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New York Cooperative Summit

Saturday, September 28th 9:30 am to 7:30 pm

South Side Innovaon Center 2610 South Salina Street Syracuse, NY 13205

Arizmendi Level Sponsors Rochdale Level Sponsors

SYRACUSE

UNIVERSITY

Schedule of Events
9:30 AM Introductions 10:00 AM Opening Speaker 11:00 AM Breakout Sessions 12:00 PM Breakout Sessions Richard Wolff, Democracy at Work Cooperative Startup What's Next for Grocery Cooperatives? Legally Organizing Your Cooperative Agricultural Cooperation in New York Cooperative Housing Brendan Martin, The Working World Worker Cooperative Incubation Community Finance and Economic Justice 3:45 PM Closing Speaker 4:45 PM Tour 5:30 PM Roundtable Esteban Kelly, New Economics Institute The Eat to Live Food Co-op Organizing a Regional Cooperative Organization

1:00 PM Lunch
1:30 PM Lunch Speaker 2:30 PM Breakout Sessions

Learn more at NewYorkCooperative.net

Franklin Level Sponsors
Cooperator Level Sponsors
ACT Home Inspections Alternatives Federal Credit Union Equal Exchange Northside Urban Partnership SolidarityNYC SyracuseFirst Syracuse Real Food Co-op
Creighton, Johnsen & Giroux, Attorneys at Law

NYC Network of Worker Cooperatives

2013 New York Cooperative Summit

Featured Speakers
10:00 AM Featured Opening Speaker Richard Wolff, Democracy at Work
Richard D. Wolff is Professor of Economics Emeritus, University of Massachusetts, Amherst. He is currently a Visiting Professor at the New School University in New York. Wolff is the author of many books, including Democracy at Work: A Cure for Capitalism, Occupy the Economy: Challenging Capitalism, and Capitalism Hits the Fan: The Global Economic Meltdown and What to Do About It. He hosts the weekly hour-long radio program Economic Update on WBAI (Pacifica Radio) and fifteen other stations across the US. He writes regularly for The Guardian, Truthout.org, and the MRZine. His appearances include the Bill Moyers Show, Charlie Rose Show, Democracy Now!, Al Jazeera English, Thom Hartmann, RT-TV, and NPR. His work is available at rdwolff.com and at democracyatwork.info. Wolff lives in New York with his wife and frequent collaborator, Dr. Harriet Fraad.

1:30 PM Featured Lunch Speaker Brendan Martin, The Working World

Brendan Martin is founder and director of the Working World, a cooperative financial institution and business incubator based in Argentina, Nicaragua, and the United States. Brendan originally moved to Argentina in 2004 to work with a group of Argentines looking to support the recovered factory phenomenon, and out of this was born The Working World financial institution and its methods of non-extractive finance and just-in-time evergreen credit. Despite dire predictions of investing in the chaotic groundswell that was the recovered factory movement, The Working World achieved a 98% return rate across over 715 loans, and all with repayments only from profit sharing and without guarantees. This experience demonstrated both that grassroots cooperative movements can be economically viable and that finance can be non-extractive and subservient to people yet still be solvent. After this success, Brendan helped open a second branch in Nicaragua in 2009, and another in the United States in 2012. The same grassroots cooperative efforts have proven effective and provocative in the context of the US, where The Working World has already funded six cooperatives, including New Era Windows, the manufacturing cooperative that emerged from the infamous Republic Windows and Doors in Chicago. Brendan is a 2009 Ashoka fellow, a two time Ashoka Globalizer, a nominated Prime Mover, and a frequent speaker on the solidarity and cooperative economy.

3:45 PM Featured Closing Speaker Esteban Kelly, New Economics Institute

Esteban Kelly recently joined the New Economics Institute as Director of Development. In addition to co-founding PACA (the Philadelphia Area Co-op Alliance), Esteban has been an important leader and creative force in food justice and co-op movements. He has served on many boards including the Democracy at Work Institute, the US Solidarity Economy Network, and Mariposa Food Co-op where he also worked for over eight years on the co-management team. From 2009-2011, Mr. Kelly was the Vice President of the U.S. Federation of Worker Co-ops and is a previous Board President of NASCO (the North American Students of Cooperation) where he worked as the Director of Education from 20032005, and was a board member from 20052013. In recognition of outstanding leadership, Esteban was inducted into the NASCO Cooperative Hall of Fame in 2011, and was recently appointed to the boards of the Cooperative Development Foundation (CDF) and the National Cooperative Business Association (NCBA). Due to his impassioned advocacy for food justice, Mr. Kelly was appointed to the Food Policy Advisory Council in the Philadelphia Mayors Office of Sustainability.

2013 New York Cooperative Summit

11:00 AM Breakout Sessions

Cooperative Startup
Noemi Giszpenc, Cooperative Development Institute Stuart Reid, Food Cooperative Initiative
Noemi Giszpenc, Executive Director of the Cooperative Development Institute (www.cdi.coop), manages the day-to-day activities of the organization. She began her career as an economics researcher at the World Bank, worked as an editor at the Nonprofit Quarterly, a magazine for nonprofit managers, and became a principal at Ownership Associates, Inc., a consulting firm in Cambridge, MA specializing in developing an ownership culture at employee-owned firms. As part of earning a Masters in Community Economic Development from Southern New Hampshire University, she did a thesis on the creation of a cooperative economy in the Northeast, including the practical development of an interactive cooperative directory, which has now evolved into the Data Commons Cooperative (datacommons.find.coop). She has a Bachelors degree in Economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Stuart Reid is the Executive Director of Food Co-op Initiative, a non-profit foundation providing technical assistance, information and resources to groups organizing new retail food co-ops across the United States. Previously, he served as the Food Co-op Development Specialist for Food Co-op 500, the pilot project that grew into FCI. Stuart has an extensive background working with retail food cooperatives, co-op wholesalers, and support organizations.

What's Next for Grocery Cooperatives?

Thane Joyal, Syracuse Real Food Co-op Brandon Kane, GreenStar Cooperative Market

Thane Joyal is the Board President of the Syracuse Real Food Co-op and advises start-up Co-ops across the country as a part of her consulting work through Cooperative Development Services Co-op. Thane is committed to helping cooperative boards achieve excellence by improving relationships within the board, and between the board and the cooperatives general manager, members, and external stakeholders. She is particularly interested in helping boards to create structures that support them in governing their cooperatives. She works with boards through all phases of their development, including Policy Governance training. Brandon Kane is General Manager for GreenStar Coopertive Market in Ithaca. He has served in a management role in the natural foods industry for thirteen years. He oversaw operations of Hawaii's largest independent natural foods store, Mana Foods located in Maui, HI for three years. In 2004 he was hired as the Grocery Manager for GreenStar and was hired in 2011 as the General Manager. Brandon has played an important role in mobilizing GreenStar's Board of Directors and Management Team in supporting an aggressive growth and development policy.

2013 New York Cooperative Summit

12:00 PM Breakout Sessions

Legally Organizing Your Cooperative
Ted De Barbieri, Urban Justice Center
Ted De Barbieri is a Senior Staff Attorney and former Equal Justice Works Fellow at the Community Development Project of the Urban Justice Center in New York City. His practice involves representing community-based nonprofit organizations and worker-owned cooperatives in business and transactional matters, advising community coalitions on land use matters, and negotiating community benefits agreements. He is a 2008 graduate of Brooklyn Law School, where he was an Edward V. Sparer Public Interest Fellow. He was a Fulbright Fellow to Ireland where he received an LL.M. (first class honors) from University College Cork in 2008. Prior to law school, he earned an M.A. in Religion with an ethics concentration from Yale Divinity School, and a B.A. in philosophy cum laude from Boston College.

Agricultural Cooperation in New York

Brian Henehan David Hardy, Organic Valley Laura Biasillo, Cornell Cooperative Extension

Brian Henehan retired in 2012 from his position as a Senior Extension Associate with the Department of Applied Economics and Management in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at Cornell University, where his applied research focused on agribusiness management and marketing for over 25 years. He served as program leader for the Cooperative Enterprise Program. His primary outreach responsibility was developing and delivering an educational program for senior management, directors, members, and staff of cooperative businesses as well as conducting applied research on cooperative organizational behavior, marketing, governance, and decision making. He also served as Executive Secretary of the Northeast Cooperative Council, a non-profit organization serving rural cooperatives in New York and New England. He served as an alternate director on the board of the National Council of Farmer Cooperatives as well as on the founding board of directors of the Cooperative Development Institute. Since 1999 David and Susan Hardy own and along with their oldest son, Aaron, operate a 100 cow certified organic dairy farm in Mohawk, NY. Dave has been involved in dairy farming since 1972. For the past 3 years Dave has been the Northeast Pool Manager working closely with all NY state Organic Valley farmers as well as prospective farmers interested in transitioning. He is a support to farmers with any issues, visiting over 140 dairies annually. Coinciding with the support system built within the co-op he runs multiple meetings presenting the in-house veterinarians, feed specialists, Producer meetings and other concerning topics farmers may have. He is an advocate for educating about organics and wears the many hats required to successfully maintain their dairy. Laura Biasillo is an Agricultural Economic Development Specialist with Cornell Cooperative Extension in Broome County, in Binghamton, NY. Laura has been in this position for 7 years, and her educational and program responsibilities focus on increasing marketing channels for farmers, creating education programs focused on new marketing skills and technologies, and facilitating farmland protection and agricultural development initiatives in the county. She has a Masters Degree from Rutgers University in Public Policy and is a graduate of LEAD NY and has been recognized as a 20 in their 20s in Binghamton. 5

2013 New York Cooperative Summit

Howard Banker, Fair Mortgage Collaborative, ROC USA

Howard Banker is the Executive Director of the Fair Mortgage Collaborative with over 35 years experience in affordable lending and community development. FMC has developed and is implementing a national single family coop loan product for ROC USA (Resident Owned Communities USA), which helps residents affordably purchase and cooperatively own their manufacture home communities. Howard also directed a program which organized and financed (purchase and rehab) low income resident purchases of privately owned buildings in NYC and convert them to affordable cooperative ownership. He actively supports credit union residential lending and has served on CU boards. He lives in a residential cooperative in Yonkers, NY. Fair Mortgage Collaborative is supporting ROC USA in the design and now implementation of a national secondary market program which allows credit unions to originate loans to manufacture home owners in MH resident owned communities. ROC USA provides organizing and technical assistance to residents in manufactured home communities to try and purchase their parks. ROC USA also provides all necessary financing for these purchase and rehab efforts and has (so far) supported 45 such resident purchases in 15 states.

Cooperative Housing

2:30 PM Breakout Sessions

Worker Cooperative Incubation

Vanessa Bransburg, Center for Family Life Joe Marraffino, Democracy at Work Network
Vanessa Bransburg, LCSW, is the Director of Cooperative Development at the Center for Family Life in Brooklyn, NY. Since February 2008 she has been providing technical assistance and consultation to Sunset Park, Brooklyn worker-owned cooperative businesses run by immigrants. In the last couple of years Vanessa has been at the forefront of creating and running the NYC Cooperative Development Initiative which provides year long support to community based organizations in NYC as they learn to become practitioners in cooperative development. Vanessa is also a founder of the NYC Network of Worker Cooperatives ("Nick Nock") since its inception in December 2009. Joe Marraffino is a certified peer advisor with the Democracy at Work Network and curates a online collection of worker cooperative resources at www.american.coop. He became a member at worker-owned Arizmendi Bakery in San Francisco in 2003 and from 2007 to 2010 incubated two new bakery cooperatives with the Arizmendi Association of Cooperatives, a network of six worker-owned cooperatives. He has sat on the boards of the Network of Bay Area Worker Cooperatives and the California Center for Cooperative Development. Joe currently works as the Finance Manager at GreenStar Cooperative Market in Ithaca, and is a co-organizer of the New York Cooperative Summit.

2013 New York Cooperative Summit

Community Finance and Economic Justice

Karl Graham, Alternatives Federal Credit Union Sarah Ludwig, New Economy Project Melissa Marquez, Genesee Co-op Federal Credit Union

Karl Graham is the Director of Community Relations and Development for Alternatives Federal Credit Union, a Community Development Financial Institution (CDFI) located in Ithaca, NY. Karl has worked at Alternatives for 28 years. Their mission is "to build wealth and create economic opportunity for underserved people and communities." Like all credit unions, Alternatives is a member-owned, not-for-profit financial cooperative that provides savings, loans, and other financial services to our members. Credit union membership is based on a common bond. Our field of membership includes GreenStar Cooperative Market, Handwork, the Alternatives Fund, and people who live or work in Tompkins and contiguous counties. Sarah Ludwig is founder and co-director of New Economy Project (formerly known as NEDAP). Since launching the organization in 1995, she has worked with hundreds of grassroots groups to organize and advocate for neighborhood equity and financial justice, and has spoken frequently at community forums and public hearings on a wide range of economic justice matters. In 2000, Sarah co-founded the coalition, New Yorkers for Responsible Lending, which has secured major state-level policy changes and now includes more than 160 organizational members. Sarah received the 2000 Rockefeller Foundation's Next Generation Leadership fellowship; the 2002 Union Square Award; the Ford Foundation's 2004 Leadership for a Changing World award; New York Lawyers for the Public Interest's 2008 Felix A. Fishman Award; and Chhaya CDC's 2011 Architect of Change award. She served on the Federal Reserve Board's Consumer Advisory Council from 2006-2008, and serves on the boards of directors of the Center for Responsible Lending, Consumer Federation of America, and North Star Fund. Sarah received degrees in law and urban planning from NYU, and since 2003 has taught a course on community equity in NYU's urban planning program. Melissa Marquez is the Chief Executive Officer of Genesee Co-op Federal Credit Union in Rochester, NY, a 31 year-old Community Development Credit Union with $14 million in assets and 3200 members. Melissa has served on the Board of Directors of various local and national organizations including the National Federation of Community Development Credit Unions, the Institute for Community Economics and Abundance Cooperative Market. Melissa has an MS in Community Economic Development from Southern New Hampshire University and a BS in Political Science from Santa Clara University.

2013 New York Cooperative Summit

Special Events
Ongoing
Technical Assistance from the Democracy at Work Network Joe Rinehart Aaron Dawson
Are you interested in starting a worker cooperative but don't know where to start? Is your worker cooperative having trouble moving through a sticky issue? Sign up for a free advising session from one of the Democracy at Work Network's Peer Advisors. These sessions will help you identify first steps to moving forward, recognize how others have solved similar problems and point you towards other resources you can use to succeed. DAWN Peer Advisors are worker-owners from across the cooperative movement who have completed a year long training and certification process to move them from successful worker-owners to great advisors. Peer Advisors work with cooperatives to build their internal capacity, connect them to the breadth of knowledge in the cooperative movement and help the choose and implement the answers that best fits the cooperatives goals and culture. Joe Rinehart is a Worker/Owner at Firestorm Caf & Books in Asheville and is a Journeyman Peer Advisor in the Democracy at Work Networks Technical Assistance Program NC. A long time social justice and environmental activist, his main interests now lie in building capacity for community held capital and in cooperative political economy. He holds a Masters degree in Industrial Technology with a focus on Appropriate Technology from Appalachian State University. For the past 10 years, Aaron Dawson has been has Customer Service Manager at Equal Exchange, a Fair Trade worker co-op in Massachusetts with approximately 120 employees, 100 co-op members and a 25+ year history of growth, Fair Trade and democratic practice. He is also an elected board member for Equal Exchange. In 2012, Aaron graduated with a Master's in Co-operative Management from St. Mary's Master's in Management: Co-operatives and Credit Unions program. Involvement in worker co-ops runs in Aaron's family. His father, Steven Dawson, is a co-founder of the ICA Co-op Loan Fund and helped to set up Cooperative Home Care Associates in New York City.

4:45 PM Tour

The Eat to Live Food Co-op

The Eat to Live Food Cooperative is opening in October right across the street from the Summit venue! Check out their brand new building, meet the manager, and hear about how this dedicated group of community organizers is working to promote health and prosperity in a low-income 'Food Desert' neighborhood.

5:30 PM to 7:00 PM Roundtable

Cross-Sector Cooperative Organizing in New York State Tom Decker, National Cooperative Business Association
Tom Decker of the National Cooperative Business Association (NCBA) will introduce their regional organizing strategy to explore a potential partnership with New York cooperatives. Come to have a roundtable organizing discussion that establishes a vision and goals for a new cross-sector organization of cooperatives in New York. The roundtable will aim to establish a steering committee and delegate to that group a series of questions to explore including geographic range, core activities, and feasibility. 8 2013 New York Cooperative Summit