Shawn Berry: The Benefits and Drawbacks of Worker-Owned Cooperatives

Next Economy Now highlights the leaders who are taking a regenerative, bio-regional, equitable, transparent, and whole-systems approach to using business as a force for good. 

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Shawn Berry is an organizational strategist inspired to harness the power of business to create resilient local economies as patterns to be documented, open sourced, scaled globally and adapted regionally. Shawn left an early career path in nuclear physics research to found the Woodshanti Cooperative (1997-2011), a custom cabinet and furniture shop in San Francisco that set the standard for ethical craftsmanship in the green building movement. This hands on experience as an entrepreneur combined with community organizing and systems theory to craft the vision for LIFT Economy to model an economy that works for all life.

Shawn is especially gifted at assessing and addressing gaps in the ways in which we organize our businesses and our lives. He has remarkable skills in being able to stay present in the often chaotic environment of leading a business, as he helps clients craft and adapt frameworks and models to enable them to be more efficient and effective. Shawn’s experience with working in democratic, multi-stakeholder work environments enables him to offer invaluable counseling in organizing business structures and communicating effectively with partners, employees and board members. Email him at shawn (at) lifteconomy (dot) com.

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