The second most common form of employee ownership in the United States is the worker cooperative where workers participate in both the financial success and governance of the firms. Today there are over 750 worker cooperatives in the United States, which is triple the amount that existed in 2012. How do we know these numbers? Unlike the number of ESOPs which can be tracked using publicly available data generated by the government, there is no public entity that tracks worker cooperatives. Instead, it has been nonprofit groups that have filled in this gap in knowledge. On this episode I speak with Olga Prushinskaya and Jamie Pockrandt of the Democracy at Work Institute, a national organization committed to worker cooperative development – which includes gather data on worker cooperatives. We talk about their soon to be released State of the Sector report and what it found regarding worker cooperatives as well as other projects they have been working on which aim to better understand the impact that employee ownership is having on workers, companies, and communities.
As DAWI's metrics and impact analyst, Olga works to understand and communicate impact in the growing field of worker ownership. Olga is a dynamic and mission-driven data scientist with a background in public health and a focus on health equity. Her work has spanned a variety of fields in addition to worker ownership, including youth housing services, pulmonary medicine, chronic disease management, and maternal and infant health. Olga has an MPH in Health Behavior and Health Education from the University of Michigan and a BS in Microbiology from Michigan State University. Olga is a 2021/22 Executive Fellow at Rutgers University's Institute for the Study of Employee Ownership and Profit Sharing at the School of Management and Labor Relations. When not thinking about data, she can be found working on an art or sewing project.
Jamie Pockrandt supports DAWI's organizational initiatives through data management and systems design. She recently received a BA in Social Psychology from Portland State University, with a focus on applications at work and in community. Previously, Jamie has supported research addressing the impacts of access to community resources on individual opportunity and well-being, the development of a respectful workplace climate, and has coauthored work in occupational health psychology regarding mistreatment and stress in the workplace. Prior to her work in research, Jamie worked in relationship management and education in the context of sustainable supply chains in the coffee industry, during which time she assisted in the development and management of small-scale client-funded economic development initiatives with coffee-producing partner organizations around mostly Latin America and East Africa. She also holds a BA in Creative Writing from Naropa University and enjoys listening to science fiction audiobooks in her free time.
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This episode of the Owners At Work podcast is brought to you with support from Eide Bailly. With over 25 years of experience Eide Baily provide a full range of ESOP services including feasibility and succession planning analysis, corporate audit and tax compliance, mature ESOP consulting, and sustainability analysis for mature ESOP companies.
The Owners at Work Podcast is a continuation of the biannual Owners at Work Newsletter which ran for 19 years (1990-2019). We are hoping to continue the same conversations and focus on providing updates on everything employee ownership. We plan to interview practitioners with expertise in different facets of employee ownership, academics doing new and interesting research, and most importantly, individuals who have a personal experience with employee ownership, including current and former employee-owners, mid-level to C suite management, and selling owners.
We want to produce a show that engages with relevant questions and provides practical lessons and information. We want this podcast to include the voices of those who practice employee-ownership each and every day. To that end we want to hear from you! We want to highlight what you are doing, whether you are an employee-owned company, a practitioner, or researcher.
***Please reach out via email: oeoc@kent.edu
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