In this episode of All Things Co-op, Kevin and Larry speak with Kate Washington, the CEO of OWN Rochester, a non-profit cooperative business development corporation whose mission is to create jobs and build wealth in low-income communities by developing, promoting, and supporting a diverse portfolio of employee-owned businesses in Rochester, New York.

Kate Washington shares the backstory of how OWN Rochester started and its first projects; thoughts on incubating versus converting cooperatives; efforts to make government support of co-ops more mainstream and the challenges of lagging bureaucracy; ESOPs vs worker cooperatives, tailoring the model for the specific need; the challenges and opportunities for co-op conversion in the time of Covid-19; efforts of the Mayor of Rochester.

Learn more about OWN Rochester on their website: https://www.ownrochester.coop/