Building Wealth Through Worker Coops: Understanding 401K Plans and Retirement Options

Camille Gharib

Camille joined ICA because she believes in the potential of democratic workplaces to build power and narrow the wealth gap for communities of color. In the Data Systems Manager role, she develops systems to collect and analyze information about the impact of worker ownership in the child and home care industries, as well as cooperative conversions in the Northeast and around the country. She also lends support to ICA’s data-driven communications, as well as to continued development of ICA’s wide library of resources on worker ownership. Prior to this role, Camille has worked in a variety of community organizations oriented around equity for women and people of color, as well as in an administrative role at ICA, prior to transitioning to ICA’s communications team. Camille holds a BA in English from UMass Amherst.

cgharib@icagroup.org

Capital Home Care

Cooperative

Olympia, Washington
Industry: Home Care
Founded: 2017

Website: http://capitalhomecare.coop/

Capital Homecare Cooperative is committed to choice. Caregivers choose to become worker-owners because it allows them to have direct input in the business decisions that affect them and their clients. Clients choose to hire Capital Homecare Cooperative because they provide nurturing and consistent care as a result of low caregiver turnover rates. The cooperative model has provided Capital Homecare Cooperative the ability enhance direct lines of communication between caregivers and clients to provide the highest quality care and employment.

Circle of Life

Cooperative

Bellingham, Washington
Industry: Home Care
Founded: 2016

Website: https://www.circleoflife.coop/

Circle of Life Caregiver Cooperative has been able to surpass all homecare industry standards in Washington by empowering its worker-owners to build long-lasting relationships with their clients. By forging strong connections based on compassion and respect, Circle of Life Caregiver Cooperative is able to live its mission and provide its caregivers with competitive wages, stability, collaboration, and respect.

Heart is Home

Cooperative

Bernalillo, New Mexico
Industry: Home Care
Founded: 1985

Website: https://hih.coop/

Heart is Home is a home care cooperative working in New Mexico to ensure quality care for rurally located residents by emphasizing strong ethical practices, good communication, and participatory decision-making. Decision-making happens with clients in mind, but most importantly among work-owners by utilizing the 7 Cooperative Principles that shine a spotlight on the community, voluntary and democratic participation, and strengthening the cooperative field through sharing.

Cooperative Care

Cooperative

Wautoma, Wisconsin
Industry: Home Care
Founded: 2001

Website: http://www.cooperativecare.us/

As the third-largest home care cooperative in the United States, Cooperative Care has received recognition from both the Harvard Kennedy School and President Obama for its ability to showcase democracy in practice. Cooperative Care was forged in a rural disconnected environment where caregivers worked alone with little to no supports and grew to become a nationally recognized home care cooperative that centers the needs of their members.

Learn more about ICA’s work with Cooperative Care.

Cooperative Home Care Associates

Cooperative

Bronx, New York
Industry: Home Care
Founded: 1985

Website: http://www.chcany.org/

From 12 home health aides in 1985 to more than 2,000 staff today, Cooperative Home Care Associates is the largest worker cooperative in the U.S. Every year this Care Associates is the largest worker cooperative in the U.S. Every year this nationally recognized home care agency trains over 600 low-income and unemployed women for free, serving as a significant driver of employment in the Bronx.

eQuality Home Care

Cooperative

New Braunfels, Texas
Industry: Home Care
Founded: 2015

Website: https://www.equality.homecare.coop/

Everyday Details

Cooperative

Asheville, North Carolina
Industry: Home Care
Founded: 2018

Incubated in partnership with Asheville Buncombe Institute of Parity Achievement (ABIPA), Everyday Details is a small group of committed caregivers that serve the needs of the community’s most vulnerable members. By providing companionship, light housekeeping, and transportation services, Everyday Details is a dependable resource for clients that prefer to age at home.

Home Care Associates

Cooperative

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Industry: Home Care
Founded: 1993
Website: https://homecareassociatespa.com/

HCA is the second largest Home Care Cooperative in the United States and the recipient of the Governor’s Achievement Award, the American Society on Aging’s Best Practice Award, the Better Business Bureau’s Best Health Service Award, and the Philadelphia County Assistance Office’s Employer Recognition Award for their innovative caregiver training programs.

Peninsula Home Care

Cooperative

Port Townsend, Washington
Industry: Home Care
Founded: 2016
Website: http://www.peninsulahomecare.coop/

Peninsula Homecare Cooperative was founded by a community of concerned caregivers, and continues to be engrained in their community of clients, worker-owners, and supporters. A few experienced caregivers identified the needs of the area’s aging population, the community responded with support and financing, and Peninsula Homecare Cooperative grew to fill the gap of caregiving jobs in Port Townsend, WA. They continue to grow, working tirelessly to raise wages, provide training, educate themselves, and shift the paradigm of a successful home care agency in the United States.

Golden Steps

Cooperative

New York, New York
Industry: Home Care
Founded: 2012
Website: http://goldensteps.coop/

Located in Brooklyn, Golden Steps walks alongside men and women in their Golden Age. Golden Steps values thorough and well rounded training to ensure that caregivers are able to serve their clients safely and with the highest quality of care. Golden Steps provides services at an affordable price to allow clients the ability to lead safer and happier lives at home.

Courage Home Care

Website: https://courage.elevate.coop/

Cooperative

Los Angeles, California
Industry: Home Care
Founded: 2016
(213) 344-8370

Incubated in partnership with the Pilipino Workers Center (PWC) in Los Angeles, Courage Home Care is the only employee-owned home care cooperative in Southern California. As a shining example to its community and clients, Courage actively reinvests all proceeds from services towards the continued education and training of care providers, as well as benefits for the workers. With most caregivers fluent in both English and Tagalog, Courage Home Care strives to make sure families have access to quality care and that caregivers are treated with respect and dignity.

Brook Bernini

Brook joined the ICA Group in 2024 as a Senior Cooperative Business Consultant on the Home Care Team. Prior to joining ICA, Brook worked in a home health training program for Latinx immigrants in Albuquerque, New Mexico where she connected home health aides to economic and leadership opportunities and helped develop a worker-owned home care cooperative. She also worked as a consultant supporting cooperatives in Albuquerque and rural New Mexico. Brook also has experience in adult education, facilitation, and training, and works to create spaces that are participatory, emergent, and allow for multiple ways of arriving at understanding. Their most recent organizing work has focused on community and alternative financing as a way to move resources, and is currently involved in bringing participatory budgeting to Albuquerque.

Brook has a BA in Biology and a Masters in Geography with a focus on solidarity economies.

bbernini@icagroup.org

Iwona (Ona) Matczuk

Iwona (Ona) Matczuk, Senior Business Intelligence Analyst: As a Senior Business Intelligence Analyst, Iwona leads data analytics for the home care team, including the annual Home Care Cooperative Benchmarking Survey, provides strategic growth consulting to start-up and growing home care cooperatives, develops products and systems that increase operational and financial sustainability and efficiency for home care cooperatives, and assists home care agency owners looking to transition to employee ownership. Iwona also leads ICA’s Home Care Market Assessment and Business Planning practice. Iwona brings to ICA ten years of experience directing projects in the fields of international development, healthcare, and the non-profit sector. She is the founding member of a social enterprise and author of a researched thesis on the use of social entrepreneurship as a tool forinternational development.

Iwona received her BA in Anthropology from the University of Illinois at Chicago, her MBA in SociaI Impact with a concentration in Social Entrepreneurship and Impact Management, and her MA in Sustainable International Development from Brandeis University.

imatczuk@icagroup.org

Charlie Fraioli

Charlie joined the ICA Group in 2024 as a Senior Cooperative Business Consultant on the homecare team, driven by his passion for economic systems change. Charlie began his career at BLab, the non-profit behind B Corp Certification, where he supported hundreds of companies in verifying their social and environmental impact. He went on to join the standards management team, overseeing the continuous improvement of B Corp standards. Through research, data analysis, interviews, and focus groups, Charlie developed rigorous standards for businesses across diverse industries and regions to ensure they prioritize the well-being of workers, communities, and the environment.

Most recently, Charlie worked at Drexel University where he helped establish the research development team and launched research analytics services to support faculty pursuing interdisciplinary research.

Charlie holds a BS in Applied Economics & Management and Information Science from Cornell University.

cfraioli@icagroup.org

Chris Carley

I graduated from Williams College in 2018 with a degree in Economics. My first job out of school was working in data analytics for an economic consulting company in Boston. I mainly worked on projects related to health outcomes research, and dabbled a bit in energy and environmental projects as well. In 2022, I moved back to NYC and joined the New York City Economic Development Corporation (NYCEDC). In that role, I helped conduct research in support of initiatives and policy to make NewYork’s economy more equitable and sustainable. Outside of work, I am a member-worker of a food cooperative in Brooklyn. That experience has introduced me to the broader solidarity economy, and over time, I’ve grown more and more excited about the role that worker cooperatives could play in building worker power and giving workers wealth-building opportunities.

ccarley@icagroup.org

Mike Sandmel

Mike Sandmel joined ICA in 2023 and serves as a Senior Cooperative Business Consultant on ICA’s Cross Program Team, supporting conversions and existing cooperatives.

Prior to joining ICA, Mike worked as the Membership Director at New Economy Coalition and as a Senior Campaign Organizer at New Economy Project, where he coordinated coalition efforts to advance cooperative and community wealth building policies in New York City and State. Mike holds a B.A. in Economics and Ecology and a Masters in Public and Nonprofit Administration, both from New York University.

mike@icagroup.org

Fay Strongin

Fay joined the ICA Group in 2021 as a home care Business Developer and now directs ICA’s home care program, working with home care cooperatives and supporters across the country to build a thriving home care cooperative sector.

Prior to joining the ICA Group, Fay served as a consultant for the NYC Office of the Mayor for Strategic Policy Initiatives supporting the Employee Ownership NYC initiative and worked at the Philadelphia Water Department where she led community engagement for Philadelphia’s green stormwater infrastructure plan. She previously worked in urban agriculture, as the founder of a queer, women-owned vegetable farm and CSA in Providence, Rhode Island.

Fay has a BA in Political Science from Haverford College and a Master’s in City Planning from MIT, where her research focused on gentrification in small and mid-sized US cities.

fstrongin@icagroup.org

Katrina Kazda

Katrina joined the ICA Group in January 2017 following a fifteen-year career supporting the development and scale of businesses and institutions in a variety of industries and sectors, with a common thread of sustainable social, environmental, and economic development.

Between 2017-2023, Katrina led ICA’s home care program, contributing to growth and strengthening of the national home care cooperative sector through research, education, and cooperative consulting. Today, as Vice President of Home Care Innovations, Katrina leads strategy, planning, and development of ICA’s scaled home care industry innovations including Elevate Cooperative–a new secondary cooperative for the home care cooperative sector–state-based secondary cooperatives, rapid replication models of home care cooperative development, acquisitions strategy and related work including partnership development, fundraising, and public education. Katrina also leads educational programming for the for the National Home Care Cooperatives Conference and the National Home Care Cooperative Initiative, provides direct consulting to home care cooperative clients and participates sector research. Finally, Katrina has co-authored over a dozen research studies on home care cooperative development and scale including Profitability, Growth, and Influence: Elevating the Home Care Cooperative Sector with Formalized National Collaboration (January 2021).

Katrina received her MA in Sustainable International Development from the Heller School for Social Policy at Brandeis University, her BA in Visual Anthropology, and a certificate in Native American Studies from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. She is a member of the Board of Nonotuck Community School, a parent-led cooperative preschool and has served on numerous other boards and committees over the years.

kkazda@icagroup.org

Joél Mejia

Joél Mejia is a New York-based professional specializing in Communications, Marketing, and Digital Content Management, with a strong focus on Cooperative Business Development. He is also a founding member of the worker-owned Mi Oh My Farms Cooperative based in the Bronx and Kingston, NY. Currently, Joél plays a vital role in supporting the ICA Group, a prominent non-profit organization dedicated to promoting employee ownership, by contributing his expertise in outreach, marketing, and providing technical assistance to worker-owned cooperatives.

With a career spanning several decades, Joél has established himself as an accomplished media consultant, producer, and trainer for both businesses and nonprofits. Prior to his involvement in economic development, he served as a dedicated high school media literacy teacher, empowering graduating seniors with valuable skills and knowledge.

As a passionate advocate for worker-owned enterprises, Joél is committed to the principles of permaculture and Just Transition as transformative frameworks. He firmly believes that these principles hold the potential to reshape power dynamics and foster stronger connections among individuals and the Earth, our shared home. His role as a founding member of an agricultural cooperative is part of a multi-phase strategy aimed at shifting economic and cultural power away from oppressive systems, drawing inspiration from indigenous spiritual teachings.

In his current capacity, Joél applies his extensive experience and expertise to advance the mission of the ICA Group, working diligently to promote worker ownership and create positive change within communities. His dedication to cooperative development and commitment to sustainable, equitable practices make him an invaluable asset in the field of economic empowerment and social transformation.

jmejia@icagroup.org

Stephanie Sucasaca

Stephanie joined the ICA Group in November of 2022. On the home care team, Stephanie plays a lead role in supporting start-up home care cooperatives, including bi-lingual training, as well as home care outreach, communications, and network management. Stephanie was brought up on the mantra la union hace la fuerza (unity is strength) and it’s a core value that has fueled Stephanie’s mission to empower and support the strength of worker cooperatives, immigrants, QTPOC artists and entrepreneurs. Stephanie believes in cooperative values as a beacon of hope for the brighter future we can build for ourselves and generations to come. Prior to joining ICA group, Stephanie supported the launch of the Brightly Washington Heights Cooperative, an immigrant run cleaning services worker cooperative. Stephanie is also a life coach and has provided coaching sessions and group workshops that facilitate vulnerable conversations that lead to stronger teams.

stephanie@icagroup.org

Katie Wing

As ICA’s first Director of People and Culture, Katie focuses on organizational culture; hiring and staff development; team coordination; and office policies and procedures. She drives internal organizational development and supports a thriving democratic workplace, bringing a lens of equity, diversity, and inclusion to everything she does.

Originally from Maine, Katie moved to Western Massachusetts in 2014 with her daughter when she was accepted into the Ada Comstock Scholars program at Smith College (designed for non-traditionally aged women to return to college). Katie graduated with a degree in philosophy & ethics with a concentration in community engagement and social change. She is certified in change management and blends her personal experience with her professional skill sets to move projects forward with vision while maintaining a culture of care.

katie@icagroup.org

Khalif Nunnally-Rivera

Khalif Nunnally-Rivera is a Cooperative Business Developer on the ICA Group’s Cross Program. He joined the organization in May 2022. He was born and raised in Springfield, MA. Khalif recently relocated to Queens, New York. He has always had a passion for history, government, and social justice issues. Through the ICA, Khalif hopes to reduce wealth inequality, be an advocate for employee ownership, and create new opportunities for people of color and working class communities.

Khalif earned a B.A. in Human Geography from UMass Amherst in 2017. After graduation, he returned home to work for the Springfield Public School District. During his time at the district, he worked as an Attendance Specialist and a College Financial Aid Advisor. His experiences with the school district inspired him to pursue a Master’s Degree in Public Policy and Administration at UMass Amherst.

Throughout his graduate school career, Khalif showed high interest in policy equity issues. In the Spring of 2021, Khalif was selected as a fellow for the Civic Action Project, a nonprofit organization with a focus on building future leaders in public service. Through this fellowship, he secured an internship with the Office of State Senator Eric Lesser. As a legislative intern, he worked on various projects surrounding healthcare, education, workforce development, and housing equity. During his second year of graduate school Khalif worked as a Graduate Assistant with the UMass Amherst Office of Student Engagement, where he advised dozens of student run organizations. Khalif recently earned a Master’s of Public Policy and Administration from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

khalif@icagroup.org

Insiyah Bergeron

Insiyah Mohammad Bergeron is a Co-Program Lead at ICA. In this role, she helps business owners understand the financial and operational feasibility of transitioning their companies to employee ownership, and coaches owners and workers through the transition process. Insiyah also manages outreach strategy and partnerships for the Massachusetts Center of Employee Ownership which is administered by ICA.

Insiyah has been working in sustainable economic development in Massachusetts for several years. Before her current role, Insiyah was the Holyoke Innovation District Manager and Transformative Development Initiative Fellow through MassDevelopment. In these capacities, Insiyah collaborated with residents, businesses, community organizations, and government agencies to develop projects in of support equity and vibrancy in Holyoke’s downtown, such as a hydroponic farm and workforce training program. Insiyah enjoys working with people from different backgrounds to imagine new ways of working, doing, and creating.

Insiyah holds a BA from Bennington College, and a Masters in City Planning from MIT. Insiyah enjoys dancing, drawing, and serving on the boards of local organizations like CISA and LightHouse Holyoke.

ibergeron@icagroup.org

Allison Curtis

Allison Curtis is a Co-Program Lead for ICA’s cooperative development team. Allison works with business owners across ICA’s industries and geographies who are pursuing transitions to employee ownership. This involves guiding business owners through the exit planning process, conducting financial and operational analysis on the feasibility of an employee ownership transition, and supporting owners and workers through the entire transition process. Allison is passionate about cooperative ownership as a tool to increase worker power and create access to well-paying jobs.

Prior to joining ICA, Allison worked as an urban planner and data analyst for a regional planning commission. She earned a Master of Urban and Environmental Planning and Policy from Tufts University where she focused her studies on community land trusts and other community ownership models. She has a BA in Sociology and Anthropology from Lewis and Clark College.

acurtis@icagroup.org

White Electric Coffee

Cooperative

Providence, Rhode Island

Industry: Café

Founded: 2000
Converted to Employee-Owned: 2021

Employees: 14

Website: http://whiteelectriccoffee.com/

White Electric Coffee is Providence, Rhode Island’s first unionized and worker-owned coffee shop.

Bluestockings

Cooperative

New York, NY
Industry: Bookstore

Founded: 1999
Converted to Employee-Owned: 2021

Employees: 7

Website: https://bluestockings.com/

Bluestockings is an independent bookstore, café, and activist resource center, located in the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Through words, art, food, activism, education, and community, we strive to create a space that welcomes and empowers all people. We actively support movements that challenge hierarchy and all systems of oppression, including but not limited to patriarchy, heterosexism, the gender binary, white supremacy and classism, within society as well as our own movements. We seek to make our space and resources available to such movements for meetings, events, and research. Additionally, we offer educational programming that promotes centered, strategic, and visionary thinking, towards the realization of a society that is infinitely creative, truly democratic, equitable, ecological, and free.

Blythe P. Newton-Haynes

Blythe joined the ICA Group in 2021 as an administrative assistant, helping out with bookkeeping and data entry, after working similar roles at other companies. Her favorite past job was at another nonprofit, which motivated her to join the staff of ICA. She has also worked as an ESL teacher, providing online English lessons to Chinese students.

Blythe graduated from Hampshire College with a BA in Linguistics. Her undergraduate dissertation was on a specific aspect of the linguistics of Twitter, and she presented her research on superlinguistics (the application of linguistic analysis to non-linguistic forms of communication and expression) at the 42nd GLOW conference in Oslo, Norway in 2019. While at Hampshire College, she founded and co-lead a social justice-oriented student group.

blythe@icagroup.org

Jonathan Ward

Jonathan Ward is the Director of Lending for the Fund for Jobs Worth Owning. The Fund supports the growth and development of employee-owned businesses, creating and sustaining jobs worth owning. Jonathan primarily manages the Fund’s lending and outreach work. He connects with borrowers, helping transform ideas into strong lending opportunities that develop cooperatives. Jonathan coordinates the day-to-day loan-processing work and the review process with the Fund’s Board of Directors.

Jonathan views employee ownership as a powerful tool that grows strong companies providing good jobs in the community. Before he even knew about cooperatives, Jonathan knew that participatory management and profit-sharing deepened worker engagement in organizations. Now he works to show how these same strong business practices can be encoded in the DNA of a company through the cooperative model.

From 2014 through 2019, Jonathan led the employee ownership conversions program at the ICA Group, assisting dozens of companies with their ownership transitions. His work on conversions includes exit planning and business valuation, governance design and worker training. Jonathan specializes in structuring and coordinating the financing for employee ownership transitions, working alongside the cooperative lenders in the field. Jonathan also works to develop common processes and benchmarks for conversions in order to reduce costs, simplify transitions, and scale the cooperative sector.

A trainer at heart, Jonathan enjoys working with people to build shared understanding around new concepts, and is skilled at building learning programs and infrastructures for companies to enhance capacity. Prior to ICA, he worked in digital marketing where he helped his company reinvent and streamline their training and onboarding practices. Jonathan has also supported business development projects and financing strategies for social enterprises, particularly in local agriculture and food systems.

Jonathan earned an MBA and a Master of Public Policy and Administration from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, and a BS in Information Design and Corporate Communication from Bentley University.

jward@icagroup.org

jonathan@jobsworthowning.org

Childspace Daycare Centers

Cooperative

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Industry: Child Care

Founded: 1998

Employees: 67

Website: http://childspacedaycarecenters.org/

Childspace Daycare Centers is a multi-site business that serves over 200 families in Philadelphia. The business has been employee-owned since 1988. As a NAEYC Accredited business, Childspace offers city and state-funded pre-K and Head Start programs. As an employee-owned business, Childspace is able to maintain half the staff turnover rate as other business in the child care industry.

The Rose Garden

Cooperative

Buffalo, New York
Industry: Child Care

Founded: 2008
Converted to Employee-Owned: 2017

Employees: 15

Website: https://therosegarden.us/

The Rose Garden partnered with Cooperative Buffalo with support from the ICA Group to convert their traditional business model into a worker cooperative in 2017. The transition came about as a response to the retirement plan of the original owner, Judy. Staff are trained in the Lifeways Model and offer programming for 18 month olds to five year olds.

Read more about The Rose Garden.

Beyond Care

Cooperative

Brooklyn, New York
Industry: Child Care
Founded: 2008

Employees: 38
Website: https://beyondcare.coop/

Beyond Care Childcare Cooperative was launched in Sunset Park, Brooklyn in June 2008. With the support of the Center for Family Life (CFL), 17 immigrant women and founding members came together to conceptualize, plan and launch a membership cooperative business. The business plan was based on models of immigrant owned cooperatives (particularly in Long Island and Oakland, CA) that have been successful in helping immigrant men and women increase income, build internal leadership and provide mutual support.

The Green Engineer

Cooperative

Concord, Massachusetts
Industry: Building Design
Founded: 2005

Converted to employee-owned: 2011

Employees: 22
Website: https://www.greenengineer.com/

The Green Engineer, Inc. is a sustainable design consulting firm specializing in energy efficient and sustainable design solutions for the built environment. The expert team brings to the table experience and perspective from a variety of backgrounds including engineering, architecture, construction, planning, development, and public policy. They practice Integrative Design and see sustainability as a core goal shared by design team members and stakeholders. As part of their business model, The Green Engineer is an employee-owned company. Today, more than 75% of their full-time staff members are also owners.

Mētis Construction

Employee Trust

Seattle, Washington
Industry: Construction

Founded: 2008
Converted to Employee-Owned: 2016

Employees: 25

Website: http://metisconstructioninc.com

Mētis Construction is a community of highly skilled and motivated craftspeople who have come together to form a worker-owned and controlled company. It is their goal to create and maintain a structure that will remain in place for future generations of craftspeople—a structure that promotes the practice and teaching of the trades and the fostering of craft—a structure that facilitates worker ownership and hence promotes the financial viability of the trades as a career choice. They hope to provide an alternative business model—one that doesn’t lead to the alienation of individuals from the products of their labor, from the people with whom they work, from the people for whom they produce and from the natural world.

Learn more about ICA’s work with Mētis Construction.

Chroma Technology Corp.

ESOP

Bellows Falls, Vermont

Industry: Manufacturing
Founded: 1991

Converted to Employee-Owned: 2011

Employees: 100
Website: https://www.chroma.com/

Chroma Technology Corp. is a leading manufacturer of optical filters and related products. Founded in Vermont, in 1991, Chroma is a leader in filter designs. While not a cooperative, Chroma is 100% employee-owned and democratically run firm, with more than 100 employees and offices in Europe and Asia.

Sun Light & Power

ESOP

Berkeley, California
Industry: Renewable Energy

Founded: 1976
Converted to Employee-Owned: 2018

Employees: 70

Website: https://www.sunlightandpower.com/

Sun Light & Power became an Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP) when founder Gary Gerber retired in 2018 after over 40 years in business. The company shares profits with vested employees through a retirement fund and as an ESOP, it operates free of federal income taxes. Drawn to the democratic practices of worker cooperatives, Sun Light & Power is structured so that employee-owners have the right to elect the Board of Directors and vote on owner matters on a one-participant, one-vote basis.

New Prairie Construction

Cooperative

Urbana, Illinois
Industry: Construction

Converted to Employee-Owned: 2018

Employees: 25

Website: https://www.newprairieconstruction.com/

New Prairie Construction is a full-service general contractor and solar panel installer in Urbana, Illinois. New Prairie Construction’s transition story began in 2016, when the company’s two co-founders were considering their long-term plans for the business and themselves. They investigated many options for succession, including selling to a third party. But they felt these options had significant disadvantages, especially for the employees, and decided to pursue a worker-owned cooperative, because it provided the best opportunity for employees to remain working in their respective positions for the long term.

Isthmus Engineering

Cooperative

Madison, Wisconsin
Industry: Manufacturing
Founded: 1980

Converted to Employee-owned: 1983

Employees: 62
Website: http://www.isthmuseng.com/

Isthmus Engineering & Manufacturing is a worker-owned cooperative specializing in custom automation solutions and equipment. At Isthmus, they know that the success of their employee-owned company is contingent on the performance of every member of the Isthmus team. Clients have Isthmus Engineering’s promise that the automation equipment they provide will be the result of the very best efforts of their entire staff.

Isthmus’s 62 employees, 32 of whom are worker-owners, together generate more than $20M in annual revenue.

Read more about Isthmus Engineering.

South Mountain Company

Cooperative

West Tisbury, Massachusetts
Industry: Construction
Founded: 1975

Converted to employee-owned: 1987

Employees: 33
Website: https://www.southmountain.com/

South Mountain began as a partnership in 1975, became a sole proprietorship in 1984, and re-structured as a worker cooperative in 1987. The transition to employee ownership was a dramatic hinge point in the history of the company. Ownership became available to all employees, enabling people to own and guide their workplace. The responsibility, the power, and the profits all belong to the group of owners. There are no outside investors and no non-employee owners. The employee-owners decide what type of business South Mountain Company will be.

Equity Atlas

Employee Trust

Portland, Oregon
Industry: Finance

Founded: 2016
Converted to Employee-Owned: 2016

Employees: 3

Website: https://www.equityatlas.com/

Equity Atlas is a worker-owned, community-inspired finance corporation dedicated to strengthening their clients’ financial well-being by building local equity and community ownership. As the first 100% worker-owned finance company, Equitly Atlas believes in the power of fairness, honesty, humanity, and a growth mindset. These values are woven into their founding principles and fuel their mission to create a better financial world and improve the lives of families and communities.

California Solar Electric Company

Cooperative

Grass Valley, California
Industry: Renewable Energy

Founded: 2000
Converted to Employee-Owned: 2019

Employees: 30

Website: https://californiasolarco.com/

Cal Solar is the first ever worker-owned cooperative in Nevada County, and the first worker-owned solar cooperative in California. Cal Solar is committed to the economic vitality of the community and believes in hiring and investing locally. The company’s entire staff of worker-owners resides in Nevada County.

PV Squared

Cooperative

Greenfield, Massachusetts
Industry: Renewable Energy

Founded: 2002

Employees: 43

Website: https://pvsquared.coop/

A designer and installer of renewable energy systems including solar, wind, and small hydro projects across Southwestern New England, PV Squared is committed to growing good, green, cooperative jobs.

Learn more about PV Squared.

Dara Nussbaum-Vazquez

Dara Nussbaum-Vazquez is passionate about increasing wealth and ownership among marginalized communities—especially low-income communities and communities of color—as a means to increase equity and realize healthy, thriving communities and our collective wellbeing.

Dara’s professional background spans economic development, urban planning, social entrepreneurship, workforce development, government, and community organizing. She has founded several entities and initiatives over her career, including the technology startup BronXchange (with the Bronx Cooperative Development Initiative and MIT CoLab), a procurement and business services platform that harnesses the purchasing power of anchor institutions and connects them to local vendors while generating community wealth. As Vice President at the New York City Economic Development Corporation, Dara managed external affairs and strategic partnerships for complex real estate development projects and programs. Dara has worked at the helm of regional non-profit organizations, most recently as Executive Director of Tech Foundry, a workforce development organization in Springfield, Massachusetts that elevates under-represented groups into sustainable careers in tech. Dara was selected by the Nathan Cummings Foundation to be one of three innovators confronting intractable problems of inequality through disruptive ideas.

Dara enjoys operating at the nexus of business, community, and government to generate new models and partnerships. She is motivated by ongoing learning, playing, and seeing impact.

dara@icagroup.org

David Hammer

David Hammer is the Executive Director of the ICA Group and a leading practitioner in the employee ownership field. He has assisted in the conversion, launch and growth of dozens of employee-owned firms and social enterprises.

Dave speaks frequently about the potential for employee ownership to address income inequality and improve job quality and is an experienced trainer on the nuts and bolts of employee ownership and business strategy. He is the author of numerous publications and resource guides, including Co-op Conversions at Scale: A Market Assessment for Expanding Worker Co-op Conversions in Key Regions & Sectors; Building Assets, Saving Jobs: Employee Ownership as a Job Stabilization Strategy in Massachusetts Gateway Cities; and The Framework for Democratic Control: An Introduction to Articles of Incorporation & by-Laws for Democratic Firms.

David joined the ICA Group in 2008 and served as a Senior Business Consultant until assuming the position of Executive Director in June 2013. He has spent his career supporting workers in their efforts to achieve meaningful economic control over their lives. Prior to joining ICA, he served as Assistant Director of Research of 1199SEIU, the largest health care union on the east coast. Previously, he was a Senior Research Analyst for UNITE in New York City and the United Steelworkers of America in Pittsburgh. David has worked on a wide variety of projects throughout the country in industries as diverse as long term care, child care, industrial laundries, apparel distribution, food retail, tire manufacturing, temporary staffing, hospitality, aluminum can manufacturing, as well as various small manufacturing settings.

David earned a Master’s of Science from the Labor Relations and Research Center at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and a Bachelor’s degree in History from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

dhammer@icagroup.org

Sandra Magri

Sandra joined the ICA Group in 2017 as Controller, and is responsible for all financial functions of the organization. Prior to joining ICA, Sandra served in leadership roles in the nonprofit sector in Boston, New York, and Springfield. Sandra earned an MBA from University of Phoenix, a BS in Accounting from Merrimack College, and holds a Certified Public Accounting license in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. In her spare time, Sandra can be found on a soccer field or at a gymnastics meet cheering on her children. She also serves as the Treasurer of the Parent Teacher Association of her children’s elementary school.

smagri@icagroup.org

Shelley Miller

Shelley Miller joined the ICA Group in August, 2019 as an Outreach Manager in New York City. In this role, Shelley hopes to greatly expand the knowledge of, and appreciation for, the transformative impact that employee-owned cooperatives can have on the American economic system.

Shelley brings more than 25 years of diverse experience in business, law, nonprofit administration, and education to ICA. As a former small business owner, and the daughter of a small business owner, Shelley looks forward to sharing her personal experiences with other businesses as they engage with cooperative ownership models.

Prior to joining ICA, Shelley spent 4 years as a coach and business developer working with immigrant small business owners at the New American Chamber of Commerce in Brooklyn, New York. Previously, she served as the Director of Adult Education at St. Nicks Alliance, a community development agency, and Director of Youth Development for the Jackie Robinson Center for Physical Culture (JRC). Shelley has also worked as an attorney in New York City government and in private practice.

Shelley holds a BA in Economics from Newcomb College at Tulane University and a JD from Tulane University School of Law.

smiller@icagroup.org

Shavon Prophet

As Outreach Manager, Shavon supports ICA’s work in child care and cooperative conversions by creating and implementing outreach strategies to nurture successful relationships with partners and clients. Prior to joining ICA, Shavon was the founder of a digital marketing agency and worked in marketing and communications roles for a number of social enterprises and mission-driven organizations. She is actively involved in the local start-up ecosystem and serves as a mentor for entrepreneurs of color with Spark EforAll Holyoke. Shavon earned her BA in Environmental Studies from Mount Holyoke College and is currently pursuing her Social Impact MBA at Marlboro College. Her forthcoming graduate capstone project is on the subject of inclusive social innovation.

sprophet@icagroup.org

Emma Rubin

Emma Rubin is a Cooperative Developer with the ICA Group. In this role, she supports the development of employee owned child care cooperatives in the Midwest, and brings child care providers together to address their shared business needs through secondary cooperatives. Emma is passionate about the role of employee ownership in creating a more just economy and society.

Before joining the ICA Group, Emma worked as the Co-Executive Director of the Chicago Community Bond Fund, a charitable bond fund working to end money bond (money bail) while alleviating the harms of pre-trial incarceration. For three years, she was an adult educator rooted in popular education, working with immigrant and refugee English language learners. She also brings experience in non-profit administration, public health, and community organizing. Emma received a Master’s in Public Health from San Francisco State University and a BA in Comparative American Studies from Oberlin College.

erubin@icagroup.org

Janet Van Liere

Janet joined the ICA Group in 2000 as a Business Consultant and currently manages the Alternative Staffing Alliance, which she helped launch in 2007. In this role, she facilitates peer learning and networking for practitioners across the U.S., documents sector best practices, and develops resources to support and promote this growing enterprise strategy for workforce development. Janet also performs feasibility analysis and business planning for selected projects.

Janet’s early career included credit management for a manufacturing firm and convention sales for the Tampa/Hillsborough Convention and Visitors Association. In the early 90’s she joined the U.S. Peace Corps as a volunteer Small Business Advisor in Bungoma, Kenya, working mainly with entrepreneurs and producer cooperatives. That led to a position with the Burlington, Vermont Community and Economic Development Office and the opportunity to work with and learn about community land trusts, community development loan funds, community supported agriculture, institutional procurement initiatives and other local, inclusive models for economic development.

Janet serves on the Board of Maine Recovery Fund, which provides wraparound services that support employment of people in recovery from substance use disorder or reentering from jail, prison, or military service. She also volunteers with Boston by Foot to lead walking tours about the city’s history and architecture. Janet earned an MS in Community Economic Development from Southern New Hampshire University and a BS in Business Administration from Grand Valley State University.

jvanliere@icagroup.org

Visitec Marketing Associates

Cooperative

St. Charles, Illinois
Industry: Electrical Equipment Wholesaler

Founded: 1986
Converted to Employee-Owned: 2018

Employees: 10

Website: https://www.visitec.com/

Visitec is an independent rep organization operating in the Midwest. Visitec also offers value-added distribution of a select group of manufacturers across the United States and Canada. Their primary objective is to help dealer integrators successfully design, sell, and implement advanced collaboration solutions and audio visual technologies.

A Yard & A Half

Cooperative

Waltham, MA
Industry: Landscaping

Founded: 1998
Converted to Employee-Owned: 2013

Employees: 35

Website: https://ayardandahalf.com/

A Yard & A Half Landscaping Cooperative, Inc. was formed in 2013 to preserve and continue to develop a locally-owned, safe, just, and democratic workplace in an industry where workers often face exploitation, wage theft, and hazardous working conditions. Participation in the cooperative is a financial and career investment for members, not just a job. Worker-owners participate in professional development, learning transferable skills and creating economic growth and self-sufficiency. The company also shares in the profits of labor, allowing the business to reinvest in their own local economy, communities, and families.

Learn more about A Yard & A Half.

KPH Healthcare Services, Inc.

ESOP

East Syracuse, New York
Industry: Health Care

Employees: 4000+

Website: https://www.kphhealthcareservices.com/en/

KPH is a national provider of pharmaceutical and health care services. They operate Kinney Drugs, a chain of 100 drug stores, an institutional pharmacy service, and a pharmacy benefit management company. KPH has over 4,000 employees and became 100% employee-owned in 2008. The ESOP is a critical element of the retirement plan and drives the customer focused culture throughout the company

Ewing Controls

Cooperative

Greenfield, Massachusetts
Industry: Manufacturing

Founded: 2001
Converted to Employee-Owned: 2017

Employees: 12

Website: http://ewingcontrols.com/

Ewing Controls is a small, dedicated team of engineers and other professionals passionate about producing the finest industrial control systems. Their specialty is engineering, building and servicing steam turbine generator controls for use in institutional and industrial facilities around the world. In 2017 Ewing Controls became a 100 percent employee-owned worker cooperative. Each worker-owner has an equal vote in electing their Board of Directors and receives an equal share of the company profits.

NYC Cargo Bike Collective

Cooperative

New York, New York
Industry: Delivery

Founded: 2008
Converted to Employee-Owned: 2016

Employees: 4

Website: https://cargobikecollective.wordpress.com/

Cargo Bike Collective Deliveries is a worker cooperative that offers cargo bike-based logistical solutions for a diverse clientele throughout the boroughs. Their mission is make carbon neutral logistics a large scale reality while also operating a functioning worker cooperative that values the quality of life of their riders. They operate with the input and direction of all riders, and provide a living wage.

Partner & Partners

Cooperative

New York, New York
Industry: Graphic Design

Founded: 2013
Converted to Employee-Owned: 2019

Employees: 5

Website: https://partnerandpartners.com/

Partner & Partners is a worker-owned design practice focusing on print, exhibition, interactive, and identity work with clients and collaborators in art, architecture, public space, and activism.

Davis Home Pros

Cooperative

Walnut Creek, California
Industry: Construction

Founded: 1998
Converted to Employee-Owned: 2019

Employees: 14

Website: http://www.davishomepros.com/

Davis Home Pros provides residential remodel and addition services to the homeowners of Central Contra Costa County; partnering with them to create a unique home of beauty, comfort and enjoyment; and doing so in a dependable and professional manner that is honest, cost effective, and environmentally responsible. Davis Home Pros serves their clients, employees and community and is a worker owned California Cooperative Corporation.

Soaring Independent

Cooperative
Madison, Wisconsin
Industry: Home Care
Founded: 2019
Employees: 4
Website: www.soaringindependent.com

Soaring Independent provides committed, competent, and compassionate care to it’s devoted clients. Soaring Independent Cooperative was founded by a group of women who are professional caregivers as well as family caregivers for aging relatives and children. With a shared 30 years of professional experience in healthcare, Soaring Independent builds flourishing communities for people needing care, family caregivers, and direct care professionals. The caregivers at Soaring Independent embody caring for a community as a community, and work to expand that care to their clients

Paragus IT

ESOP

Hadley, Massachusetts
Industry: IT Services

Founded: 2003
Converted to Employee-Owned: 2016

Website: https://www.paragusit.com/

Paragus IT provides outsourced IT services to small and medium businesses in the Pioneer Valley. These services include help desk services, IT project services, security and compliance, and IT strategy. The company employs 50 full time people and switched to employee ownership in 2016.

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