimidating esops in particular can be Rife with technical jargon um specters of litigation things that sort of make us I think worry that it's hard to get involved with with and I I see I saw the event last year the event yesterday a number of things that have happened in the intervening year really helping to demystify this concept make it more accessible um and both showcase you know leadership and models that have been around for decades while creating this big tent right that allows many more of us to see ourselves in it and you know as someone who's got sort of one foot in and one foot out it really feels like we're in a moment of growth and dynamism and energy Innovation for the space and I just think it's incredibly exciting um but in chatting with a few people this morning I know not everyone could be there yesterday um so I wanted to camp on to moren's Reflections and just share a couple of things that stuck with me for those of you who couldn't be in the capital um one again esops you know are their own thing there's some idiosyncrasies to to employee ownership um but they're not apart from all of the other issues of our time right we heard folks from the industrial Commons talking about having received money from the chips act to really um push the frontier of circular economy and textiles and we heard other esap companies talk about reskilling and retention and supply chain resilience right these are not issues that are in addition to all the other things that we worry about as an economy and a society they are an integral part of it and to me that was that was really exciting we heard about a proposal for a national employee ownership Bank um which I think a number of us were pleased and surprised to hear um as soon as we finished sorting out Green Banks I'm excited for folks to really dig into that we know that a large number of ESOP conversions are seller financed and that that can be an impediment and so really welcomed the opportunity to have a an ambitious conversation about wholesale financing I thought that was a really exciting and for me unexpected takeway um I at least was excited and surprised by the amount of innovation happening in policy and Regulatory mechanisms to hear more about what's working in Washington state and Colorado was really exciting to hear that the Department of Defense has a pilot procurement program for employee owned businesses like that's really exciting I think it gets us a little bit closer to that whole of government approach that a lot of us aspire to and finally this wasn't new but I was reminded that employee owned businesses and their workers are the best advocates for this work I mean it's I think all of us were incredibly inspired and so opportunities to Showcase those voices are just extremely valuable so day one was exciting um and I think day two is lining up to be even more so um I see lots of people who I admire and lots more that I can't wait to get to know um so without further Ado Matt I'll pass it over to you to [Applause]