Today is the start of the America's Small Business Development Centers (ASBDC) annual conference, where employee ownership will be discussed not once, not twice, but thrice over the course of the event.
I was delighted to give a talk with Tom Strong of the Georgia Center for Employee Ownership (GACEO) about employee ownership in general. Our hour-long presentation gives a brief overview of all things EO, including the different forms of broad-based employee ownership, their histories, current statuses, and the benefits of each. In a separate presentation, Alison Lingane of Project Equity and Mitch Miller of the Beyster Institute cover not only what employee ownership is but more specifically how SBDC advisors can use different forms of it to preserve their clients' businesses. And last, Frank Cetera of the New York SBDC at Onondaga covers the 2018 Main Street Employee Ownership Act and how SBDCs across the country can and should implement its directives.
The conference consists of a live agenda that runs today and tomorrow and features speakers and panelists from across the business and government world. The breakout sessions and workshops, including the ones above, will be available on-demand for registrants (primary employees at the SBDCs throughout the country) for the next six months. You can learn more about the conference here.
On a separate note, I'm very excited to be giving a talk with our friends at SNPI in the Netherlands on November 26. SNPI is an organization that encourages financial participation and broad-based employee ownership for businesses in the Netherlands, and my talk will focus on how employee-owned companies in America have been impacted by and responded to the Coronavirus pandemic. More information on the webinar can be found here (note: website is in Dutch).