LEARN Series Presents: Cooperative Business Models: Why Become a Co-Op, and How?

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Name: LEARN Series Presents: Cooperative Business Models: Why Become a Co-Op, and How?
Date: October 17, 2023
Time: 9:00 AM - 10:00 AM EDT
Registration: Register Now
Event Description:
October is co-op month, celebrated by cooperatives nationwide, is an annual opportunity to raise awareness of a trusted, proven way to do business and build resilient, inclusive communities: cooperatives. We’re excited to invite you to learn more about co-ops from local co-op leaders Colleen Anunu from Gimme Coffee, Lisa Swayze from Buffalo Street Books and McKenzie Jones - Founder and Director of The Worker Place. 

Colleen and Lisa will be sharing their thoughts and insight about how co-ops work and why becoming a co-op is may be an achievable business model. Folks from co-ops and the general community are invited to come learn different models of cooperatively owned businesses. We’re delighted to have Joe Marraffino from the Cooperative Fund of the Northeast facilitate. He brings a lot of practice experience working with cooperatives internally and externally.

Colleen Anunu is the Co-Managing Director and Head of Product Development for Gimme! Coffee, an employee-owned coffee roasting and retailing cooperative located in Ithaca, NY. They are the former Director of Coffee Supply Chain at Fair Trade USA and Past President of the Specialty Coffee Association. Their career has focused on building equitable structures across the coffee value chain. They are a mentor for Grow-NY and an alumnus of Ithaca High School (2001), Ithaca College (BA, 2005) and Cornell University (MPS, 2015).
Lisa Swayze has been the General Manager and Buyer at Buffalo Street Books, Ithaca’s cooperatively-owned independent bookstore, since 2017. Buffalo Street Books was named Business of the Year by the Downtown Ithaca Alliance in 2022. Lisa previously spent 10 years in bookselling at the iconic Wordsworth Bookstore in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with a long break in between to work in fundraising and raise a child. Lisa is also an instructor in Store Operations Management in the Professional Booksellers School.

McKenzie Jones is a founding member of the Aurora Pocket Neighborhood Cooperative, a co-owned, urban, intentional community that she still calls home in Fall Creek. She has steered radical organizations such as the Center for Sustainability in State College, PA and Ithaca Biodiesel Cooperative in Ithaca, NY. McKenzie is a member owner of a large cooperative and is the director of The Worker Place, a nonprofit consulting firm supporting worker-owned cooperatives. She believes in worker ownership as a pathway out of oppressive economics toward a just working environment for all! 
Joe Marraffino joined the Cooperative Fund in 2021 to support cooperative lending in New York State. He previously coordinated the Workers to Owners program for the Democracy at Work Institute, convening a national collaborative working to transition small businesses to democratic employee ownership. Prior to that he was the Finance Manager for GreenStar Food Co-op in Ithaca. Joe's formative years with the cooperative model were spent walking to 4am shifts in the fog as a worker-owner at Arizmendi Bakery in San Francisco, and as cooperative entrepreneur launching new bakeries for the Arizmendi Association of Cooperatives, which now has more than 200 worker-owners. 
 
Event Media:
Location:
Hybrid: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/83776735446
Tompkins Chamber
124 Brindley St
Ithaca, NY 14850     
 
Date/Time Information:
Tuesday, October 17 
9 am - 10 am 
Contact Information:
Mary Holland-Bavis
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