Building an economy that shares prosperity among the many, not just the few.
Our Approach
Our mission is to cultivate the next generation of cooperative businesses at scale:
We're here to jump start the next generation of cooperative businesses: we grow the entrepreneur pipeline and strengthen the cooperative ecosystem, we equip cooperative entrepreneurs with skills and tools for success, and we connect cooperative businesses with the capital they need to thrive.
Our Team
Greg Brodsky
Greg is the Founder and Executive Director of Start.coop. Greg brings a powerful background of financial strategy, tech, and entrepreneurship to growing the cooperative landscape. Greg's work has ranged from business development to strategic planning for multiple cooperatives.
Prior to launching Start.coop, Greg founded and led the Bike Cooperative, a division of CCA Global Partners, and also helped to launch the nation's only purchasing co-op for craft breweries. Greg also previously served on the board of the Cooperative Development Institute for 10 years and was board chair for 3 years.
Greg also convenes the Equitable Economy Fund, a $2 million pilot fund convening angel investors to scale shared ownership. He is a graduate of Wesleyan University.
Shantae J. Edwards
Shantae J. is Director of Community and Training at Start.coop. She is passionate about organizational culture, sustainability, equity, and leadership development. At Start.coop, Shantae J. oversees the day-to-day management of the Grad/Alumni, Coaching, and Mentor Community, and leads our education initiatives—including incubators, peer circles, and accelerator programs.
In addition to her role at Start.coop, Shantae J. is an adjunct professor at New York University.
Based in Chicago, Shantae J. enjoys spending time with her family, reading, traveling, and discovering her next favorite coffee roaster.
Ashley Holst
Ashley is a program management and operations leader with nonprofit experience executing a diverse portfolio of projects in international and US economic development. She is an experienced facilitator and developer supporting cooperatives and small businesses in business acumen, democratic management, and strategic leadership. Prior to this role, Ashley managed a multi-country USAID-funded Cooperative Development Program.
Ashley is based in Alexandria, VA, right outside of Washington, DC. She is a proud member-owner of her housing cooperative. In her free time, she enjoys baking sourdough, serving on two non-profit boards, and hiking with her dog Tusker in the VA mountains.
Qy'Darrius McEachern
Qy'Darrius (known as Q) is our Program Manager. A dynamic and strategic leader with over six years of experience driving transformative programs that center equity, inclusion, and liberatory design. At Start.coop he oversees the end-to-end program management and handles logistics, and operations to ensure a smooth, engaging experience for all participants.
Q earned his Bachelor’s degree in Psychology with minors in Social and Economic Justice and Education from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and attended Texas State University to earn his Master's degree in Higher Education.
He is also a PROUD member of Phi Beta Sigma Fraternity, Incorporated. Q is passionate about empowering communities of color through education equity and innovative programmatic interventions.
Arda Ungun
Arda is Program Manager of Services and Special Projects. Arda’s background includes software engineering for startups and political campaigns, as well as managing and teaching at an AI education company. At Start.coop, Arda leads development of our Lean Co-op curriculum and platform, and our Incorporation support service.
Arda is on the Board of the Data Commons Cooperative, a member with DAWI’s Workers To Owners Collaborative, and an organizer for the New York Cooperative Summit.
Based in NYC, Arda spends his spare time discovering local restaurants, and moonlighting as an event photographer.
Our Board
Howard Brodsky
Howard Brodsky is a prolific entrepreneur and a recognized world leader in cooperative business models. As the Co-founder, Chairman, and co-CEO of CCA Global Partners, the cooperative expanded into 15 companies serving over 1 million family businesses with $12 billion in annual revenue. CCA Global ranks as the fourteenth largest retail cooperative in the world. In 2019, Howard was the first American. Rochdale Pioneers Award, known as the "Nobel Prize of Cooperative Business”. Howard is the chairperson of the Co-op 20, a new G20 working group.
Joseph Cureton
Joseph Cureton (Start.coop 2019 cohort) is co-founder and former Chief Coordinating Officer of Obran Cooperative, the first worker-owned conglomerate corporation. His work focuses on corporate strategy, capital formation, and transactional support for the Cooperative's mergers and acquisitions practice. His work focuses on bringing new worker-directed enterprises to life. He is a serial entrepreneur, a software engineer, and a classically trained chef.
Hélène Lesterlin
Hélène Lesterlin a Worker Trustee & Co-Executive Director at the Good Work Institute. She fosters connection, social impact, and access to aligned capital, working with community leaders, entrepreneurs, and activists to help build healthier economic and social ecosystems in the Hudson Valley. She is a co-founder of CO, a co-working co-op and community center, and enjoys acting as a mentor and coach to mission-led entrepreneurs. She also serves on the board of Co-op HV, a loan fund that is a project of Seed Commons.
Nathan Schneider
Nathan Schneider is an assistant professor of media studies at the University of Colorado Boulder, where he leads the Media Economies Design Lab. He is the author of four books, most recently Governable Spaces: Democratic Design for Online Life, and Everything for Everyone: The Radical Tradition that Is Shaping the Next Economy. He edited Vitalik Buterin’s book Proof of Stake: The Making of Ethereum and the Philosophy of Blockchains and co-edited Ours to Hack and Own: The Rise of Platform Cooperativism. He also serves on the boards of the Metagovernance Project, and Zebras Unite.
Alissa Orlando
Alissa Orlando is a serial entrepreneur passionate about hustling for hustlers. She was co-founder and Managing Director of The Drivers' Cooperative and consulted for many shared ownership organizations including Inclusiv, Zebras Unite, O1 Labs, and Francesco Collaborative. She is currently co-founder of You Should Smile More Productions, a 2X Tony-nominated Broadway production company. She previously spent four years building Rocket Internet and Uber across East Africa and worked at McKinsey.
Maru Bautista
Maru Bautista is a co-op development consultant. Her work primarily focuses on providing training and technical assistance to worker cooperatives across the United States. She also guides organizations interested in developing worker co-ops in their communities. Maru enjoys co-creating open-source tools for co-op development and collaborating with others to bring new ideas to life. She loves art, coffee, and a good chat!
Hays Witt
Hays Witt is an organizer, technologist, and innovation leader who specializes in helping everyday people use technology and collaboration to improve their lives and communities. Hays co-founded Driver's Seat Cooperative, a mobile app that empowered over 20,000 gig workers to increase their pay while making the gig economy better for the communities they served. He has a 25 year track record of bringing people together across geographic, linguistic, and ideological differences to pursue shared goals. His work has centered on helping communities build power, strengthen local economies, and create more inclusive, resilient systems that improve everyday life. Hays is bilingual in Spanish and English.
Meet our Entrepreneurs & Alumni
Diversity, Equity, Inclusion & Justice
Co-ops have a long history as vehicles for economic development in Black communities. Indeed, co-ops -- particularly in sectors where we have high participation from Black and other workers of color -- can help these workers build economic stability and resiliency to better weather social and economic upheaval and help them build wealth for themselves and their families. However, only a tiny fraction of the 30,000 co-ops in the United States are Black-owned.
At Start.coop we believe we need to actively work to dismantle the white supremacy that is so pervasive in business culture and the economy at-large. We have an obligation to advocate for and pursue structural changes to make business ownership more accessible to Black and Brown entrepreneurs, workers, and communities and we must center Black and Brown entrepreneurs as we work together to build a new, anti-racist economy. Ending systemic oppression requires a long-term commitment and we are committed to continuously reexamining our organizational culture and internal policies to address the ways that racism and oppression show up in our work.
Ours is a diverse community that values the unique perspectives and experiences each member brings to the table. We endeavor to create a community and space in which everyone, and particularly our BIPOC and LGBTQIA+ community members, can show up as their true selves, and in which we can have brave, tough conversations in addition to the fun ones. Together, we engage in critical dialogue through conscious questioning and active listening, and we work to address systemic racism and the root causes of inequality.