Christopher Mackin as Part of Who Owns the World? PCC Conference at The New School 2019
Summary
Christopher Mackin at Who Owns the World Conference, convened by the Platform Cooperativism Consortium at The New School in November 2019. Mackin is a speaker for the Town Hall 1 – The Capital Conundrum panel discussion.
About This Town Hall
Without access to real capital, the cooperative digital economy cannot thrive. Platform co-ops around the world struggle to access start-up funding given that traditional venture capital is not appropriate for these enterprises. Various groups have received foundation funding. British cooperators are using the Community Shares Model, which allows them to benefit from tax incentives for startups. Adapting the Mondragon process, cities like Cleveland (US) and Preston (UK) follow an ecosystem approach to launching and funding worker cooperatives. Yet others explore ways of creating “user trusts” to democratize the Internet. Learn about diverse financial instruments and strategies that can help groups to launch an upstart without venture capital. Together with the International Cooperative Alliance, philanthropists, and communities worldwide, we need to urgently take bold steps to meet these challenges.
Christopher Mackin is the Founder and President of Ownership Associates, Inc. of Cambridge, MA. Ownership Associates provides “after the transaction” assessment, training and corporate governance services to companies broadly owned by their employees. He also serves as a partner at American Working Capital, LLC, an investment banking firm that specializes in broad based employee ownership transactions. Chris is a Lecturer at the Rutgers University School of Management and Labor Relations where he teaches an undergraduate course called Employee Ownership and Group Incentives. He held the Sidney Harman Fellowship at the Kennedy School of Harvard University and earned a Doctorate in Human Development at the Harvard Graduate School of Education with a thesis called The Social Psychology of Ownership: A Case Study of a Democratically Owned Firm. He writes occasionally for the PBS Newshour, The New Republic, The Nation and Challenge: The Magazine of Economic Affairs.