The Woman Aiming to Get 50 Million Americans Into the Worker-Owner Economy

Fran Korten in Yes! Magazine:

Shot of two young women holding up an open sign in their coffee shop

For decades Marjorie Kelly has looked for ways that businesses can better contribute to the good of society. In 1987, after getting a master’s degree in journalism, she founded Business Ethics magazine to showcase socially responsible corporations. But after 20 years as president and publisher, she sold the magazine. She had come to an epiphany: Encouraging individual corporations to behave better was an insufficient route to improving society. Significant change would require a shift in the ownership structure of business. Kelly’s 2012 book, Owning Our Future,lays out ways to expand democratized ownership models, including employee ownership.

Through the Fifty By Fifty Network, which Kelly co-founded with Jessica Rose, she is now putting those ideas into action. Fifty By Fifty is based at the nonprofit Democracy Collaborative, where Kelly is executive vice president. It aims to increase the number of employee-owners in the United States from 10 million today to 50 million by 2050. It’s a shift they believe will transform our economy and our democracy.

More here.