Esteban Kelly

Executive Director of the U.S. Federation of Worker Cooperatives, where he leads work on worker cooperatives, democratic workplaces, economic democracy, and cooperative business ownership. He is also a co-founder and worker-owner of AORTA, a worker cooperative providing training, facilitation, and consulting for social justice movements.

Five Proposals Target the Scaling Bottlenecks in Employee Ownership

At the Aspen Institute’s 2026 Employee Ownership Ideas Forum, five speakers argued that expanding employee ownership is less a matter of promoting a single model than building the institutions that let ownership endure and scale. Sara Horowitz, Esteban Kelly, Sean-Tamba Matthew, Ginny Vanderslice, and Felipe Witchger each identified a different bottleneck — from weak membership structures and bespoke co-op development to seller-exit barriers, neglected ownership culture, and risk-averse capital.

The Aspen InstituteJun 9, 202614 min read