employee-ownership
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Hamdi Ulukaya Bought the Factory Everyone Else Had Finished With
A junk-mail advertisement led him to a silent yogurt plant in upstate New York. What followed became a food company and a stubborn argument that factories, workers and newcomers deserve another look.
Stephanie Silverman Built a Washington Firm - Then Gave Its People a Stake
The founder of Venn Strategies spent decades arguing that workers should share in the companies they build. Then she made the argument personal.
Stephanie Crockett Spent 19 Years Learning the Agency. Then It Became Everyone’s Business.
After nearly two decades inside Mower, Stephanie Crockett inherited a founder’s chair and an employee-owned future. Her method is less corporate theatre than candor, community and the steady work of earning trust.
Mike Francis Is Turning a Garage Experiment Into Infrastructure Armor
The NanoTech Materials CEO went from programming a calculator he meant to use for cheating to building ceramic coatings for roofs, bridges and industrial plants. His harder invention may be a company where every employee gets to think like an owner.
Dan Kenary Bet the Brewery on the People Who Built It
Harpoon began as three friends chasing the local beer culture they had found in Europe. Nearly four decades later, Kenary's most revealing product is not an IPA but a durable idea: let the people doing the work own the future.
Todd Kaufman Built a Software Company That Its Employees Could Own
A sixth-grade encounter with BASIC led to a career in code, a roadside Chili’s led to Test Double, and a stubborn question about fairness led its founders to give the company to its employees.
Isaac Baker Is Making Solar Work for the Buildings the Market Forgot
The Boston founder built Resonant Energy around a stubborn idea: clean power should lower costs for nonprofits and affordable housing, not wait for the easiest roof and richest owner.
Connor Rouan Is Turning the Ceiling Into an Energy Dashboard
The SiteWorx CEO learned the business from installation sites upward. Now he is betting that the most useful climate technology may be the kind a facility manager can see, measure and switch off.
Eric Foster
Eric Foster spent 42 years at Swinerton - one of the largest 100% employee-owned construction companies in the US - rising from project engineer in 1982 to CEO in January 2020, the company's 12th chief executive in its 132-year history. A UC Berkeley civil engineering graduate, he led Swinerton through the COVID-19 pandemic, oversaw the launch of mass timber subsidiary Timberlab, and expanded the firm to $4.3 billion in revenue across 20 locations before retiring on January 11, 2024. His career touched landmark San Francisco structures including SFMOMA and the historic Monadnock Building.
Mandy Cabot
Mandy Cabot co-founded Dansko in 1990 from the back of a station wagon and built it into a $140M comfort footwear empire - then gave the whole company to her employees. Now she's running Silk Grass Farms in Belize, a vertically integrated agribusiness sitting atop 24,500 acres of protected rainforest. Chapter three of an already remarkable life.