Ownership for Equity: Building an Inclusive Economy through Employee Ownership

so we are gonna have our next panel ownership by Equity um this next conversation on race and gender equity and employee ownership highlights why so many of us care so deeply about employee ownership and want to see it succeed uh because there's enormous potential in employee ownership to help create an inclusive economy that works for all and I just want to give a shout out to a couple of things one we did a round table that resulted in a paper on this topic a few years ago that we did in collaboration with democracy at work Institute in the Rutgers Institute and I also really want to recognize the sort of foundational research that Gene Warford and the Kellogg Foundation supported to really highlight this issue and investigate how employee ownership can really Advance racial Equity so a couple plugs there uh and and our panelists and speakers of course we'll we'll highlight this um uh um and we have a remarkable set of speakers for this important topic now I have to skip over a couple of things um just uh to get to uh again what we're gonna do here is have two openings uh Institute fellows to give some some brief remarks about um their perspective on this topic and then I'll come back and invite the panelists to the stage um but our first speaker is Melissa Hoover Melissa is the founder and co-executive director of the Democracy at work Institute she's been an inspirational this is true an incredible leader in this work helping to expand worker ownership as a strategy for people locked out of good jobs she advises non-profits investors foundations and policy makers on infective interventions to support employee ownership as a tool for racial and social equity and helped start and grow the U.S Federation of worker cooperatives so Melissa to welcome you [Applause] hi good morning um so I'm going to start with maybe an obvious statement which is that the questions we ask shape how we do the work in the field and in fact how we can do the work in the field so we know employee ownership is good for companies we know it's good for workers there are clear impacts on job quality asset ownership we have data we have stories and as we heard yesterday from lawmakers on both sides of the aisle we know that story is compelling um I don't know how you argue against esops it just makes sense it can fulfill any talking points those are powerful statements from an elected official but something else is happening in recent years and I want to start by mentioning three critical and very recent interventions in the field that position and play ownership as a lever to increase race and gender equity so the first is a 2017 study by Dr Nancy wifek at the national Center for employee ownership she's here and I would encourage you to follow up with her about this research she's in the back hi Nancy um so this is um the first study of its kind it Compares thousands of young employee owners of color in esops to non-employee owners in 1997 and following them to 2013. and she found employee owners of color in this data have 30 percent higher income from wages 79 greater net household wealth 36 percent longer median tenure in their current job over non-employee owners of color it was a longitudinal study really groundbreaking followed two years later by the Rutgers study on how people of color especially women do in esops is a multi-year mixed method study with participation from Scholars across the country you know found that median there were a bunch of bunch of findings from this but one that stood out to me was the median ESOP account value was nearly 10 times the savings of the average American household and these are low and modest wage workers so both of those projects were funded by the Kellogg Foundation who we'll hear from later today on the panel and as far as I know that was the first funder intervention in the space to fund foundational research about racial equity and gender equity and then as Maury mentioned in 2021 the Aspen report on race and gender wealth equity and the role of employee share ownership came out and furthered the conversation the same year that essentially the pandemic continued making our case for us so these Studies have profound findings but from my view maybe the most profound thing here was even asking the question it opened up all sorts of new possibilities and the first step is knowing that there are Equity effects from employee ownership measuring impacts helps us make the case it helps inform policy and advocacy and funding but the next step is to design for Equity to intentionally amplify these known Equity effects so how does research help us do that from a practitioner perspective I'll briefly use the Legacy fund at apis and Heritage Capital as a case study to show three design elements it's just one of the many exciting experiments out there now so I'd encourage you to follow up with some of the others too but looking at the Legacy fund so first an equity lens helps us allocate resources intentionally a h raised 58 million dollars from investors all of whom explicitly wanted to invest in racial equity for low-wage workers uh it's also the screen for the companies the Legacy Fund invests in they transition companies in essential Industries with majority workforces of color and low-wage workers so there's an allocation component secondly a racial Equity lens helps us design supports at the company level that are culturally competent and meet workers needs so I want to mention here the employee ownership online education program also funded by the Kellogg Foundation a set of videos and this will you'll see why this is particularly relevant for our work in a minute we work with companies where workers are bilingual where many of them well a decent percentage may not read very well and so the traditional kind of written materials are not relevant for them and not accessible so we do popular education We Do videos in building employee ownership culture a couple other design supports at the company level we look at benefits for people whose lives are balancing multiple other priorities Child Care Elder Care Transit access there's an intentional lens that needs to take place to sort of design benefits for for people balancing those priorities in some of the companies and this isn't even the good companies that the Legacy Fund invests in trust is sometimes in short supply for workers who have run into glass ceilings who face discrimination on the job and throughout their lives who've had their career Pathways cut off so we can't automatically assume trust and buy-in to the ESOP and sort of relatedly agency right worker engagement education and voice is more than showing people the material reward of their work and then sort of expecting that to generate more work right there's a there's a component sort of rewiring the fundamentals of the traditional command and control workplace structure so there's deep work to be done in Shifting the culture in Legacy fund companies with a racial Equity lens the third element of a design for racial Equity is to build an ecosystem of support so we're identifying the supports that are needed and are even available to these companies we know several organizations in the field have identified mwbe programs that need to be reconsidered to account for employee ownership and other shared ownership forms in the Legacy funds case both of our companies bid public sector contracts and you know there's a procurement preference question there's a question about employee ownership and the ESG guidelines that might open up all kinds of opportunities for companies those are ecosystem questions that's just a brief kind of sketch of the way we think about race and gender Equity at the company level and the broader level I'll just uh wrap up so do esops work why aren't there more esops we had to ask these basic questions early in the building of the field and we still need to as we've talked about it several times and we need to refine them and keep asking them and now we can ask even deeper questions what are the impacts of esops for workers what are the impacts for workers of color for women and low-wage workers what supports are needed to realize these impacts and I suspect the seeds to the answer of that first set of questions the basic questions may actually be in the very asking of the second set of questions and those themselves raise more questions what is a racial equity-informed approach due to the bipartisan appeal of esops what is the role of philanthropy and finance and building an ecosystem of support what is the role of the public sector in supporting employee ownership broadly esops and worker cooperatives as a tool for increasing equity what I want to say to researchers here is that your research matters we use we in the field use your research to move resources to move policy to shape our work to Design Systems of support for Enterprises and to directly benefit workers your work is directly beneficial in expanding the form and I look forward to hearing more about it thank you [Applause] great thank you Melissa and now I'm going to briefly introduce our next uh research research next fellow remarks um I did want to mention briefly that there is a QR code on your agenda and we're doing brief introductions so um you can learn more about your the speakers if you look at that bio information that you'll find by using the QR code okay uh so I'm really thrilled to introduce Robin Cox Robin is an assistant professor in the school of public policy at the University of California Riverside and NBR ER research Economist senior scholar at the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis opportunity and inclusive growth Institute and faculty at the Presley Center for Crime and Justice she has significant work in the area of the Black American experience and their interaction with the criminal legal system and her research and Publications are are too long to list which is why I mentioned that QR code so you can learn more about her and her research so Robin really thank you very much for being here today [Applause] for having me can everyone hear me okay great um I did have PowerPoints that I think they'll be able to distribute to you at some point um but uh you know I wanted to come up and specifically talk about employee ownership and um the its potential impact on marginalized communities and economic equity so I think just in general you've probably heard a lot about uh where income and wealth inequality have come from and how it's increased for everyone actually since about the 1970s and so part of what has driven wealth inequality has been differences in the returns to Capital relative to labor and then an income inequality the difference between the top 10 percent relative to everyone else has really been the result of really large payments to managerial labor and then if we dwindle down further with the with the 99 there's been some inequality that's increased there in terms of income that has been the result of um skill bias technological change as well as polarization of the labor market where individuals who are who earn high wages are able to access high quality jobs and individuals with low wages are only able to access low quality jobs and I bring that up because employee ownership actually has a quality component to it when you think about not only its increase that it can potentially increase earnings it can increase capital accumulation but then also it increases access to some of these other non-wage benefits that Melissa brought up in terms of child care and educational benefits for employees so um so so that that's why I also bring that up however when we talk about racial Equity I'm going to focus a bit on racial Equity we have to consider that racial Equity is actually structural and so the the this is a gap that has been around since emancipate emancipation right so deronic during court at all has some work where they estimated after emancipation the racial wealth Gap was approximately 60 to 1 white to black and then over the years it's converged so that today it's about six to one but there's just been this persistence in the racial wealth Gap so blacks hold 1 6 of the wealth of white Americans today according to their estimates the drivers of the racial wealth Gap are largely structural again and so historical disparities in wealth as a result of historical institutional policies such as slavery right as well as policies and other structural barriers that have created unequal endowments which are starting points for wealth as well as conditions for wealth accumulation and so that those conditions for wealth accumulation bring me to the work that I do in terms of incarceration which I'll get to in a little bit but just wanted to just highlight again the importance that work also found that you know we we need a multi-faceted approach essentially to close the racial wealth Gap not only do we need something like reparations to do so but we also need policies that address differences and savings or how we invest in terms of capital versus having the majority of our assets in in our homes and then also racial income inequality as well the racial well uh earnings Gap is also important in closing that and so it's interesting because employee ownership and I and so I've done work with esops it kind of if you think about it kind of addresses uh two of those things at one time it it in terms of the research it's been found to increase earnings and Melissa has already talked extensively about that research by our colleagues bogus Von Bryce Conway at all here at the Aspen Institute as well as Nancy wife in the back I'm there she's done work on this as well where we've we've found that employee ownership can increase you know it can it can address the racial wealth Gap right and so part of the way that it does that is that it can shift the composition of wealth portfolios by increasing access to Capital ownership and marginalized communities and it's also increased earnings and marginalized communities as well and so so that's also really important now the institute for the study of employee ownership in their study funded by the Kellogg Foundation as well they found that it's significantly increases the the median uh wealth of uh African-Americans his and Latino women as well as white women and so it has this potential to increase wealth among these marginalized communities although they they do mention that it there's still more work that needs to be done in terms of understanding how to close that that wealth Gap so um so in terms of some of those institutional policies that kind of impact asset accumulation one of them is incarceration which is why I I wanted to look at the impact of employee ownership on on formally incarcerated individuals the other is that incarcerated individuals are disproportionately um from marginalized communities especially if we look at historically oppressed groups like Native American Indian and Alaska natives as well as African Americans if we look at their rates of imprisonment they're about five to one relative to whites for African Americans and four to one relative to whites for for Alaskan American Indian Alaska Natives and some work by sike sumrado have found that incarceration can impede wealth accumulation assets and so this is this is also very early research in this field in terms of understanding the effects or the associations between incarceration which historically you know has been which there's been historical disparities in terms of marginalized communities especially given it's linked to recouping labor From Slavery and Native Americans and so it's important to understand what what's the role of esops here in addressing these issues and so one of the my research has actually found that earnings individuals who are employed who are formally incarcerated who work in an ESOP when I compare them to individuals who don't their earnings increase by about 25 percent their hours worked per week increased by about nine percent and importantly they have decreased in recidivism so arrest rates decrease by nine and a half per nine and a half percentage points convictions by 11 percentage points felony convictions by three percentage points and incarcerations by 12 percentage points and then I did some disaggregation by race and a lot of that is driven by African Americans this its impact by improving the recidivism outcomes of African Americans and so I'm wrapping up here I'm out of time so what's next what's next is that we have a lot of work to do to understand you know how what role employee ownership plays in addressing some of these historical injustices and marginalized communities and so one of the things we want to understand we need to understand more is what impact what impacts the access to employee ownership for these communities as well as you know does employee ownership sort of replicate the inequalities inequalities we've seen greater Society or do they improve them so these are some questions that we need to think about a little bit more and so I want to thank you for your time if you have any questions I'm here to answer them thank you [Applause] thank you Robin and uh yeah it's it's a lot to cover and a little bit of time but um really appreciate you sharing your your work with us today I want to welcome our panel to the to the stage now again I'm just doing gonna do kind of a quick names to faces as they come up so on the panel we have Sean Timba Matthew um shareholder Stevens and Lee uh SCS ESOP strategies Project Director for the Rutgers Kellogg project at the Rutgers Institute for the study of employee ownership and profit sharing at a nice long title to give you time to walk up here um Evan Edwards uh CEO and executive director project Equity you have to be a little faster uh Gene wardford program officer for family Economic Security at the W.K Kellogg Foundation Sarah K vice president of inclusive Solutions Prudential Financial and we're delighted to have with us today JJ mccorvey to guide the conversation JJ is a business and Innovation reporter at NBC News where he focuses on socioeconomic disparities and the ways in which business and money affect the day-to-day lives of Americans again you can find out more about him on our on our website but thank you so much JJ and I'll turn it over to you awesome thank you for having me I'm very happy to be here the last time I was invited to moderate a panel for Aspen I got strep throat and I had to cancel so I'm very happy to demonstrate that I can speak now um so as we get started I just wanted to just say a few quick remarks um I'll start by saying that I've just been very motivated by the work that the economic opportunities program and Rutgers employee ownership researchers puts out regularly I'm a business supporter who sits at a lot of different intersections I'm black obviously also a member of the LGBT community also raised in the poorest state in the country and so I'm always kind of sniffing out these opportunities to write about how capitalism can kind of be used to create more equal footing for marginalized communities and Dr blasey and Maureen I just want to thank you for making this a little easier to do that right and making your research accessible for reporters like me um so I'd like to first talk about our panelists if I can just get you all to introduce yourselves I start with with you Sean if you want to um just talk about what you what you do and also the importance of employee ownership in your work great well thank you JJ uh and thanks to the Aspen Institute and to Rutgers for hosting hosting this great event um I am a part of a team at scsc sub strategies of attorneys and investment bankers that do ESOP work throughout the country and I'm incredibly fortunate to be on the team that's very Mission oriented we even have a uh as an attorney we've got lots of client matter numbers we've got one that's dedicated to uh you know building out the employee ownership space or a play ownership Mission uh uh uh sort of uh invoices that come in every once in a while so um we as part of that work um you know led by our founder Jim Steiger and the many things that he's done over the years including working with the employee ownership exchange part of that work and sort of what I do is working uh with the Kellogg foundation's project at Rutgers on employee ownership education and that prod project is directed towards trying to help business owners from underrepresented communities so we were talking about women business owners minority business owners and helping them learn about employee ownership transition options so that they are aware that there's another lover that they can pull um when it's time to think about exiting their business and so over the past few years what we've been able to do is to bring in uh you know people from you know the minority business advisor Community to come in and talk about what employee ownership is on these uh panel on these various videos that we've put online we're looking forward to expanding that over the next several weeks we actually uh recently got a commitment from we bank which is a a women business certification organization to do a panel to talk about their employee ownership uh certification process what that means the steps to doing that to help really promote and help build the understanding of of what a transition to an ESOP might look like for for a business that is a woman-owned business so um you know very grateful for this like you I grew up in a uh probably the poorest municipality in the state of Ohio employee ownership to me um means creating opportunities to for my friends and neighbors who didn't have a chance to to um necessarily invest in a business or start their business or whatnot that's what sort of drives this work and and to be able to work on the Kellogg project and be able to work on the projects like the apis and Heritage Capital Partnerships Legacy fund one um you know you know is sort of you know for me a blessing uh that I get to sort of pay it forward in a way that has real material impact and will hopefully grow and expand as other folks throughout their partnership space uh do more of this work I'm going to skip over to Evan um so Evan even though we're we're at record low unemployment right now um you know a lot of folks built up savings during the pandemic we learned black wealth is still just a fraction when compared to White Wolf as we just heard a few minutes ago according to the Federal Reserve in 2019 the median wealth of white households was about 190 000 while black families were at about twenty four thousand latinx families were at 36 000. um so given that context can you talk about project equity and its purpose and approach and just how you think it can play a role in increasing racial equity sure I'm happy to thank you very much um many of you familiar with project Equity uh we're a national non-profit organization and our mission is twofold we are intent on leveraging employee ownership as a wealth building strategy for communities of color and low and modest income workers writ large uh the other key aspect of our mission work is seeing to it that employee ownership is embedded in the National Business ecosystem such that employee ownership transactions happen as a means of the normal m a cycle in the country um to that first aspect of our work we saw what happened during the pandemic and we know all the data about the racial wealth Gap what we've done has been very intentional about addressing that wealth Gap by launching our black employee ownership initiative this work sees us partnering with Morehouse College Atlanta wealth building Institute the city of Birmingham Alabama Chicago Partnerships in South Florida and this work is intended to see us build pipeline such that we are identifying businesses that have a density of black workers oftentimes owned by black folks we know that there's a correlation between black business ownership and density of black Workforce and Caesars developing not not only the pipeline but also embedding employee ownership in black business ecosystems that's really important because at project Equity we've done the work of identifying opportunities to build out uh employee ownership knowledge in the broader business ecosystem but in doing that work came to understand that some of the strategies that we employed weren't necessarily being impact impactful of black workers and so we've centered the work primarily in the South Atlanta is a hub for black businesses in the country Birmingham has a 70 excuse me 75 percent black Workforce in that City it's one of the reasons we chose that City and I could go on but towards addressing uh this inequity we found that it is really important for us to sharpen our Focus so that we are being very intentional in terms of addressing black workers awesome thank you for um telling us about that project I definitely want to ask about that um I want to go over to Sarah hello tell us about yourself and why Prudential Financial has decided to support employee ownership and how does it fit into your overall mission and strategy yeah thank you so much JJ and thank you to Aspen Maureen Joanne Rutgers for hosting this event um you know some of you heard me speak yesterday but you know I always like to ground why Prudential does this work and it's founding story so we were started we were founded over 148 years ago in the city of Newark in New Jersey and we were founded because our founder John Dryden saw a societal need which was that working class families didn't have the financial means to bury their loved ones and so our first product was Barrel Insurance it costs as little as 10 to 15 cents a week and at the time he created an inclusive Market that unlocked both commercial and societal benefits and so that is exactly where Prudential looks at at the intersection of where society and business where we can create that value and so we're looking at how do we expand wealth building Pathways particularly for people of color who have been historically shut out of those kind of opportunities and so we look at it from a range from place-based strategies obviously we're founded and we're still headquartered in Newark New Jersey we look at at their income and quality jobs but also Financial tools and Pathways that create and sustain wealth for individuals and employee ownership is an important component of that because it's looking at how do you preserve and keep assets and Commerce in communities how do you build individual wealth Community wealth that ultimately has that impact on society and the economy at large and particularly for people of color we know that you know businesses whether they be small medium to large I think the last percentage I saw is only 2.3 percent were owned by black workers or black owners and so that in and of itself tells you there's a huge inequity in there and so looking at employee ownership as a way to help create ownership opportunities and Pathways to really help build that wealth but also to develop the Financial Health and well-being of these workers as well too because you know when you go through this process you really have to educate the workers on what is what do your company performance mean what do revenues and expenses look like how does that impact you as an individual so we look at it from a very holistic way that this is about that individual person's wealth but also the company's performance which we know increases we have higher productivity higher employee satisfaction and then ultimately how that looks at towards the community of the family and then intergenerationally how does that pass down from family to generation to the next awesome thank you um and lastly um Gene the Kellogg Foundation was an early investor and supporting employee ownership so what made you excited about the possibilities then and what has kept you interested since then you know a particularly given where we are now what kind of the lack of worker Economic Security thanks JJ I'm really excited to be here um I want first want to just give you a little context because many of you know the Kellogg foundation for our work with children and that's really what we're concerned about is is that how do we create environments for children to thrive and so when I came to the foundation about eight and a half years ago they were really then begin focusing on family and economic security because children don't take care of themselves and so my first day on the job I was given citizens share to read and it was so needless to lose to Joseph and I had some very interesting conversations about this whole thing about employee ownership and my question to him was is that I don't think that it will work and he said well yeah and I said okay well let's see so here we are today right and that really was the conversation that began us down the road to say we have to answer these questions and so the research that you have been doing really has helped to really begin to mobilize and gain momentum around employee ownership and so our investments really were around saying is is that this traditional wealth structure that exists does not benefit workers at all right and so therefore we knew that it wasn't benefiting children either and so it's like how do we begin to close that Gap and we still believe we firmly believe now we have the research to support it that employee ownership is a way for families to increase their own individual will you know I have a lot of differing thoughts that are mine and maybe not that of the foundation I want to be on record for that so I think we record um though is is that you know the wealth the racial World Cup is really huge it's really big you know but I do believe that there are opportunities for us to provide a way and a structure for families to begin building their own individual and intergenerational wealth so you can have your child have dance lessons or participate in sports or doing the quality of life so that you can afford a home that's not infested you can have you know not have to sit at the table and say um who gets paid today right do I have to make a decision whether I'm going to have lights or gas that you can begin to provide the kind of secure environment that children deserve to in order to thrive thank you for that thoughtful response I want to go to some of the challenges you know we obviously have seen evidence that employee ownership can yield some you know pretty impactful results but you know implementing it um you know just involves a lot of different barriers um and yeah I think it's a really interesting area to explore so Sean I want to come back to you um you know I looked at some research from the national Center of employee ownership um it talks about young young employees of color and how which I think Robin mentioned earlier how young employees of color who participate in esops um you know make considerably more an income than those who don't they also have 80 percent greater net household well they stay at their companies longer there are also retirement benefits that are that are more so what do you see as the big challenges in using esops or other forms of employee ownership to realize these kinds of gains for more employees and how can we kind of address those challenges yeah great so I think we touch on a number of these topics throughout you know the conversations earlier today and yesterday about awareness about employee ownership about access to Capital and what what's needed to bring what you need to bring to bear in these transactions but I want to sort of touch on one particular item that's very important as it relates to minority-owned businesses and as Evan mentioned earlier um there's been a disconnect between sort of the employee ownership space and sort of the you know minority business advisor business owner ecosystem right and the work that they're doing at project Equity is a great step and sort of to help you know build that out um another piece where um you know as you know Melissa mentioned earlier with apis and Heritage Capital Partners they just recently made a proposal to the national uh minority supplier Development Council um with respect to one of their portfolio companies which is 100 ESOP owned to get that company certified as a minority-owned business right and to date there is no sort of standard or process or procedures for doing that for Holy ESOP on companies and obviously you know when you're thinking about this and the potential abuses that are out there um you know you need to carefully go through that process and so with the nmsdc has been doing with apis and Heritage in our team is to help sort of you know think through that process what those steps look like they've been very well receptive because they see two benefits right one is the benefit to worker owners of of color right because these businesses tend to own over index for minority uh minority employees the other piece of it is sort of observing the wealth that's been built and these minority communities too right because when you're talking about a minority-owned business that's certified and that's driving a lot of their revenue through because of the fact that they're a certified owned business um in the nmsdc context we're talking about private certification so working with major corporations maybe like a Comcast or a Prudential or whatnot and their Supplier Diversity Program those businesses are often forced when they're looking to trade when they're looking to exit to take a bit of a haircut right because of the risk that buyers see out there with respect to uh well if we lose a certification status because you know the new owners are not you know members of a minority group you know so what do we do so um one of the another benefit of that is sort of getting a certification process in for employee-owned companies so that you get to maintain that certification means that you get to preserve you know those inflows of Revenue from that comes from those sources and so you know one of the benefits of sort of the work that's being done at project Equity that Rucker that Rutgers and Cala foundations are promoting is that instead of sort of that being buried and we Bank like I mentioned earlier has had this certification process already built in place but it's not necessarily very well popularized now we have the tools to sort of get that out there and promote it more by doing it with with the Kellogg Foundation process online and whatnot so um I think that to me is one of the big hurdles that over the next hopefully several months we can get resolved and sort of get out there to help build on some of the momentum that we're seeing with project equity and others and trying to build in get into that that black and minority business on our ecosystem um yeah I'm glad you mentioned project Equity because I suggest that way um so you know um Evan what are some of the the challenges um that you're finding with the black employee ownership initiative like are you um sensing some of the same issues that Sean just mentioned yeah the um the challenges are many fold I think uh Chief among them it has been or was I think at least until we started approaching this work is that in general I think that there was a uh lack of awareness of historical black Cooperative economics and how they have been impactful to the good for black communities for generations to that end we partnered with I mentioned this before with Morehouse College and specifically Dr Cynthia Hewitt who leads their International Center for labor studies to develop a research paper that would Elevate the historical nature of black Cooperative economics but then also in working with us indicate a Way Forward right and this work is intended to help to get through some of the barriers in terms of understanding how it is that these models have some historical precedent and have some currency going forward um quite frankly we have in this country and our sort of business ethos the hero founder and that happens to be the case amongst black owned businesses as well right and because we have a level of focus on black owned businesses again with their preponderance of black workforces we've had to break through with black business owners on how it is that employee ownership represents value to them in the near term we know that workforces that have an ownership stake are more productive right and provide a long-term benefit because many black business owners have thought of their businesses as a paycheck but not as an investment and so haven't necessarily viewed their succession or exit strategy down the road and so those are just a couple of barriers that we've had to break through and again our partnership uh with Morehouse not just with this International Center for labor studies we also are working with the Morehouse entrepreneurs ship and Innovation Center to activate students at the University who are already engaged with working with black businesses in Atlanta to go out and start to talk about employee ownership and employee ownership as a succession or productivity strategy for those business owners so we're doing a bunch of stuff to try to break through I could go on and on about the challenges we've identified them and now you know the work the blocking and tackling for us is to break through thank you um Sarah uh you flicked out something earlier that um I think Evan did uh too um about this employee awareness about um employee ownership um and what are the the options available to you um I have worked at pretty big companies you know and I have friends who work they're pretty big companies and and they're um are a pretty substantial programs you know that support employee ownership but they're for a lot of reasons um uh don't feel readily accessible you know and that's even for you know I've been at this for a minute now right um so to still kind of need a financial advisor or to ask one of my friends hey did you participate in your company um so that's clearly still like a um a gap there when it comes to okay I'm at this company and there's a program what what do I do um what do you think about ways to kind of circumvent that and make uh just make that the opportunity more um visible for uh minority employees yeah it's a great question and a definitely a persistent challenge whether we're talking about you know smaller businesses and that's why we support organizations like project Equity that is doing marketing and Communications campaigns which you know sometimes may not see that short-term value especially as a funder but we know the long-term value that's going to have and seeding these ideas and making sure that people are aware but even at companies as large as Prudential we have 40 000 employees and I'll say a few of my team members just recently learned that they have the ability to purchase stocks at a discounted price for uh Prudential and become you know own uh part of the the company and so that's just a challenge all around right because there's so much information out there whether you're working for a small business or to a large company but then also when you're just thinking about your individual Financial Health right the the concept of owning a stock or an equity option or anything in the company can be kind of scary because you don't know you hear about stock market downturns you hear about people losing a lot of money and so educating individuals on what the importance of understanding your company financials why you should have agency in it why you should have a voice in how the company is shaped the culture and the environment it's a challenge all across the board and I think it just takes persistence Communications it takes working and partnering with organizations that are trusted by the community looking at organizations that may not be in your sphere because I remember when project Equity came first to us with Morehouse we were like Morehouse College are they interested in point ownership and but they are a very well trusted credible institution in the city of Atlanta and so really looking for kind of those unique Partnerships that may not be in that space and then I'll say even though I'm not good at it at all but social media is really really important we know the younger Generations YouTube Tick Tock Instagram those are the ways that are getting people information out there and so even as a company when we're talking about Financial Health we have partnered with Tick Tock influencers who are getting the message out there about why it's important to think about building and saving and why you should be thinking about your retirement and that should be similar for employee ownership as well too because we know this work has been being done for decades but we still need to raise awareness and help educate individuals on why this is important and how it can benefit themselves thank you great answer um I think just you know uh again as a black person who grew up in the South I think there's also like a just a stubborn kind of risk-averseness that that comes with with um uh growing up in a minority uh household um where um you know there's something kind of uh wary sometimes about stocks and you know you want me to work with my money you know um and so I think there that's kind of an education component but also kind of a um just a normalization uh component um at least you know speaking from my background obviously not not all black folks um Gene as someone who supported employee ownership um through different strategies um I'm curious how you've seen the field evolve over time like you know kind of looking forward we've talked a lot about the challenges but what are some of the challenges that you think that um leaders and employee ownership have surmounted um and what kind of has given you you know the encouragement to keep going in this field I think that um this is really a very exciting time I think you're right we have some big challenges we have big challenges like private Equity right so that's one that where we're looking at um the important role they really play in society today and that they are really their focus is to maximize short-term profits right but employee ownership is about sustainability and so that's where we're trying to keep our eye on the Target right to say that this is what's important is is that we want to keep our jobs and communities we want to keep the services that are provided we want to keep them in communities because that really is actually what makes up the fabric of America our our communities and so I think employee ownership keeps his eye on that right our go-to right now is Evergreen and there are others also that like we heard from earlier today about how they it gives employees some agency some feeling you know really great feelings about owning a part of this seeing the kind of progress and profits that they can make and then actually knowing that they'll be able to have a living wage or a better wage to take care of their families and those are the things to give hope when we went to Evergreen and we talked with the workers you know the woman actually cried and she said I've been working for five years and I got six months left to pay in my house to be paid off okay um also the um driver who said when I came my driver's license was suspended but they helped me you know get my driver's license back they helped me you know unpack some of the baggage that I brought to this job because we all have some suitcases that we carrying around whether it's for us or our family right we all do and we know particularly that in the African-American Community we carry a little bit more luggage if we're a little bit ahead you know in our family so that we make things try and make things work and employee ownership helps to do that you know and so I think that we just keep our eye on the prize that we continue to focus on this that we continue to say that this is what America is really all about because this is given each citizen is shared did you get that Joseph [Laughter] I love that thank you definitely Applause worthy um I want to have a quick follow-up on uh you mentioned private Equity I'm curious um you know we've seen a lot of headlines about the impact of private equity on uh again communities of color um on uh in the business World on startups uh I'm curious as as private Equity becomes more powerful um when you think about the employee ownership field do you have thoughts on how to kind of insulate it or or bolster it you know as you know it as private Equity you know kind of grows and and has more influence and and so many aspects of our um our American society yes first I want to start off in saying that one of my colleagues is a math person and so she said to me do you know how long it takes to spend a trillion dollars does anybody know he spent a million dollars a day it'll take you 2 700 years so when we look at about five to six trillion dollars right now floating around in private Equity that's a big challenge right there right but we can chip away at that if we educate people and get people to understand how it's going to be a longer term benefit for them right you know and that you know business owners who don't understand it lawyers who don't understand it accountants who don't understand it they say just take private equity and get you know take the haircut like Sean said you know get Pennies on the dollar right and then we'll just open up a Halloween store and then the real estate and be vacant after then right that's that's what we have that's what happened now I'm I'm telling the truth I want to see how many people have Halloween stores in their Community right look okay look almost everybody here and we know that there was a really big chat there was a Toys R Us there was a Sears there was a Payless Shoe there was a chain there right that was really providing needed services in communities and so we now know what happens is is that you know the short-term prop the short-term profits you know um are have been winning out over longer term benefits but I think when people understand with the long longer term benefits are and that we have to continue educating continue talking continue sharing the strategy demystifying the process because everybody when you they hear about employee ownership they're like well what is that and what does that really mean but as business owners begin to understand that they can leave a legacy in communities that their jobs will be there they'll be sustained because once they make that commitment in that community and get the benefits of employee ownership the jobs have to stay there if they want to continue to get it so we have to really and also work on women municipalities like the work that dowie has worked democracy at work has done with educating the municipalities and saying this contributes to your Economic Development bottom line you know this is these are businesses that you have here they're not going to pick up and leave and go to a Southern state that says oh we're not going to tax you on this and we're going to give you these kind of benefits and so it's it's to your advantage to continue to support and promote this with businesses and so we think this is a big opportunity but I'm telling you what what creates change in communities are small groups of people working together and I think that's what we have to do continue to do with employee I'll just say quickly because you'll hear from anna-lysa in the afternoon who's from ownership works but we all know the issues with private Equity but they're not going away and we have to figure out a way to work with them and that's exactly what ownership works is doing they're working with private Equity firms to deploy employee ownership programs to implement them execute them make them make sure that they're with Fidelity and that the workers are receiving all the benefits necessary and the supports and so I just want to plug that and you'll hear from anna-lysa in the afternoon but um just finding ways to make sure that other Industries and sectors are aware of this right that that that is an important point that she brought up that they are coming to talk about that this afternoon and so one of the things that we really are trying to get them to think about is is that when they sell that that doesn't eliminate the employee ownership structure and that's the key piece about how we continue to like support you know this type of model and not go back to disenfranchising employees [Applause] yeah that that that's a fantastic point I think another point to sort of think about is sort of you know these private Equity Funds aren't coming up with this capital on their own um they're getting it from LPS from investors who are looking for a return um and I think the thing that I'm excited about in The Space Between the employee uh Equity investment act which just got introduced a few weeks ago creating a new pool of capital that would be used to invest in an employee-owned companies esap owned companies to help build and promote employee ownership that way but also looking at firms like apis and Heritage Capital Partners the Toronto group folks like Social Capital Partners up in Canada those who are looking to pull Capital to invest in employee-owned businesses and to make sure that they sustain employee ownership for for those long-term returns and I think that's a a really important part and when you hear about the trillions of dollars of dry power that's out there and I think part of the conversation has to be well how do we take those pools of capital and show the the incredible work that employee ownership own companies have done adjourning returns for the employee owners getting investors to buy into that to help to create more employee owners that way as well and one more question on this topic of kind of um you know sermon on these barriers and and getting the message of esops out there um Evan I think you've you've thought a lot about the marketing and messaging strategies right to kind of popularize and mainstream uh the idea of employee ownership um what needs to happen or what more needs to happen to kind of socialize it and make it more of the vernacular when it comes to esops yeah that's where the rubber meets the road right when uh employee ownership has been normalized such that the national business ecosystem is executing transactions uh EO transactions on the regular um to that end we see raise awareness educate and activate right so the raise awareness piece is a lot of us in this room are doing we're trying to do it both broadly and narrow casting to certain groups like through black employee ownership to really Elevate the benefits of employee ownership to workers to business owners to communities to business advisors right the business connectors are a really key group those are the trusted voices the influencers of business owners and we talked to a couple hundred business owners a year many more business advisors and by and large they're unaware of employee ownership they may have heard of esop's co-ops eots generally not particularly familiar with right so for us it's making sure that those folks are aware and so we're leading on an EO equals campaign shout out candida thank you very much Diane we're doing a lot of work with the localities that we're partnered with to elevate employee ownership through their communication streams to Sarah's point we are embracing social media we've always embraced social media but we are are developing more content that speaks directly to the advisor class so that we start to embed in their Consciousness we understand they need to see messages three four five six seven times before it really starts to resonate and stick so all of that is part of the normalization such that you know five to ten years down the line we'd like to see three and ten business transactions be to employee-owned companies I will um okay so now we're gonna have a little fun um not that this hasn't been fun it's been great um so we're gonna have a lightning round of Big Ideas um and I'm gonna give each of you 60 seconds to just give us one final takeaway for the audience something that you have not been able to touch on in this conversation it can be you know your big idea for making employee ownership more accessible for minorities or let's just go there making every corporation employee on uh so let's start with Sarah 60 seconds 60 Seconds um we have an investment program that we just launched with HBCU students of getting them invested into the stock market but having them educated whether it's at college or high school about employee ownership opportunities and how they could be the best ambassadors we know young people get the message out really well and so how do we leverage them to help educate their parents and their community members wow that was really quick and good thank you so you need more time okay okay let's go to Evan I got a million Big Ideas um I think that it's really important for us I'll go back to what I was uh just talking about two um to uh again raise awareness educate and activate and uh the ideas that I have around uh those three pillars are seeing us really invest in uh employee ownership and messaging employee ownership in the way that so many other um so many other models gain currency in our culture right 20 years ago very few people understood about Venture Capital right and venture-backed companies and now it's part of our vernacular and so my big idea is let's figure out how to message employee ownership so that it embeds in our national vernacular the way that you can jump on the elevator with somebody and talk about and mention venture capital and they'll have some inkling of what that's about I love that um Jean ready okay here goes my big idea is I think we should eliminate all the barriers right I think we should just throw them out right we should just say once the minority if you get your designation you are if the same group of people right not like this 51 rule I think we should throw all those things out I think we should give them the same advantages that we give really big corporations in this country right that they should be able to jump through the loopholes as well hey man I'm sure a lot of people would uh be happy with their with their big idea um and lastly Sean yeah so I I think my big idea is to build off of the big ideas that have been put out there over the last several years right um you know building off of the work that we've done with with the Kellogg foundation and and and Rutgers to sort of build out and get into the minority business advisor Community um you know there's you know when we think about the diversity of the employee ownership space um it's you know it's a great and very welcoming group but it's not a very diverse group right and so thinking about how we bring in lenders of color uh have you know try to work to hire more attorneys and investment bankers of color so that we can tap into those networks that those people might be uh entrenched in to help build that out um and then also looking at the models like you know you know seeing you know the incredible work that the a h is in the torontas and the and the others of the world and the sort of like New Impact investing group and helping to sort of like you know go to to fund two and fund three for those funds um and then sort of merging models I mean you mentioned Evergreen cooperatives and my hometown of Cleveland Cleveland Ohio and you know which is a worker Cooperative focused uh sort of a bottle where they're transitioning businesses to employ ownership but looking to merge it with some of the you know other models that we see out there out there like ESOP holding companies like empowered Ventures and whatnot um and making something maybe a little bit more locally based that leverages the power of an ESOP in that context and does a lot of the work that Evergreen does in terms of empowering workers and things of that nature so I think that it's the big ideas are actually here already and it's just sort of building out building them out and seeing them through over the next many years so awesome um I think we are ready for some class questions one more thing is is that I just want all of you who are doing this research and putting pen to paper don't stop this is the momentum that has propelled us to where we are today I mean you are so vital to this movement because every time we bring this up they say well how do you know that and I could pull out a paper whether it's Nancy's paper Joseph's paper Robin's paper you know or Melissa Tanya I can pull it out and it helps get my point across and so keep please keep up the good work and thank you so much you have one question back here [Music] um I wasn't able to mention this yesterday but I think it relates to this idea of awareness and some of the problems that we're having to getting this message out the PA CEO Kevin McPhillips and I we we've been toying with this idea of advertising and we actually started doing advertising on NPR local station WHYY in Philadelphia and so we we have um a couple um uh sessions that we had and it was proven with data uh that uh the the website blew up when when when we advertised and we um uh Kevin's done a great job with different messages you know would would different message really resonates and would actually Drew more people to the website to get more information so I submit to you that you know at least with what we're doing with the uh State Centers we're we're trying to message this thing and get the right message out and get the awareness going I don't have a question I'm sorry well thank you I think that's a great Point once again any of you have thoughts on Advertising as a solution I think it's a great idea about six years ago uh Marketplace NPR's Marketplace did a piece on uh an early project Equity feasibility client a company called Urban Ore in Oakland that piece is still up at our website um to your point uh that one piece almost blew up our website and organization the amount of of attention and uh the way that it elevated the profile of our work it was one of the sort of uh seminal events that really helped to propel us forward so we know advertising works it's why but you know it's why every social media company is trying to gather all of our data so they can advertise to us right so we got to figure out how to advertise more I would just add to that you know um I think there are opportunities to you know people as a journalist people always kind of ask me what's the best way to pitch you know how do I pitch a story to you um and I always tell them if you have especially if you have research or like a product launch or something like that try to find ways to tie it to um uh what's happening in the news you know what what's what's the general um uh tenor uh uh on certain issues on the economy on wealth building on you know inflation I think um you know my my first encounter with a lot of the the research that um that Dr blasi and Marine and and their colleagues have done was through a story about the lack of um access to stock options for minority employees um and so I can't remember exactly what what it was uh the new story that was it was tied to but you know I think as result of that they're just you know that piece like did really well um and so sometimes it's organic exposure to um and not just you know paid advertising two more questions yeah okay two more questions very quick hi thanks so much for all the information I was wondering if you could talk a little bit more about the research on the racial Equity impacts of cooperatives is there another question um so you're going to answer that one you can do it okay briefly I I uh there is a body of research on the racial Equity impacts of worker co-ops and I was remiss and not mentioning and sort of framing the beginning of the conversation with the sort of giant in the field Jessica Gordon nemhard who wrote a book called Collective courage which recovers the history of black cooperation going back to slavery and immediately after emancipation and I think is sort of related to some of the work I want to draw a historical line to what you all are doing with um connecting to the black business community that there that that her researcher shows business ownership as a strategy but also as a connection to movements for Liberation so I should have mentioned that earlier it's like the foundational work in the field Collective courage but there's also more re and there's also more recent work that connects worker cooperatives and looks in comparison to esops as well so I think I want to sort of honor the whole range of strategies we're focused on esops today but there is a rich body of research around worker co-ops which often more explicitly aimed at um uh fostering racial and gender equity uh okay one more question right here we have one right here I can right here okay Dr Mary Alexander Institute for academic management I just wanted to point out the um or just make a comment regarding the private equity and you talked about five to six trillion dollars that's out there I've not heard mention of the 1.6 trillion dollars spending power that Black America has that's important and as you mentioned Morehouse and hbcus I would invite you to approach the White House initiative on hbcus for their conference that's major and that's that's if you want to advertise and Market I think that's starting there um and I can imagine I can make that connection for you appreciate that thank you very much well thank you all for giving your time and just providing some thoughtful answers I really enjoyed this personally I think our audience did too um and that's it for the panel thank you thank you