WEBINAR: Roadmap to Black Employee Ownership Recording

uh hello hello welcome to our virtual dialogue roadmap to Black employee ownership uh good morning good afternoon depending on where you are filing in from around the world my name is Terron Ferguson and I I'm incredibly honored to be able to facilitate what I think will be a very deep and dynamic conversation today about a topic that is incredibly near and dear to my heart so uh before I introduce the beautiful faces that are in this first slide I'd like to just frame up the occasion and set some context with backstory so um for about a year and a half the past year and a half I have been serving as the first leader of black of project equities black employee ownership initiative um it's been a remarkable experience not only learning about employee ownership but strategizing with how we concede this business strategy and economic tool in a community that um could absolutely use it particularly at this time um I worked very very closely with Evan Edwards project Equity CEO and also Dr Cynthia Hewitt the Avalon professor of Sociology at Morehouse College and here's why because one of the first learnings and lessons that we had um is that in order to really Drive employee ownership in the black business community in the black labor workforce and also in the black economic ecosystem we would have to craft a broad diverse Coalition that is cross-sectoral in order to reach every audience because this is a project that is about language it's about perspective it's about levels of influence and so we widen our aperture at project Equity as practitioners and struck an important alliance with Dr Cynthia Hewitt at Morehouse College in the higher education space to be able to launch and activate research knowledge thinking around the utility behind employee ownership and so this is a marriage if you will between the practitioner space and higher education and we believe that that partnership that has spawned not one but two incredible papers um is a nucleus for uh a fomenting movement that we will talk about just shortly so this work is important it's incredibly important because we're bringing more and more people to the field Morehouse and project Equity were very synergistic Partners in that project Equity has a uh hyper focused ambition to activate employee ownership in Black communities and with the fact that one out of every third black worker in our country lives in the southern states it makes Incredible strategic sense to broker an alliance with um a venerated institution of the South and in the black community and if you know anything about hbcus if you know anything about the Civil Rights Movement then you know Morehouse College has always been at the Vanguard of anything happening in the South with the black Workforce and with economic empowerment as a way to uplift the race and so I'd like to just do some really basic introductions and I'm going to talk about two artifacts that were born out of this partnership and then I want to turn it over to my panelists my team my friends uh on the left side of the screen you see Evan Edwards many of you might already know him he's the CEO of project Equity I consider him um an incredible thought partner and mentor and he's the person who opened the door um to employ ownership for me and he does that for many others and so um before asking Evan to speak I just want you guys to just recognize him and um next we have Dr Cynthia Huard who's the Avalon professor of Sociology at Morehouse College she also uh is a director of the international comparative labor studies program um and she is the author behind uh one of the papers that I'll reference now if you don't mind going to the next slide so these are the two artifacts that emerge uh from this partnership and we're going to take a deeper dive into the conversation about the content they're in on the left side you see uh research study employee ownership for black workers closing the racial wealth Gap this was authored by Dr Cynthia Hewitt published in partnership with Morehouse and other partners uh from the international comparative labor studies program at Morehouse and this paper is very much arrayed to an academic audience really really trying to uh uh see this topic in a community that has some awareness issues about it and I'll let Dr Hewitt share more about that but one amazing byproduct of this is project Equity identifying the need for a tactical strategic companion piece that is arrayed towards practitioners in the field elevating uh best practices and uh North Stars and innovative ways for us to do this work at a deeper and More impactful Level so Shameless plug but you ought to pick up copies of both of these papers they can be found on both project equities website and Morehouse College icls website um they're great reads brisk reads and very very informative reads and so without further Ado the first thing I'd like to do is ask Dr Hewitt um given your background in labor studies your understanding of Cooperative economics what was your attraction to employee ownership in the first place and um what was probably a major takeaway or Insight from your findings in the study just a second Doctor Who we've got to unmute you there we go sorry about that um my background is in the study of political economy as a sociologist and I've always focused on how the black community and really the Africana community in a global sense can can move this Final Phase of I won't say final but move this phase of Liberation from uh from civil rights to one of adequate uh adequate human rights or at really adequate economic uh sustainable well-being so in this struggle we we started by looking at the at black people as workers about 80 percent of our population are in fact earning earning a wage and do uh constitute the working class so when we at Morehouse talk about social justice or economic Justice in particular this is the group of people we're really beginning we're really talking about now we also have those who constitute the informal economy and the unemployed but all together um the base and the strength is usually found in the working class and that's the case for many of our students parents at the same time there was such an unawareness of where our economic strength lies uh even though a lot of our parents have been union members unless you ask a student specifically they don't realize that and they don't even think about it so our first step was to create sort of a recursive um recursive process whereby hvcus Morehouse in particular educate our students about unions and the political positions that unions support so that was the first turn sort of turn and then as we begin to talk about what can a union do you also know that um there for the black community to become for the well-being of the black community to occur you also need to have our ability you need our ability to live within the cultural Heritage of the African-American community and within that cultural heritage means that we would also need to produce and fill all types of creative and productive positions so thinking about that it's a little different than um protecting yourself as a worker it's instead sort of projecting yourself as a creator in the project for projecting yourself as a Creator you know you have to have control over some Capital so that's what brought us to employee ownership as these sort of the inverse side of uh what our community needs in order to be economically well well off right we need not only to protect ourselves when we are in the workforce we need to be able to direct what we want to see happen in our community how we want to work and what we want to produce thank you for that thoughtful answer I I it's a perfect segue into my next question for you for you Evan um I I heard Dr Hewitt talk about sort of the need to uh do something about the lack of awareness um about around employee ownership and then this other um parallel objective to a reframe the Paradigm about how we think about uh wolf creation um uh our sort of economic utility in the space I want to ask you were those sort of some of the lead-in hypotheses you had in bringing project Equity to engage with Dr Hewitt and Morehouse on this topic like can you tell us a little bit about that backstory and how the trajectory came to fruition yeah sure absolutely um from the beginning project Equity uh has had a mission to impact uh black workers uh in communities of color uh more broadly through employee ownership you know we see it as a opportunity uh for economically marginalized folks to be able to build wealth uh when we set about uh our work at project Equity some years back and uh began to engage with uh business owners uh around uh transitioning their businesses to employee ownership um notably that work was centered in California that's where we are we've always had uh National Outreach but our initial work was centered in California um and what we found is uh beyond our best intentions uh we had challenges engaging uh employers that represented a density of black workers right workers that we were really seeking to to impact and we found that not just in our work in California but as we started to work more nationally and we arrived at a place where we understood that that if we want to be impactful to Black workers we have to be intentional about doing that right and so we've always been a very data driven organization anyone that's visited our website and see that we do a lot of number crunching to guide how it is that we go about developing Pipeline and understanding who critical audiences are for our messages and for our work and when we did a little bit of a deeper dive uh in terms of our our data studies we understood a point that Tehran made earlier that the majority of black workers are in the south and they're also centered in a few specific uh Industries Health Care retail and accommodations and food service so we understood that we were going to have to reframe some of the way that we at project Equity went about identifying uh pipeline that represent a pipeline of businesses to transition that were representative of a density of black workers uh we also understood that we were going to have to uh provide greater Focus to identifying those businesses that were owned by black folks because we know that there is an over-representation of black workers and businesses owned by black folks uh that surfaced other challenges because we came to understand a little bit more deeply about uh challenges that black owned businesses have with respect to uh engaging technical assistance and accessing Capital Etc all of these issues elevated to the extent that we said we need to have a comprehensive program uh which manifested in our black employee ownership initiative and if we want this program to be effective and thoughtful and considered beyond our expertise that project Equity is uh as technicians and folks that are firm Believers in economic Justice that we need to engage uh someone with the expertise of Dr Hewitt who's at an institution that is well regarded so as we are as we're starting to bring forward the concept of employee ownership uh to audiences uh who may be unfamiliar with it that we're doing so with um the grounding in the background of for instance uh uh Collective uh uh economics in Black communities um and grounded in a region such as Atlanta where there is the representation of the density of Workforce and and black business owners and so that was kind of the impetus for us to go ahead and uh decide that we were going to develop this initiative we also uh recognized that we were going to need to Resource it and so I think it's appropriate uh that uh I acknowledge uh Prudential and the Delta fund who both have uh underwritten our ability to execute um the um both the research paper the Dr Hewitt has authored and for us to be able to fund our black employee ownership initiative so in essence it was our us doing so gaining some understanding of where it is that our our operating model was not going to necessarily be as impactful as we would like it and uh taking the steps to um to uh to adjust it so that we uh so that we could be effective and that's how we got to Dr Hewitt that's great uh and and I don't mean to make a trite response but kudos to both of you for recognizing a Gap a need and like leaning into that to try to craft a solution right I mean we could a lot of people might take the path of least resistance towards the work and it seems like we're going to where the tough Authority issues are that excites me um so let's try to get into the topics a little deeper you know there's 66 participants on this call right now and the numbers rising and based on some of the introductions in the chat seems like we got some experts here so we can get pretty wonky uh I'm just gonna ask you two a few high level questions feel free to dialogue between one another if you'd like to but what I would like to say to our participants if you're anything like me you're gonna have thoughts questions what have you feel free to pop them into the chat we have Reserve time um at the balance of the of the the event to raise some of those questions that you all have to our panelists so um this question first question is for Dr Hewitt you reference the need to examine the Nexus between uh and employee ownership all the actors in the space and the labor unions which have been um an incredible organizing vessel specifically for black workers in the history of our country I wanted to give you some space to say more about that like why why why is that important why in this moment um and what do you see as a North star for that collaboration um as as we know the labor unions have been a financial supporter and a political supporter as as African Americans have come into the elect electoral process as well as supporting equal employment opportunity protection for workers and all the things that we know like the eight-hour day come from uh the supportive unions so we might not we might not think that there's a automatic connection between unions and um businesses and so even this idea even the concept of employee ownership sometimes is considered in terms of large businesses where it may have an ESOP or other employee benefit in place but the largest employee-owned businesses that we have been encountering are often actually unionized so if we take the largest one that I am aware of which is the um um let me see the Healthcare Associates so I guess that's the um yeah I want to call them chca in New York um they have about 2 000 members and they're members of the service employees International Union so what we see is that uh another I have other instances um the City University of New York has a school of Labor and urban studies and they are their Professor um Rebecca Laurie who does who works with employee-owned companies uh she comes out of the construction trades and she too talks about where there's potential for the overlap so on the one hand um unions might people might think unions and private businesses don't go together but an employee-owned business that has a union base has the benefits that a union gives so for instance the union will help solidify training opportunities within whatever industry that the employee-owned business is entering into union members are also very familiar with how to how to work cooperatively how to make decisions how to do elections uh how to resolve disputes you know these are all trainings that unions bring to you so when you have your membership also to reach if when your membership retains Union membership while becoming owners of their own uh operation that's a really excellent I think that's an excellent place to be here in Georgia um we've started to bring this the concept of employee ownership to the uh Atlanta North Georgia labor Council and um whose new president Sandra Williams I guess is the first African-American to hold that position African-American woman to hold that position and then we also are going to be bringing it with um Ms Yvonne Brooks who is now uh at this point she's um interim uh president of the AFL-CIO Georgia so at the level of organized labor in the state we we think we have a open door to to bring together business small and medium business workers interests and also these unions thank you uh and and to your point about Open Door I love that phrase I think that um Evan has often um talked about like the knee the the the US meeting the moment and there's a particular urgency at the national level for this type of work um so Evan I wanted to give you an opportunity to kind of set that stage like why is this work so incredibly incredibly important right now what's the big opportunity from a United States Economic Policy perspective um I'd love to hear you talk about that because I think what we're trying to do is is figure out our lanes and our ways of getting into this deeply yeah so you know to Dr Hewitt's Point um uh labor unions are a force um and it would be wonderful if you know among other things that uh uh uh they have that we saw a stronger labor movement in this country we do see uh it re-emerging but we also know that uh there aren't enough black workers that are supported by labor unions there are a lot of black workers that are in uh businesses that you know quite frankly might be too small or not in a position to be organized and so from the perspective of us wanting to have deep impact of black workers um the particular moment that we're in is fairly unique in that the vast majority of small and Middle Market businesses uh in this country uh those with payrolls are owned by Baby Boomers and you all have heard project Equity talk about the silver tsunami we're at this period where those baby boomers are are going to be retiring and exiting their businesses we have you know lots of data that shows that those businesses are are only a fraction of them will end up selling right and transitioning uh within families and so the opportunity is for us to identify those businesses and transition them to employee ownership and our focus in particular on the national level is to find those businesses that are representative of the populations that project Equity wants to impact and so um you know we we are we we see ourselves as uh another opportunity for wealth building alongside labor unions uh for Rank and file workers and in particular black Rank and fireworkers that don't otherwise see those uh those Pathways there are uh in a given year 50 000 or more businesses that are listed for sale right um only a small fraction of those businesses uh have business owners have any awareness of a model that could transition ownership of their business that would allow them to see a return on their investment and so you know we see ourselves project Equity as you know not only uh positively impacting workers but to the extent that you know many business owners and you know in terms of our impact goals black business owners oftentimes shut down their businesses and never have the opportunity to see her return we also know that a lot of black business owners tend to see their businesses as a paycheck and not necessarily an investment in which they're going to see a return on investment so it's really it's really important for us to elevate this work nationally with it in mind that we're impacting the workers that we want to impact we're impacting business owners that otherwise might not be able to attain the wealth that they otherwise would and we're doing this in an environment where uh we see labor re-emerging and we see ourselves side by side with the labor movement in terms of growing wealth for those communities the great great answer I I the way I see this like conversation flowing in my mind you know we we set the context both of our uh both perspectives in terms of how we got to this work and I love that each of you enumerated the opportunities that you see so let's like jump ahead because both sides have done some really deep work thinking about this and let's talk about some of the solutions that we've kind of figured out some hypothesis ways in which we want to activate this work so Dr Hewitt I know you talked about the lack of knowledge um and you have a lot of great ideas and activities to try to cure that I'd like to hear you maybe discuss with the group some of the ways you're activating the work and then Evan I'll ask you the same question but in the practitioner space so we focus our in our icls program focuses on preparing students to enter into careers of service to community um and also that that allow them to raise a family so all activism doesn't allow that but uh we've taken a we particularly want to guide our students to being able to use their skills in that kind of way so bringing employee ownership to the students is our number one uh objective we work with the Morehouse Innovation and Entrepreneurship Center led by Dr Tiffany Bussey in in preparing them to see businesses and see business opportunities that can be translated into an employee-owned situation so this year we'll begin um training our students to be able to help us to do Outreach work in the community as well as we begin to do more Outreach we are looking forward to Bringing to being bringing basic education about employee ownership through our alumni Network which is very substantial and you know well basically um well positioned in the arena of both local politics and um policy and other other types of positions so we are we are organizing an Alumni network to also carry the word and we will also uh organize with our Chapel because it's very clear that um many people here just have not heard of it and definitely all those Arenas can be uh approached so yeah that's pretty much what we're doing I should also say that we're continuing our research we are working again with the help of project equity and a research project to uh to interview more extensively black businesses owners and workers to find out what their feelings are what their needs are their response to employee ownership so we are doing that in conjunction with project Equity also tracking and what what about you Evan yes so um I feel like the best answer to that question is what aren't we doing because we've got a lot of irons in the fire um uh We've identified uh a handful of regions where we really want to plant the flag and uh activate this work so Atlanta is one Birmingham is the second South Florida where you are Tehran is a third and Chicago is a fourth um each of these regions is representative of density of black Workforce and also uh significant number of black owned businesses um we have Partnerships beyond our partnership with Morehouse uh throughout these regions to raise awareness and it was really important for us to partner with as a for instance in Atlanta Atlanta wealth building initiative because that's an organization that has credibility in the region has worked with uh small and Middle Market businesses in the past and has their trust and it's been really important for us to be able to uh bring along awbi and some of our other partner organizations and understanding about employee ownership so that they're able to bring us into those regions and begin to have conversations with capital with technical assistance providers with other stakeholders in the nonprofit Community all of whom can serve to raise awareness of employee ownership um Dr Hewitt's comment about the way that Morehouse is activating the student population is really important from a number of perspectives for us we understand that a lot of excuse me a lot of black owned businesses are going to be what we refer to as micro businesses those with uh workforces of less than 10 workers those are a little bit more challenging for us to transition to employee ownership and also sometimes have more uh economic fragility and so the Young Folks at Morehouse who engage with these small business owners through the Morehouse Innovation lab will be able to do work uh for uh to advance what we call preparedness for employee ownership transition so we essentially see ourselves as seeding employee ownership knowledge in the academy at Morehouse and then having that knowledge be exported in the community so there's a lot of awareness raising we're doing uh initially we're also again engaging with uh our partners to start to develop pipeline to identify businesses that are good candidates for employee ownership and that work entails us doing uh business engagement uh activities in the community whether they be um uh webinars or you know nowadays we're allowed we're able to have in-person events more frequently so we're beginning to engage with uh practitioners and with business owners with business connectors uh all of whom um we see as as being trusted voices of business owners that's uh one of the places that we've uh started our work another thing that's really important that I think that we're doing and I think this is taking the Long View is that uh we understand that our success in these uh first four communities that we're working will allow us to advance this work more broadly nationally so as we are doing this work in the community in these communities we are capturing our experiences so that we can share them in other communities that we want to advance this work and so that folks in those other regions that we wanted to to influence black employee ownership you know amongst them other uh cities in the north uh Great Migration areas throughout Texas um I don't know that everybody's familiar Texas has more black workers than any other state in the country right so we'd like to see our work move uh into some of these other regions but we want to capture our success stories in Atlanta Birmingham South Florida and Chicago as we move to Advanced this work so those are some of the things that we're doing right now in order to see this work move forward that's incredible I love the emphasis on a multi-prong approach you know oftentimes people want a silver bullet solution to really difficult problems when in actuality it's probably doing a whole lot of things in the cumulative effect is what has the uh the real impact so I think that's wonderful from from my vantage point I see your two institutions like really flanking this issue you know you have the student engagement alumni youth piece that's trying to instill this as a viable opportunity for career and social justice in the Next Generation and then project Equity seems to be all around the country trying to prepare the ground so that they're real real practical opportunities for that next generation of leaders um I if I can just share a little bit about my background when I was at Morehouse College because Morehouse is my alma mater um I was arrayed to go directly to law school and then I learned of another organization called Teach for America and I was very heavily recruited to join Teach for America and the framing was kind of similar we were at a precipice in our country where education um was was in a really really delicate place and I could make a difference if I went into the classroom and tried to apply some of my learning from college my capabilities and just being um getting aware of the issues and I kind of see that same type of like instance brooding again and it really energizes me so with that being said I have a very vivid imagination I want to ask each of you I'll take Evan first and then Dr Hewitt you can go second I want you to think forward and this thing is working how would you know like how will you know that we have embedded in play ownership in the black wealth agenda what's that what's that indicator for you Evan that drives you doing this work and then same question for you Dr Hewitt yeah I think that um one of the key aspects of our work always is ecosystem development right and what we mean by ecosystem development is that all of the participants in the business sale or transition or advisory space are aware of employee ownership and uh can serve as either referral points for businesses being transitioned or can provide resources such as capital such that transitions can get done and I think uh we will see we will know that we have had some impact that we have embedded employee ownership when uh those business connectors those folks that operate through the ecosystem are regularly referring uh businesses for transition and in particular businesses that are representative of black workers right and so we are uh you know still developing our uh impact measurement measurement methodology um but you know we do know that um the communities that we're working with and that we're partnering with are going to help us to advance our ability to be able to engage with uh their ecosystems and with businesses specifically and as we're doing that you know one of the things that I think that we're really good at project Equity is um uh Gathering the data and we will gather that data because it's important for us to be able to again exhibit that this is working and so you know Tehran I think the the you know for us as we delve into this work um I think we're still understanding exactly how it is that we'll measure but I do know that um that the ecosystem development portion of this is really important where we're starting to see that uh a black employee ownership becomes self self-replicating I love that um and I can see that I can totally see we we activate this flywheel and then the momentum just continues on itself what about you Doctor Who what's how will you know you're muted oh no because we'll see the Cooperative Enterprise space um reach all the way back to perhaps the Morehouse College where I am because I like to see within Atlanta more spaces that are clearly cooperatively owned proud of it in showing it uh one of those might be a student Co-op at the college because I've seen what that does when you have students uh living and running their place of residence while they're at College that's one of the main ways in which you train the next generation of Cooperative leaders so employee ownership I also think that I would be really um it'd be great to see that it would diffuse in or um uh become active in some of the most important areas that are now uh areas where workers are really underserved uh so for instance child care if I see if I see sort of an uptake of employee-owned child care services that would be a great thing it's very much under under people are very much under uh employed and all of their skills which are great skills women women who have uh important nurturing skills are all being ignored in the current economy and then another area might be Construction because again uh this is this is a needed and booming industry where African Americans have been um basically uh sort of squeezed out of the profitable sectors so I think if I take those two examples I'd like to see I'd like to see a burgeoning set of employee-owned Enterprises in those areas Atlanta was reported to be the most unequal city of a population with a population over a hundred thousand in the United States the single most unequal City and it's been it's been occupying that place for 11 years the real deal on that on that statistic is that the um the the median income household income in Atlanta is twenty eight thousand twenty eight thousand so that tells you that it is the low income that allows Atlanta to occupy that place of greatest inequality so to to change the situation of low income is to empower people to have control over capturing some of their returns so I would just say that uh yeah so I would like to see another method of um both income generation and then eventually wealth accrual come about in Atlanta so I that would to me be a great thing uh I'm tracking um you you you'll know when that the Cooperative Enterprises is much more popularized and you even see students in your backyard doing co-ops working in co-ops you see EO finally penetrating these sectors that you think are uh could could desperately use this underutilized tool and if you see the Dynamics change in Atlanta we've got this over a decade experience of of gross inequality if we can begin to narrow that then it's it's we're on the right path what I'll say to that is we're gonna put all of these North stars out into the ether and and wish them positivity but then collectively all of us on this call are going to work like our hair is on fire to try to make it a reality uh so I appreciate you guys for just just being being very honest genuine and Earnest with your answers we do have some questions from the participants so how do you guys feel about me reading them out loud and you taking them yep sounds great to me okay cool and so I think this first question is to Evan when you help companies convert to employee ownership are there particular forms you find most impactful as a for instance ESOP versus eot versus KOA yeah so uh that question is going to be answered based on an analysis of the business um Co-op ESOP or eot uh are a fit based on some characteristics of the business economic and operational uh that we usually discern at project Equity through our feasibility feasibility assessment um that's our process of due diligence that goes beyond actually just looking at financial statements and numbers but also looks at the businesses operating uh capacity um as a as a as a rule of thumb and uh uh this isn't uh something that we are um not inflexible about but as a rule of thumb if if a business is Evita is less than 750 000 um it is not a fit for an ESOP and we would look at Co-op or eot but that's just a matter of looking at numbers that isn't to say that a a business could not be a fit for a Nissan at below that threshold um it's not also not saying that uh businesses that uh have ibita above three quarters of a million dollars can't be co-ops or eots so I think the best way to answer that question is it depends and I I know that might be an unsatisfying answer but the devil is really in the details insofar as the analysis of the business and understanding uh what the fit might be you know there's there's going to be some um business owners that might have a particular preference based on how it is they want to exit um and there's going to be some Workforce issues that also might be influential of what model we pursue thank you uh yeah thank you this next question it was it was addressed to Evan but Anonymous attendee I'm going to ask for permission to make it uh to invite both Dr Hewitt and Evan to answer because I think they both talked about the topic the question is in your view what are the important components of an ecosystem that will support employee ownership or the Cooperative Enterprise and or the Cooperative Enterprise go ahead with that do you want to go first talk to you okay in order not to back and forth our poor audience so let me take a little shot at this um from our perspective as um new participants in this ecosystems that exist in the ecosystems that exists now we're very interested in the development of legal assistance and we're looking forward to the emergence at Georgia State University of a uh of a of a Cooperative Clinic uh in their law school so that would provide greater legal support we're also very we're also engaged on the finance side with um looking at the potential for inclusive economy institutions uh foundations and I guess I would call them sort of Angel donors who um are in that space right now inclusive economy we're very interested in having some connections with them and understanding at what point they can be asked to Channel some of their funds into what we're doing so I think that Finance Feast is also very important um and then I think uh the black business organizations are very important the Atlanta Business League Etc are very important also in this ecosystem and we have some Cooperative we have some Cooperative associations um the Georgia cooperative has another term Georgia Cooperative Association I think I'm missing a word so I think the the associations of cooperatives are very important along with the financial institutions the a legal a link to legal support and then the educational Arena yeah I can second uh I could second uh all of what Dr ewitz put forward um uh I think a strong ecosystem is representative is represented by um uh e of some EO expertise or at least knowledge um I think that's one of the gaps right now um first there's awareness but then there's also who are the folks on the ground who are going to be able to execute transactions um and project Equity is doing some work uh to to build ecosystem capacity through uh some work we're doing to educate service providers those folks including uh business brokers um CPAs attorneys um and other advisors of business owners so all of those folks have to be educated about employee ownership that's one piece uh the capital piece um you know we haven't delved into this but you know the way that we transition business to businesses to employee ownership is through a mechanism called a leverage buyout which is a requisite of uh the availability of loan capital and there are only so many capital providers who will engage these transactions uh for reasons having to do with um guarantors right we don't expect workforces to be guarantors so capital is a big portion is an important part of a strong ecosystem uh project Equity has uh stood up a capital fund such that we're able to fund these transactions but also so that we can attract other Capital providers to the space um I think it's important that Economic Development and policy folks uh begin to elevate employee ownership as a um legitimate um strategy supporting local economies um I think that that helps to underpin the ecosystem and uh you know then I'll just I'm being a little bit redundant here but it's it's the technical assistance piece that's really important in that and that folks understand number one how to talk about employee ownership but then number two how it is to actually execute Transit transactions those are all important pieces of a strong ecosystem thank you uh we've got a juicy question here and I I'm I'm I want to just say thank you to the attendee that posed it because um it's just been undergirded in the entire conversation when we talk about employee ownership in Black communities we're talking about race in this country and there is an incredibly um fraud sort of context that we're operating in so we have to acknowledge that with realism the question that's posed to both of you begins with the statement we have found in my community that white sellers are not as open as we'd hope to sell businesses to black owners and black workers what are some ideas to work around this issue and I'll let whoever would like to answer first to answer sure so uh we're not naive to that um and you know to that end um you know we are as part of our going forward strategy um and a piece of our black employee ownership work is uh our ability project equities ability to be able to uh do an acquisition-like model that allows us to be able to acquire business from an owner and do some of the transition work on the back end um you know at the end of the day I think that um our transition process and likely I believe if this question is coming from a practitioner the transition process that uh compels the Legacy owner and the workforce to have to engage in a process over a period of time if that works if if that owner has uh certain biases or prejudices um that's not an environment for having a successful transition they won't even Engage The Transition I think if you have the equivalent of a proxy buyer um owners are happy to walk away with uh value for their business and um you know and then we can go ahead and do some transition work on the back end um so I think that's one way of approaching it I don't want to take up all the time I would love Dr Hewitt has any further comment I don't have experience with that but I think that um what's important that we might be able to offer is leadership studies part of it is to know who we are as African people African Heritage people and to and where we've been where we're going I think um once you once you strengthen the core of individuals they can see themselves differently and they even approach a transaction differently so I would just add that to what Evans has said thank you I think we have time for one more question because I want to respect everybody's time we can't we can't cover the whole lot of it because we're only an hour talking about this but I feel really great about how this dialogue is going I'm gonna combine three questions so the overarching framework is people want to know more about roles so we have questions on what is the role of worker centers in the promotion of black employee ownership what is the role um of investors in supporting black employee ownership most effectively and finally what do you see is the role of economic Developers and helping business owners find the path to employ ownership and those collated questions are to both of you well maybe I'll jump out and make a make some quick comments so that given the time Evan can can elaborate more on these things um the first one was the role of worker centers and I think it's a good idea to bring this information to Worker Center so that they can distribute it among workers who can then consider it consider this pathway again it's for it's a pathway for those who may be non-confrontational and that's a that's sort of a characteristic of some people and it can activate people in within the within the labor movement who are not necessarily on the front line the second um I'm sorry I need to I need you to restate the other two second the second and third roles were investors and economic Developers okay investors I will I will uh say that I think I've said I've said that I'm interested in those and particularly uh I the ones that I'm mostly aware of now are those who are in the inclusive economy uh networks so even when you if you were to Google that you see it must be at least uh 65 different inclusive economy programs um operating in every type of from left to right so that space I find an interesting one um and then in terms of um Community Development clearly clearly enabling the cities are able to to impact investment opportunities that reach this that reach the citizens so I think there's a big role for for Sid to talk with the um City governments because those areas that have been very successful with employee ownership I noticed that the cities have had initiatives that support it yeah I'll approach these questions in reverse order um I think Economic Development folks are important uh because they can help to elevate uh amongst the business Community the importance of retaining uh small and Middle Market businesses in that local economy um and you know you use a bully pulpit so to speak to influence business owners uh hey there are models whereby you can transition ownership of your business to owners or workers who are going to keep it local keep it in this economy preserve your legacy Etc so I think economic development is important because uh you know they have reached to local businesses through other programs that they execute and can be influencers investors I think are really important insofar as providing the type of capital that is necessary for more employee ownership transitions to happen um I've mentioned before that there's the need for more flexible Capital because again uh in our transition methodology we do not obligate the workers to any sort of personal guarantee and so with that in mind your typical business lender is not going to support these transactions it's part of our work to influence them that they should and that's part of project equities work over time but in the meantime uh being able to engage investors who can provide a flexible Capital that would allow for these transitions to happen um is really key aspect of growing employee ownership supporting it um I think worker centers are important because oftentimes workers will have some knowledge of uh the business that they are employed at uh um that owner having some desire to potentially retire and not necessarily knowing what direction that owner is going to take I think when workers have awareness of employee ownership they can help influence their place of employment to move in the direction of a transition at the appropriate time so um I'm hoping I captured uh each of those uh uh items sufficiently wonderful wonderful wonderful comprehensive answers I I appreciate um both of you all I want to in the interest of time we will wrap now but I'd like to let all the participants know that if you have any additional questions or comments we welcome you to reach out directly to project Equity at the URL that's on the screen um as has been previously stated there's um a lot to to happen and to to uncover in this conversation but I recommend as a starting point to read the papers both papers are incredible um and they make the case that we have uh come across today from two different perspectives um before we end I'd like to give Dr Hewitt and Evan an opportunity to say any famous last words and then we'll bid you a do um what I'd like to add is that our immediate Outreach project is is in the development of the website and I'd like to particularly thank you thank Prudential Financial for their support and in this phase of our development and um I guess uh I'll stop there thank everybody for listening to this and being a part of it yeah I'll just uh say that I'd like to thank Dr Hewitt for her partnership and um the enlightenment that she shared with me um again I'd like to thank uh Morehouse College more broadly for working with us on this and uh the Delta fund and Prudential for supporting this work we can't do this important work without their financial support so thank you very much and again Dr Hewitt I appreciate you and thank you Tehran well done thank you all thank you all for the time uh and let's not pass the buck but pass the torch see you later take care bye-bye bye-bye