Employee Ownership Field Needs Shared Infrastructure to Build Demand
Loren Rodgers, executive director of the National Center for Employee Ownership, used his keynote at Aspen’s 2026 Employee Ownership Ideas Forum to argue that the employee ownership field needs a staffed consortium, not another standalone organization. Rodgers said existing groups are duplicating work, missing referrals, and presenting a fragmented face to business owners; his proposal is to coordinate events, research, communications, and demand-building across ESOPs, worker cooperatives, employee ownership trusts, and other broad-based ownership models.
The Aspen Institute·Jun 9, 2026·9 min read
