Shawn Berry

Natalie Reitman-White: Restructuring Organically Grown Co. to a Perpetual Purpose Trust

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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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Natalie Reitman-White served as Vice President of Organizational Vitality and Trade Advocacy at Organically Grown Company, one of the largest independent distributors of organic produce in the country, where in 2018 she led an groundbreaking move to restructure the company ownership under a Perpetual Purpose Trust.

This initiative was featured in 2019 Fast Company’s World Changing Ideas, and Natalie was recognized as “a leading executive and change-maker in efforts to make food supply greener, healthier and equitable.”

She founded and served as the Executive Director of the Sustainable Food Trade Association (2008-12), she was on the faculty of the Institute for Sustainable Environment, serves on numerous advisory boards throughout the organic food sector.

Recently Natalie has shifted her focus to transformative finance and ownership models that ensure mission maximization, shared prosperity for multiple-stakeholders and lasting independence through growth or business transition.

In the last year she supported the launch of the Purpose Foundation to grow the movement toward a new paradigm of “steward-ownership” in the U.S. through field building, infrastructure development, and investment.

In 2020 she co-launched Alternative Ownership Advisors, is a Trustee of the Sustainable Food & Agriculture Purpose Trust, and is in Cohort 5 of the New Zealand Edmund Hillary Fellowship for Global Change Makers.

Interview Highlights:

  • Natalie’s background as an activist that informed her work to shift corporate behavior that is irresponsible to it’s stakeholders

  • Translating principles of regeneration in a farming context to a business context

  • Examining the purpose of a corporation and making a distinction between driving shareholder value and actual value

  • A background on Organically Grown Company’s mission, operations, and iterations of the company’s structure to be ever closer to the values that inform the mission

  • Organically Grown Company’s innovating on the Employee Owned Trust model by making it multi-stakeholder and anchoring it in the purpose of transforming food and agriculture – a “Perpetual Purpose Trust”

Resources:

Alternative Ownership Advisors: A Steward Ownership Consultancy

Fast Company: This company pioneered a new business structure to preserve its mission

Next City: Why Employee Ownership Wasn’t Good Enough for This Organic Food Company

The National Center for Employee Ownership

Christopher Michael: Could the Employee Ownership Trust Better Sustain Perpetual Employee Ownership?

Christopher Michael P.C. – Employee Ownership Law

The Climate Collaborative

Sustainable Food Trade Association

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LIFT Economy is an impact consulting firm whose mission is to create, model, and share a locally self-reliant economy that works for the benefit of all life.

Shawn Berry is a Partner at LIFT Economy, where he works as 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.

Esteban Kelly: Transformative Justice, Economic Democracy, & Collective Liberation

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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Esteban Kelly is a visionary leader and compassionate strategist who inspires organizers by drawing on science fiction, social theory, and collective liberation. Uniting close friends and long-time co-organizers, Esteban was inspired to co-create AORTA culling together his creative energy and organizational skills for expanding food sovereignty, solidarity economy & cooperative business, gender justice & queer liberation, and movements for racial justice.

Esteban’s work is vast. In addition to working for AORTA, he is the Co-Executive Director for the US Federation of Worker Co-ops (USFWC), and a co-founder and current board President of the cross-sector Philadelphia Area Cooperative Alliance (PACA).

Internationally, Esteban has advocated for workplace democracy through the ICA (International Cooperative Alliance) and CICOPA (the international worker co-op federation), and for land reform and other social movements from Canada to Brazil.

After many years as a PhD student of Marxist Geographers at the CUNY Graduate Center, Esteban has left academia with a Masters in Anthropology. Most recently, Esteban worked as Development Director and then Staff Director for the New Economy Coalition. From 2009-2011, Esteban served as Vice President of the USFWC, and a board member of the Democracy At Work Institute (DAWI) and the US Solidarity Economy Network. He is also a previous Director of Education & Training and Board President of NASCO (North American Students for Cooperation) where he was inducted into their Cooperative Hall of Fame in 2011. He currently serves on the boards of the Cooperative Development Foundation (CDF) and the National Cooperative Business Association (NCBA–CLUSA), and is an advisor to the network of artist-activist trainers, Beautiful Trouble.

Firmly rooted in West Philly, Esteban’s skills and analysis of transformative justice stem from his decade-plus of organizing with the Philly Stands Up collective. Similarly, Esteban worked through a major food co-op transition as a worker–owner at Mariposa Food Co-op, where he co-founded its Food Justice & Anti-Racism working group (FJAR) and labored to institutionalize the Mariposa Staff Collective. In light of these efforts, Esteban became a Mayoral appointee to the Philadelphia Food Policy Advisory Council (FPAC), and works to advance education, systemic thinking, and anti-oppression organizing into all of his food advocacy work. 

You can contact Esteban at: esteban(at)aorta(dot)coop and follow him on Twitter: @estebantitos

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Some highlights from Shawn Berry’s conversation with Esteban Kelly include:

  • Esteban’s nonlinear and emergent visionary approach to movement leadership as well as his own career trajectory

  • Unpacking terms like Economic Democracy, Transformative Justice, & Collective Liberation

  • Exploring some of the historic cultural erasure of the cooperative economic heritage of communities of color

  • Differentiating capitalism from economics and business & increasing awareness of the is in the collective consciousness

  • How Esteban maintains hope and inspiration by focusing in on the generative work of constructing a better economy while being in allyship with resistance movements

Resources:

Frantz Fanon

Transformative Justice

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LIFT Economy is an impact consulting firm whose mission is to create, model, and share a locally self-reliant economy that works for the benefit of all life.

Shawn Berry, Partner at LIFT Economy, works as 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. You can follow Shawn on Twitter @sd_berry or email him shawn@lifteconomy.com.

Brendan Martin: Non-extractive Finance with Tailor-made Business Support

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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Next Economy MBA

The Next Economy MBA is a nine month project-based learning course for entrepreneurs and aspiring entrepreneurs who want to learn key business fundamentals (e.g., vision, culture, strategy, and operations) from a regenerative, Next Economy perspective.

Brendan Martin is founder and director of The Working World, a cooperative financial institution and business incubator based in Argentina, Nicaragua, and the United States. Brendan originally moved to Argentina in 2004 to work with a group of Argentines in support of the “recovered factory” phenomenon, and out of this was born TWW and its non-extractive financing. Despite dire predictions of investing in the recovered factory movement, TWW achieved a 98% return rate across over 715 loans, and all with repayments only from profit sharing and without guarantees. This experience demonstrated both that grassroots cooperative movements can be economically viable and that finance can be non-extractive and subservient to people. After this success, Brendan helped open a second branch in Nicaragua in 2009, and another in the United States in 2012. The same grassroots cooperative efforts and have proven effective in the context of the US, where TWW has already funded 20+ cooperatives, including New Era Windows, which emerged from the infamous Republic Windows and Doors in Chicago. Brendan is a 2009 Ashoka fellow, a two time Ashoka Globalizer, a 2016 BALLE Local Economy Fellow, a nominated Prime Mover, and a frequent speaker on the solidarity and cooperative economy.

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Some highlights from Shawn’s interview with Brendan include:

  • The birth of The Working World and it’s deep roots in Brendan’s family experiences

  • Driven by community instead of profit extraction, The Working World’s lending practices revolve around serving investees first

  • Staying true to their model for the long haul, The Working World has achieved a 98% repayment rate, the funds for which are derived exclusively from the financial success of the companies

  • Brendan’s plans to expand The Working World’s impact and the broader impact network’s cooperative structure for a financial commons

 

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Shawn Berry is a Partner at LIFT Economy, where he works as 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.

LIFT Economy is an impact consulting firm whose mission is to create, model, and share a locally self-reliant economy that works for the benefit of all life. You can follow Shawn on Twitter @sd_berry or email him shawn@lifteconomy.com.

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Farhad Ebrahimi: Widening Our Circles for a Just Transition Toward a Regenerative Economy

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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Farhad Ebrahimi is the founder and chair of the Chorus Foundation, which works for a just transition to a regenerative economy in the United States. The Chorus Foundation supports communities on the front lines of the old, extractive economy to build new bases of political, economic, and cultural power for systemic change.

Farhad’s family history has been defined by multiple cultures, nationalities, political revolutions, and refugee experiences. To say that his parents talked politics at home when he was growing up would be an understatement, and the experience of being a first­-generation Iranian American throughout the 1980s had a profound impact on Farhad in ways that he’s still unpacking. These early experiences – combined with a lifelong love of punk and subversive art in general – have defined a political trajectory that’s informed both his personal and professional outlook.

Through his work with Chorus, Farhad is most interested in the question of how philanthropy might play a role in putting itself out of business. Which is to say, how can the redistribution of consolidated wealth support the transition to a world in which such wealth is no longer extracted and consolidated in the first place? It is in this context that Chorus will be spending down its entire endowment by 2023.

Farhad serves on the boards of the Democracy Alliance and the Wildfire Project. He graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2002 with a bachelor's degree in Mathematics with Computer Science, and currently lives in Brooklyn.

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Some highlights from Shawn’s interview with Farhad include:

  • How Farhad’s unique mixed-race family and background in punk music and art informs his work with the Chorus Foundation

  • Spending time with and funding communities directly impacted by climate change and resource extraction resulting in support for the Just Transition framework and 3 key learnings: 1) social change requires social movements 2) systemic problems require systems systemic solutions 3) local place-based engagement is where it all comes together

  • How and why philanthropy should be putting itself out of business in order to realize a regenerative and just economy

  • A closer look at the communities and enterprises the Chorus Foundation supports

 

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You can listen/subscribe to Next Economy Now on iTunes, Overcast, Stitcher, or your favorite podcasting platform.

 

Help these ideas reach more ears by clicking HERE to rate Next Economy Now on iTunes & by sharing on social media.

 

Shawn Berry is a Partner at LIFT Economy, where he works as 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.

LIFT Economy is an impact consulting firm whose mission is to create, model, and share a locally self-reliant economy that works for the benefit of all life. You can follow Shawn on Twitter @sd_berry or email him shawn@lifteconomy.com.

Neal Gorenflo: Shareable Turns the Page with "Sharing Cities: Activating the Urban Commons"

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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Neal Gorenflo is the Executive Director and co­founder of Shareable, a nonprofit solutions news outlet that covers the latest social innovations in resource sharing, new economy, and cities. He is a speaker, consultant, and writer on sharing cities, the sharing economy, and the future of work. He is the co­editor of the new book, “Sharing Cities: Activating the Urban Commons.” As a leader in the sharing movement, he advises mayors, communities, and organizations around the world how to meet their goals through sharing. Not surprisingly, Neal is an avid sharer whose year of living shareably life experiment was covered by FastCompany, Sunset Magazine, and 7x7. As a social entrepreneur, Neal's timely call to action is simple: share.

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Some highlights from Shawn’s interview with Neal include:

  • How Neal discovered the 10x effect of a social network based on purpose called the Abundance League in San Francisco between 2005 and 2010

  • The bastardization of the perception of the “sharing economy” and the signs of hope that can redeem what the sharing economy really means (ie: platform cooperatives)

  • The need for enterprise ecosystems to actualize sharing cities to create more virtuous cycles

  • We don’t have to wait for solutions to come to us; we have them now; and can act on them today (*This names explicitly is what this Next Economy Now podcast is all about!)

 

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You can listen/subscribe to Next Economy Now on iTunes, Overcast, Stitcher, or your favorite podcasting platform.

 

Help these ideas reach more ears by clicking HERE to rate Next Economy Now on iTunes & by sharing on social media.

 

Shawn Berry is a Partner at LIFT Economy, where he works as 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.

LIFT Economy is an impact consulting firm whose mission is to create, model, and share a locally self-reliant economy that works for the benefit of all life. You can follow Shawn on Twitter @sd_berry or email him shawn@lifteconomy.com.

Ed Whitfield: Racial Justice Meets Non-Extractive Financing

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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Ed Whitfield is Co-­founder and Co­-managing director of the Fund for Democratic Communities. He is a long time social justice, anti ­ war and community activist. After graduating as a Presidential Scholar from Little Rock Central High School in the late 60s, he went on to Cornell University where he became the leader of the Black student organization during the period of struggle for Black Studies.

Ed is deeply involved in theorizing and promoting the development of cooperative enterprises in marginalized communities in the south. He helped to create the Southern Reparations Loan Fund to finance sustainable, democratically owned and democratically controlled businesses in communities that do not attract capital due to racist and extractive banking and investment practices.

Ed is Chair of the Board of Directors of the Southern Reparations Loan Fund, on the Advisory Board of the Florida Dream Defenders and serves on the boards of the New Economy Coalition (NEC) and The Working World (TWW). In his free time he build and plays flutes and bass guitars and plays guitar and sings the blues.

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Some highlights from Shawn’s interview with Ed include:

  • Ed's circuitous 50 year path as an activist from witnessing lynch mobs in the streets where he grew up to impact investing

  • Examining the idea of “productive justice” – who owns the capacity to produce and how can we create more opportunities for people to be fully productive

  • How most of the social justice issues have economic issues at their root

  • How philanthropy is an afterthought of extraction

  • The notion of “commons thinking” and creating a “financial commons” and how the Southern Reparations Loans Fund attempts to build momentum toward this end

  • How the Renaissance Community Cooperative arose from the cracks and what the Southern Reparations Loan Fund & The Working World are offering non-extractive lending and other support in the face of systemic and structural racism

 

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You can listen/subscribe to Next Economy Now on iTunes, Overcast, Stitcher, or your favorite podcasting platform.

Help these ideas reach more ears by clicking HERE to rate Next Economy Now on iTunes & by sharing on social media.

Shawn Berry is a Partner at LIFT Economy, where he works as 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.  LIFT Economy is an impact consulting firm whose mission is to create, model, and share a locally self-reliant economy that works for the benefit of all life. You can follow Shawn on Twitter @sd_berry or email him shawn@lifteconomy.com.

Rebecca Adamson: Indigenous Self Determination & Principles Benefiting Both People & Business

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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Rebecca Adamson, an Indigenous economist, is Founder and President of First Peoples Worldwide, the first US based global Indigenous Peoples NGO, which makes grants and provides technical assistance and advocacy directly to Indigenous-led development projects. Rebecca has worked directly with grassroots tribal communities, both domestically and internationally, as an advocate of local tribal issues since 1970. She established the premiere US development institute, First Nations Development Institute, in 1980 and in 1997 she founded First Peoples Worldwide.

Rebecca's work established the first microenterprise loan fund in the United States; the first tribal investment model; and, a national movement for reservation land reform. Her work established a new field of culturally appropriate, values-driven development, which led to legislation that established new standards of accountability regarding federal trust responsibility for Native Americans. She currently serves on the Board of Directors for the Bay and Paul Foundations and the Calvert Social Investment Fund.

As a trustee of Calvert, Rebecca partnered with the Fund to create the first Indigenous Peoples' rights investment screen in 1999, and led the creation of the Indigenous Rights Risk Report, the first quantitative assessment of corporate risk exposure to Indigenous Peoples' rights, in 2014. In 2015 she has established three Shareholder Advocacy Leadership Training Centers located in Guatemala, Mexico and Canada as a new strategy for Indigenous leaders in addressing extractive industry on Indigenous territories. She was appointed as an advisor to the U.S. Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative Multi-Stakeholder Group, serving from 2014 to the present. She holds a Masters in Science in Economic Development.
 

Some highlights from Shawn’s interview with Rebecca include:

  • Rebecca’s role with Indian-controlled schools leading up to the Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act of 1975 and how this shaped her strategy of focusing on culture, development, and financial self-sufficiency

  • The history of the Lakota fund which birthed the microfinance movement in the U.S.

  • A comparison of the key underlying paradigm informing traditional Indigenous economic principles and values with the current dominant principles and values of capitalism

  • Nuanced history and details of DAPL and the larger pattern in which it fits

  • How using Indigenous economic principles have demonstrated superior economic performance in terms of both financial metrics as well as holistically

 

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You can listen/subscribe to Next Economy Now on iTunes, Overcast, Stitcher, or your favorite podcasting platform.

Help these ideas reach more ears by clicking HERE to rate Next Economy Now on iTunes & by sharing on social media.

Shawn Berry is a Partner at LIFT Economy, where he works as 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.

LIFT Economy is an impact consulting firm whose mission is to create, model, and share a locally self-reliant economy that works for the benefit of all life. You can follow Shawn on Twitter @sd_berry or email him shawn@lifteconomy.com.

Tyler Gage: Using the Lessons of the Amazon to Live Your Mission in Business and Life

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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Tyler Gage is an entrepreneur, author and speaker who uses wisdom from the Amazon and start­up success to bring innovation and inspiration to growing organizations.

Tyler has spent the last 12 years studying with indigenous elders in the Amazon rainforest, venturing far from his suburban roots at the age of 20. After graduating from Brown University, Tyler turned down a Fulbright grant to start RUNA, a social enterprise that makes energizing beverages with guayusa (pronounced gwhy-you-suh), a rare Amazonian leaf, and improves livelihoods for 3,000 indigenous farming families in Ecuador. With over 70 employees and 15,000 stores selling RUNA beverages in the US and Canada, RUNA has grown to be one of the 500 Fastest Growing Companies in the US according to Inc Magazine.

Tyler was named a Forbes “30 Under 30 Entrepreneur” and winner of both the Big Apple Entrepreneur of the Year Award and the Specialty Food Association's Citizen Leader of the Year Award. ABC Nightline, National Geographic and Richard Branson's book Screw Business as Usual have all featured Tyler for his unique and powerful approach to building businesses and creating social good.

Tyler also serves on the Board of Directors of DavidsTea (NASDAQ: DTEA) and on the Advisory Council for Entrepreneurship at Brown University. In addition to advising and investing in other start­ups, Tyler is a co­founding partner and strategic advisor to NAKU, a pioneering indigenous healing center in the Ecuadorian Amazon.

Tyler lives in Bellingham, Washington with his wife Michelle and enjoys boxing, yoga, riding his unicycle and studying ethnobotany.
 

Some highlights from Shawn’s interview with Tyler include:

  • Tyler’s liberal arts approach to business and use of the culture around guayusa to inform RUNA’s business model

  • The strategic reasons behind the tandem for-profit and nonprofit approach that enables RUNA to not perpetuate harmful dynamics of past business (ie: United Fruit Company)

  • Tyler discusses his new book – Fully Alive: Using the Lessons of the Amazon to Live Your Mission in Business and Life

  • The power and  importance of embedding the organization's beneficial impact in the structural DNA and core operations of the business rather than tacking programs onto the business

  • How inspired Tyler feels about organizations like Tanka Bar and Kara Solar (see Resources section below)

Resources:

ORGANIZATIONS:

BOOKS:

 

You can listen/subscribe to Next Economy Now on iTunes, Overcast, Stitcher, or your favorite podcasting platform.

Help these ideas reach more ears by clicking HERE to rate Next Economy Now on iTunes & by sharing on social media.

Shawn Berry is a Partner at LIFT Economy, where he works as 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.  LIFT Economy is an impact consulting firm whose mission is to create, model, and share a locally self-reliant economy that works for the benefit of all life. You can follow Shawn on Twitter @sd_berry or email him shawn@lifteconomy.com.

John Abrams: Behind the Scenes at the World’s Top Scoring B Corp

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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In this episode of Next Economy Now, Shawn Berry, a Partner at LIFT Economy, interviews John Abrams, founder and CEO of the South Mountain Co, a Design Build construction firm operating for over 4 decades on Martha’s vineyard. They are a worker owned cooperative and boast the highest B Corp certification score in the world! His book Companies We Keep, is a seminal work for the growing movement of worker coop buyouts.

 

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In this interview we discuss:

  • John’s background coming from the back to the land movement in the 60’s

  • The political climate following the recent election

  • Climate change and the need for solutions

  • Triple bottom line peer business support network

  • Their strong family centric culture

  • ROI on the best employee benefits package in the world including home ownership and renewable energy

  • Their limits on building big

  • Commitment to affordable housing & place

  • How they survived the great recession and their plan for the next one

  • Building a company culture that makes it safe to fail

  • Trust in people is paramount

  • What the company looks like after he is gone

 In addition to listening on B the Change Media, you can listen/subscribe to Next Economy Now on iTunes, Overcast, Stitcher, or your favorite podcasting platform.

 

Shawn Berry is a Partner at LIFT Economy, where he works as 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.

LIFT Economy is an impact consulting firm whose mission is to create, model, and share a locally self-reliant economy that works for the benefit of all life. You can follow Shawn on Twitter @sd_berry or email him shawn@lifteconomy.com.

Omar Freilla: Worker Cooperative Development as a Comprehensive Solution for Our Time

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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In this episode of Next Economy Now, Shawn Berry, a Partner at LIFT Economy, interviews Omar Freilla. Omar is the founder and coordinator for Green Worker Cooperatives in the South Bronx, where they run the Coop Academy to empower a new generation of small local businesses that are cooperatively owned and operated.  Shawn first met Omar in 2004 after the founding of the USFWC when he came to visit Shawn at his woodworking co-op in SF.  It’s been a pleasure for Shawn to see Omar’s work grow and develop over the years.

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In this interview we discuss:

  • Why coops are such powerful and deep solutions, socially, environmentally and economically.

  • Omar’s experience visiting the Mondragon Coops in Spain

  • Common misconceptions about coops

  • How the current political and economic climate make this work more important than ever

  • New York City’s groundbreaking funding & coalition for coop development

  • Successes and best practices from the Coop Academy

 

In addition to listening on B the Change Media, you can listen/subscribe to Next Economy Now on iTunes, Overcast, Stitcher, or your favorite podcasting platform.

 

Shawn Berry is a Partner at LIFT Economy, where he works as 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.

LIFT Economy is an impact consulting firm whose mission is to create, model, and share a locally self-reliant economy that works for the benefit of all life. You can follow Shawn on Twitter @sd_berry or email him shawn@lifteconomy.com.

 

Jessica Bonanno + Adam Trott: Cooperative models for community based economic development

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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In this episode of Next Economy Now, Shawn Berry, a Partner at LIFT Economy, interviews Jessica Bonanno from the Democracy Collaborative and Adam Trott from the Valley Alliance of Worker Cooperatives. The Democracy Collaborative has been doing important work around community wealth building, one of their most notable projects being the Evergreen Cooperatives in Cleveland, OH.  The Valley Alliance of Worker Cooperatives (VAWC) is a cooperative  of 8 worker-coops in Western Massachusetts created to serve their members and promote the development of the cooperative economy.

 

In this interview we discuss:

  • Their personal stories bringing them into this work

  • Trends in cooperative development

  • Ownership as a pathway to community development

  • VAWC’s inter-coop development fund

  • Evergreen Coops network of companies

  

In addition to listening on B the Change Media, you can listen/subscribe to Next Economy Now on iTunes, Overcast, Stitcher, or your favorite podcasting platform.

 

Shawn Berry is a Partner at LIFT Economy, where he works as 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.

LIFT Economy is an impact consulting firm whose mission is to create, model, and share a locally self-reliant economy that works for the benefit of all life. You can follow Shawn on Twitter @sd_berry or email him shawn@lifteconomy.com.

Rha Goddess: Aligning Entrepreneurial Approach with Awareness and Clarity of Purpose

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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In this episode of Next Economy Now, Shawn Berry, a Partner at LIFT Economy, interviews Rha Goddess, founder of Move The Crowd.

 

Rha is a cultural innovator and social entrepreneur who brings over two decades of transformational “crowd rockin’” in the name of social change. Rha is the founder of Move the Crowd, which provides rigorous entrepreneurial training to create a conscious entrepreneurial movement dedicated to re-imagining “work” and ushering in a new culture and socio-economic paradigm.

 

In this interview, Shawn and Rha discuss a number of topics, including:

  • How her background and experience in civil rights and hip hop lead to training entrepreneurs

  • Aligning entrepreneurs with the “why” before the “how”

  • Her learnings and successes working with social entrepreneurs

  • How to invite in creativity in the context of business

  • How the rising social justice awareness of these times feeds into her work.

  • The future of our movements

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In addition to listening on B the Change Media, you can listen/subscribe to Next Economy Now on iTunes, Overcast, Stitcher, or your favorite podcasting platform.

 

Shawn Berry is a Partner at LIFT Economy, where he works as 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.

LIFT Economy is an impact consulting firm whose mission is to create, model, and share a locally self-reliant economy that works for the benefit of all life. You can follow Shawn on Twitter @sd_berry or email him shawn@lifteconomy.com.

Kate Williams: Global Movement of Companies Investing 1% for the Planet

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. 

SUBSCRIBE & RATE us on iTunes, Spotify, Pandora, YouTube, or anywhere you find podcasts!

Next Economy Now highlights the leaders who are taking a regenerative, bio-regional, democratic, transparent, and whole-systems approach to solving social and environmental challenges.

The goal of this podcast is to identify the trends, tips, and best practices that will help listeners better harness the power of business as a force for good.

In this episode, Shawn Berry, a Partner at LIFT Economy, interviews Kate Williams, CEO of 1% for the Planet, an alliance of businesses financially committed to creating a healthy planet by donating 1% of their sales to environmental non-profits.

Founded in 2002 by Yvon Chouinard of Patagonia, 1% for the Planet has grown into a global movement of more than 1200 member companies in 48 countries, all donating at least 1% of annual sales to sustainability initiatives. In just over 10 years 1% for the Planet companies have given more than $100 million back to Blue.

In this interview, Shawn and Kate discuss a number of topics, including:

  • Kate’s path as an environmental entrepreneur

  • The history and success of 1%

  • Kate’s influences and inspirations

  • The state of the movement

  • What the future might look like

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In addition to listening on B the Change Media, you can listen/subscribe to Next Economy Now on iTunes, Overcast, Stitcher, or your favorite podcasting platform.

 

Shawn Berry is a Partner at LIFT Economy, where he works as 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.

LIFT Economy is an impact consulting firm whose mission is to create, model, and share a locally self-reliant economy that works for the benefit of all life. You can follow Shawn on Twitter @sd_berry or email him shawn@lifteconomy.com.

Scott Morris: How "Complementary Currencies" Support Vibrant Local Economies

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. 

SUBSCRIBE & RATE us on iTunes, Spotify, Pandora, YouTube, or anywhere you find podcasts!

Next Economy Now highlights the leaders who are taking a regenerative, bio-regional, democratic, transparent, and whole-systems approach to solving social and environmental challenges. 

The goal of this podcast is to identify the trends, tips, and best practices that will help listeners better harness the power of business as a force for good.

In this episode, Shawn Berry, a Partner at LIFT Economy, interviews Scott Morris. Scott is an economist, community organizer and social entrepreneur. He has dedicated his career to solving the problem of why the economy only works well for some, while others get left out. He is currently the founder and CEO of IthaCash. Ithacash is "Money Made for Main St.", a regional cooperative currency program for in-and-around Tompkins County, New York where the marketplace & local money work together for local people, causes, and economies by offering another way to meet real needs.

Ithacash serves the community by granting homegrown funding to area civic organizations and fostering local resilience. Ithacash is building on the legacy of the Ithaca HOURs currency program begun in 1991 and will be a flagship pilot program for Qoin's community currency software in the US.

In this interview, Shawn and Scott discuss a number of topics, including:

  • Scott’s personal journey coming to this work

  • Creating a new currency and aspects of currency design

  • New developments in complementary currencies

  • Benefits created for local economy

  • History and case studies of successful currencies

To listen to this podcast, please click the image at the top of the article.

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In addition to listening on B the Change Media, you can listen/subscribe to Next Economy Now on iTunes, Overcast, Stitcher, or your favorite podcasting platform.

 

Shawn Berry is a Partner at LIFT Economy, where he works as 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.

LIFT Economy is an impact consulting firm whose mission is to create, model, and share a locally self-reliant economy that works for the benefit of all life. You can follow Shawn on Twitter @sd_berry or email him shawn@lifteconomy.com.

Shawn Berry: Reinventing Organizations and "Going Teal"

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. 

SUBSCRIBE & RATE us on iTunes, Spotify, Pandora, YouTube, or anywhere you find podcasts!

LIFT Partners Ryan Honeyman and Shawn Berry discuss the book "Reinventing Organizations" by Frederic Laloux, the concept of "going teal," and the emergence of self-managing organizations.

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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. 

SUBSCRIBE & RATE us on iTunes, Spotify, Pandora, YouTube, or anywhere you find podcasts!

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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Ryan Honeyman: What is "Value-Based" Invoicing?

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. 

SUBSCRIBE & RATE us on iTunes, Spotify, Pandora, YouTube, or anywhere you find podcasts!

In this discussion, LIFT Partners Ryan Honeyman and Shawn Berry discuss LIFT's modified "value-based" fee approach that allows clients to adjust invoices up or down based on the value they feel they received.

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