Announcing the Co-op Clinic Virtual Workshop Series: Weathering the Storms

This first week will help your cooperative:

• Improve how your co-op distributes decision-making strategically, and empowers workers so your processes better reflect everyday life at work
• Review the diversity of management structures
• Review the nuances of structure, process, threshold, and voting. We’ll also review how to address dynamics of seniority as you engage with these.
• Identify how to get unstuck, whether your co-op gets stuck in decision bottlenecks, analysis paralysis, or how to vet what should be on an agenda.

Kate “Sassy” Sassoon is the founder of Sassy Facilitation, which provides facilitation, training, and organizational design to innovative organizations. A "co-op native", raised in agricultural, housing, and daycare cooperatives, she has deep lived experience of the benefits (and challenges) of cooperation. She draws on these almost 40 years of Membership in her work at Sassy Facilitation, where she has supported democratically owned and operated enterprises across many sectors, including: housing, childcare, worker-owned businesses, production collectives, community land trusts, and intentional communities of all flavors. She strives to bring inspiration, productivity, and humor to her classes and her clients.

Bernardo Vigil began his co-op journey at Baltimore Bicycle Works where he has been a worker-owner for the last 10 years. His membership at BBW influenced the course of his studies and he was able to spend much of his time at Goucher College researching cooperative structures domestically and in Catalonia, Spain. When he is not working on bikes, he has found time to revamp BBW's training program, expand and codify their committee structure, and generally work through the details of their internal democracy. Through his work with Baltimore Roundtable for Economic Democracy, Bernardo has helped nascent co-ops in the Baltimore area do the same through public trainings and close one-on-one collaboration.

This second week will help your cooperative:

• Get organized! Learn a new tool to sort through all your Ops & HR responsibilities
• Improve your compliance
• Understand the USFWC Worker Benefits Program
• Design your policies to improve your workplace culture through evaluations, wellness, and member engagement

Jamie Gill (she/her) works on the HR team at the U.S. Federation of Worker Cooperatives. With five years of dedicated HR experience and over 15 years in administrative leadership roles across the public and private sectors, she brings expertise in organizational operations, people management, and workplace culture. She is passionate about advancing worker cooperatives as a pathway to economic justice and building workplaces rooted in democracy and care. Originally from the Caribbean, Jamie now resides in Georgia.

Matt Feinstein is the Co-op Clinic Program Manager with the U.S. Federation of Worker Cooperatives. Before that he was a peer advisor with Co-op Clinic and specialized in co-op governance and decision-making processes. He is based in Central Massachusetts where he works with land-based projects as Program Coordinator with the Pocasset Pokanoket Land Trust and as Co-Founder of Global Village Farms, a center for education, farming and co-op development. For over ten years he was a worker owner of Future Focus Media Co-op and the co-director of Worcester Roots, a grassroots co-op organizing group that focuses on urban worker cooperatives with a social justice lens. Matt is passionate about social and environmental justice organizing, worker cooperatives and supporting youth to become agents of change. Using documentary film as a tool for connecting social movements worldwide, Matt speaks English, Spanish, Portuguese and French and has collaborated on film projects with groups in Argentina, Brazil and Worcester, MA.

This third week will help your cooperative:

• Think directly about the business development for your co-op
• Learn cooperative approaches for shared marketing
• Review ways cooperatives across industries have solved similar problems
• Get inspired by the diversity of models being tried across the world

brandon king is the director/CEO of Resonate.coop, an international music streaming platform cooperative, a co-founder of Cooperation Jackson and anchor for Freedom Farms Coop. brandon is a member of the NYC-based artists collective PTP (Protect The Peace) and is a recent MFA graduate at Queens College focusing on Social Practice and installation. brandon is currently working on a music streaming project with DisCO.coop that emerged from his work with Resonate.coop and their Manifesto. It aims to confront the exploitative dynamics of the music industry (both old and new) by unpacking its racialised, gendered economic structures. This project aims to offer viable alternatives for musicians and other artists.

Alan Ramirez grew up in Western North Carolina and is dedicated to community organizing. They are a resident owner of Sourwood Mobile Home Co-op.  He joined Poder Emma’s Cooperative Development Team to be a part of building the alternative economy we need to be safe and sustained where we live. Alan has been certified as a Great Game Coach and is a trainer of the Coaching Supervision model. They work closely with cooperatives within the ecosystem to promote participation and communication when it comes to finances, governance, and the development and growth of the cooperatives. Alan, along with the Emma community in the Neighborhood Council advocate for true affordable housing, the protection of mobile home parks and stopping displacement through policy changes that will slow down gentrification in the Emma neighborhood and greater Buncombe county. They have almost 10 years of experience as a community organizer in Henderson and Buncombe county against anti-immigrant practices by police and ICE, building solidarity across communities and using popular education to make changes to our conditions.