Shawn Furst (she/they)

Shawn Furst is an independent consultant working at the intersection of business and community, and wrestling with the systems, histories and values that are involved. She thinks in terms of strategy, governance, finance and operations, all with story, power and voice in mind. Shawn worked for over 12 years in democratic workplaces using consensus process, first at Free Geek Community Technology Center and then at People’s Food Co-op, both in Portland. They received an MBA in Sustainable Systems from Presidio Graduate School in 2021, and recently completed a participatory research project with the New Economy Coalition to recommend strategies for supporting regional solidarity economy ecosystems. They are currently training and project managing new manufactured housing co-op boards to help them buy their parks. Shawn has lived in Portland since 1996,  currently really likes tomatoes and the smell of cedar, and has a very cute cat (who honestly doesn’t care one lick about tomatoes or cedar).

JT Yu (he/they)

JT Yungian comes from a physics, biology, and engineering academic background but ultimately got into business and tech consulting for the majority of his career. During his free time, he is deeply involved in political, community and cooperative organizing. These combined experiences gave him a comprehensive social-ecological insight into how to build resilient communities and organizations. His lifelong goal is to help cultivate a large-scale cooperative network in order to replace the current extraction and exploitation based economy with a nuturing and solidarity based economy. He is one of the founders of SymbiOp, a worker-owned ecological garden shop landscaping cooperative based in Portland. He currently serves as their system developer and cooperative developer.

Kevin Christensen (he/him)

Kevin has led strategic campaigns for 20-plus years with workers and communities across the US centering economic, social and environmental justice. His work includes industry, market, corporate and key person research and craft communications, policy and organizing strategies with workers and frontline communities. Kevin is originally from Michigan, lived and organized in Oakland, CA for 20 years and moved to Portland, OR with his partner and their daughter in 2019.

Zen Trenholm (he/him)

Zen Trenholm is the Director of Employee Ownership Cities and Policy with the Democracy at Work Institute (DAWI), equipping cities with tools, technical assistance, and peer support to build equitable economies through worker ownership. He developed and managed the Shared Equity in Economic Development Fellowship program (SEED) in partnership with the National League of Cities, working with over 10 cities to advance shared ownership strategies including the preservation of minority-owned legacy businesses through transitions to employee ownership. In addition to building capacity at the municipal level, Zen informs state and federal employee ownership legislation and develops policy agendas, reports, and toolkits for lawmakers and advocates. He also serves on the steering committee of the Worker Owned Recovery California Coalition.

Prior to DAWI he was an organizer for fossil fuel divestment and a director at the California Student Sustainability Coalition. At UC Berkeley, he co-founded the Student Environmental Resource Center and after obtaining a Bachelor’s degree in Cooperative Business Development, he returned to his alma mater to launch a course on cooperative entrepreneurship.

John McNamara (he/him)

John joined Northwest Cooperative Development Center in the Spring of 2014. John has 26 years of practical experience in the worker cooperative world with Union Cab of Madison. John holds a Ph.D. in Business Administration and a Masters in Management: Cooperative and Credit Unions from Saint Mary’s University (Halifax) and now teaches in the Master’s program as part-time faculty. As a student researcher, he assisted in the development of the Co-op Index Report, a tool for measuring co-ops against the values and principles of cooperation. He also taught cooperatives at The Evergreen State College and the Presidio Graduate School and co-edited a collection of essays on measuring co-operatives available as an e-book at no cost from the Cooperative Difference. John also serves as Chair of the Union-Coops Council of the US Federation of Worker Cooperatives and serves on the Board of Directors of CooperationWorks!

Alexandra Devendra (she/her)

Alexandra (Alix) Devendra is the founder of Aligned Law, a Portland-based law firm serving purpose-driven organizations throughout California, Oregon and Washington. Her prior experience practicing employment law at a large corporate firm led Alix to conclude that our current way of working is severely broken and that the legal system is part of the problem. This is what drives Alix’s passion for the worker cooperative movement. She is also a Legal Fellow with the Sustainable Economies Law Center, which supports community resilience and grassroots economic empowerment.

Ra Criscitiello (she/her)

Ra Criscitiello, Esq. is Deputy Director of Research at SEIU-United Healthcare Workers West in Oakland, California, a labor union of nearly 100,000 healthcare workers. SEIU-UHW members are frontline caregivers, including respiratory care practitioners, dietary, environmental services, and nursing staff who aim to improve the healthcare system by providing quality care for all patients, expanding access to excellent, affordable healthcare for all Californians, and improving living standards for all workers. Ra’s work focuses on the intersection of organized labor and worker cooperatives, and she has built several innovative employment models that collectivize the employment status of unionized healthcare workers on scale. Ra’s work developing unionized cooperatives for healthcare workers demonstrates the possibility of a post-pandemic economic recovery that centers workers and allows flexibility without compromising traditional union values or worker control.

Michael Alden Peck (he/him)

Michael served for close to two decades as the International Delegate (USA) for the Mondragón Co-operative Corporation, and serves (for the past decade) as
board secretary of the American Sustainable Business Council, as a Blue Green Alliance corporate advisory board member since its start in 2006, and beginning in 2020 chairs the union-coop worX board (www.worxpriting.coop). In 2015, Michael co-founded and serves as the executive director of the non-profit 1worker1vote movement, focusing on hybrid shared worker ownership models starting with the union-coop template. Principal ecosystems include Cincinnati and Dayton, Ohio, with emerging ones in Central Brooklyn, Albuquerque/New Mexico, SE Indiana, Portland/Oregon, and elsewhere. In April 2020, Michael co-founded his second company, The Virtuous Cycle Collaboratory, as a majority-minority, for-profit worker-cooperative and social enterprise whose mission is to “flatten extractive socioeconomic curves into shared prosperity virtuous cycles”.