Shannon Richmond
Earlier this month, the NCEO concluded its second-ever Women’s Summit, and we were thrilled to deliver on our promise of fresh content. Guests who attended both events confirmed it: the programming was new, and the conversations went deeper.
Corey Rosen
In an en banc decision, Bolton v. Inland Fresh Seafood Corp. of Am., Inc., No. 24-10084 (11th Cir. Oct. 13, 2026) (en banc), the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals overturned a lower court ruling that required ESOP participants to exhaust all their administrative remedies before bringing fiduciary claims under ERISA in court. The decision brings the 11th Circuit in line with most of the other circuit courts.
Timothy Garbinsky
Many people spend roughly a third of their weekday working, and if they commute to work, that can easily add another hour or more daily. You might have more, you might have less, but the result is roughly the same: many people spend a sizable portion of their adult lives working. And while there are a great many things people look for in their work, a paycheck chief among them, more and more workers are hoping to find purpose in their work.
Loren Rodgers
If you ask directors or executives at model employee-owned companies about the secret of their success, you will be shocked by how often their answers refer to the same place: the campus of the University of Pennsylvania.
Eva Lianos
Nobody came to Detroit to sit back and listen. When NCEO members from across the country filed into the 2026 Repurchase Obligation Workshop, presented in partnership with Chartwell Financial Advisory, they brought their distribution policies, their plan documents, and a stack of questions they'd been saving up. For two days, the room worked.
Timothy Garbinsky
It’s a refrain that’s worth repeating: the strength of employee ownership isn’t in valuation methodologies, repurchase obligation studies, succession plans, or finance terms. It’s not found in plan documents or committee meeting minutes or proactive governance. The strength of employee ownership is found in the way all those things work in concert with the workers themselves and the work they do to change lives. And the best way to make that impact, that strength clear to people, be they potential new hires or local business owners or economic developers or to family around the dinner table, is through storytelling.
Kimberly McCourtney
CEO succession planning is one of the most important responsibilities of an ESOP board of directors. But how prepared is your board for a transition you don’t see coming?
Corey Rosen
A new report by Matt Helmer of the Aspen Institute, Employee Ownership: An Economic and Workforce Development Strategy for State and Local Governments, provides a comprehensive look at how state and local governments can encourage more employee ownership. Ideas include outreach programs, funding for technical assistance, revolving loan funds to help finance transactions, worker training programs, contracting preferences, and removing regulatory barriers that make it difficult to form employee-owned companies in certain kinds of businesses.
Corey Rosen
The Massachusetts Center for Employee Ownership, part of the Massachusetts Office of Business Development, now offers partial stipends for pre-conversion technical assistance to explore or structure a transition to ESOP or worker cooperative ownership. The program will cover “50% of approved costs for services provided by a MassCEO-approved technical assistance provider, up to $25,000 for an ESOP project and $12,500 for a worker cooperative project.” The state has approved a very limited number of providers under the program: currently three for ESOPs and four for worker cooperatives. The funds are not just limited to feasibility studies. They can be applied to any of the legal, trustee, financial, or appraisal services a company chooses. Details are available on MassCEO’s website.
