Jack Moriarty
Executive Director of the Lafayette Square Institute and Assistant Director for Policy Analysis at the Rutgers Institute for the Study of Employee Ownership and Profit Sharing. Moriarty is a public-policy leader focused on employee ownership, worker wealth creation, and economic mobility; he founded Ownership America and has advised policymakers on expanding employee ownership.
Employee Ownership Needs Institutional-Grade Structures to Attract Scaled Capital
A panel at the Aspen Institute’s 2026 Employee Ownership Ideas Forum argues that employee ownership is beginning to attract institutional interest, but still lacks the market infrastructure allocators need before committing capital at scale. Regina Carls of JPMorganChase, Chavon Sutton of Cambridge Associates, Jim Sorenson of the Sorenson Impact Foundation, and Emily Thomas of Morgan Stanley frame the opportunity as a financeable ownership-transition market — not simply a values-based cause. Their central case is that growth will depend on clearer structures, stronger managers, performance evidence, and regulatory confidence rather than broader enthusiasm alone.
Employee Ownership Should Advance Through Tax Simplification, Not New Carve-Outs
US Senator Ron Johnson used a keynote at the 2026 Employee Ownership Ideas Forum to argue that employee ownership belongs inside a broader effort to reduce capital concentration and put more productive assets in the hands of ordinary Americans. Johnson supported ESOPs when they reward workers who helped build a business, but warned against treating them as another narrow tax carve-out. His larger case was for a simpler tax code that taxes business income at the ownership level, preserves “wherewithal to pay,” and makes employee succession a more viable alternative to consolidation or private-equity sales.