Cascadia Cooperative Conference 2025 Presenters
Ana Jamborcic (Track 1) is co-founder and product strategist at Socialroots. With over 10 years of experience in software product strategy/management, M&A, and market analysis, she has a proven track record in predicting market trends. She was the Principle Investigator for the NSF: Small Business Innovation Research Grant, which awarded over $1.5M non-dilutive funding to Socialroots. Through this research, she’s conducted hundreds of interviews to uncover what makes effective networks thrive.
Presentation: Building a Self-organizing Cascadian Cooperative Network of Networks: A Multi-Track Workshop
Andrew Cline – Cline Consulting – Organizational Design Consultant – Andrew Cline is a leadership and organization-development consultant, coach, trainer and mediator. Based in the Pacific Northwest and working worldwide, Andrew helps individuals and teams develop their ability to lead and work collaboratively. Leading with empathy, candidness and authenticity, he brings a calm and focused demeanor to the issues, solutions and processes of organization development.
Presentation: A1DesignBuild, a Worker-Owned Cooperative, is Born. 3 Perspectives on its Conversion
Andrew Yokom – is the Executive Director of the Puget Sound Food Hub Cooperative. Prior to his role at Puget Sound Food Hub, Yokom spent a last decade immersed in a diversity of food systems development work, including on-farm labor, farm management, farm entrepreneurship, retail cooperative operations, sales and distribution for local systems, and regional network development.
Presentation: How Farmer-Owned Food Hubs are Changing the Food System Landscape Through Cooperative Networking
Andy Bowling is a cofounder of comp.coop. His specialties include software architecture, data and backend engineering, team development, and helping platforms and orgs grow their missions. Prior to cofounding comp.coop, he spent 4.5 years leading 10+ engineers at Google, building software to ensure data compliance at a global scale. He’s also had a variety of roles in software engineering, engineering management, and project management at startups ranging from 5 to 250 employees.
Presentation: Evicting Our Digital Landlords: How We Liberate Our Tech and Build Sustainable, Democratically-Run Software
Andy Jacobs is a software developer with over 25 years of experience building SaaS start-ups and rolling out reliable software on the web. For the past 10 years, he’s been innovating tech start-ups in the co-operative space and loves to talk multi-platform co-ops, user-owned platforms, and worker-ownership. Since forming his first tech startup in 1999, through several boom and bust cycles he’s seen venture capital and Silicon Valley tactics take power away from users and turn the Internet into Cable TV.
Presentation: Evicting Our Digital Landlords: How We Liberate Our Tech and Build Sustainable, Democratically-Run Software
Bob Luciano – Director of Community Planning & Development @ Rainier Valley Community Development Fund
Presentation: Who Are CDFIs and How They Finance Cooperatives
Brandon Letsinger – Regenerate Cascadia – Brandon is a bio-regionalist, open-source advocate, and nonprofit director based in Seattle, Washington. Since founding CascadiaNow! in 2005, he has spent nearly two decades advancing bioregional education, organizing, and place-based regeneration strategies across the Cascadia bioregion. He currently serves as executive director of the Department of Bioregion and is a co-founder of Regenerate Cascadia, a regional initiative launched in 2023 during the inaugural Salmon Nation Edge Prize to strengthen bioregional resilience and community collaboration. Through these roles, Brandon has helped build networks and resources that support ecological stewardship, participatory governance, and sustainable development. His work has been featured in Time Magazine, Vice, USA Today, NPR, The Atlantic Monthly, BBC, and The Wall Street Journal.
Presentation: The Design Pathway for Regenerating Cascadia
Casey Husseman-Brandt is the Executive Director of People’s Memorial Association.
Presentation: Funeral Cooperatives and the Evolution of End-of-Life Care in Washington
Cathy Statz (she/her) – International Centre for Co-operative Management, Saint Mary’s University | National Cooperative Business Association (NCBA CLUSA) Cathy is a cooperative educator with over 30 years of experience educating young people and emerging leaders about the cooperative business model.
She is a part-time outreach specialist for the International Centre for Co-operative Management at Saint Mary’s University in Halifax, Canada, and also supports the Cooperative Development Foundation and NCBA CLUSA on projects including the Cooperative Leaders and Scholars (CLS) program. An advocate for the cooperative education of youth, she spent over twenty-five years as education director and camp director for Wisconsin Farmers Union and continues to co-coordinate the National Farmers Union College Conference on Cooperatives (CCOC).
Cathy serves on the boards of the Ralph K. Morris Foundation (for whom she also supports communications and projects) and the InSPIREation Foundation. She is a member of Cooperative Communicators Association (CCA) and is a member and past president of the Association of Cooperative Educators (ACE). She completed the Credit Union Development Educator (CUDE) program with the National Credit Union Foundation.
A lifelong singer and enthusiastic traveler, Cathy holds a double degree from Lawrence University with a BA in English and BMus in voice performance and is a member and volunteer with Rotary International.
Presentation: Seeing the Elephant: Cross-Sectoral Cooperative Education in the International Year of Cooperatives
Cheryl Markham – Peoples Community Law PLLC – Cheryl is the founding attorney of Peoples Community Law (PCL), a cooperative law practice in the Seattle Metro area, serving all of Washington State. PCL serves the legal and advocacy needs of cooperatives, social enterprises, and community members desiring to form cooperative structures and participate in building cooperative networks and a cooperative economy that respects a healthy interconnection between people and the natural environment.
Cheryl began her journey as a cooperative enthusiast when her son was a wee tike, and she met a wonderful group of parents in her community who she joined with to open a childcare co-op. The experience of this venture was incredibly fulfilling and life changing. Prior to opening Peoples Community Law, Cheryl was a legal aid attorney providing vital legal services to communities, and served as a Senior Policy Advisor for King County regional government where she collaborated with an interdepartmental staff team and community-based partners to create innovative new policies and programs for equitable community development.
Presentation: Cooperative Law 101
Chris Ronk – Managing Funeral Director at The Co-op Funeral Home. Born and raised on California’s beautiful Monterey Peninsula, Chris moved to Seattle in 2000 to study sociology at Seattle University. After earning his bachelor’s in 2004, he went on to study and train in funeral service with the Pittsburgh Institute of Mortuary Science. After serving an internship at The Co-op Funeral Home of People’s Memorial, he returned to Seattle University for the Masters in Pastoral Studies program at the graduate School of Theology and Ministry. “Studies in spirituality and pastoral companionship only made sense as my ‘next step,’” he says. “Pastoral counseling was never my aim, but I was seeking to work on a similar set of skills.”
Having worked in funeral home settings varying from corporate to non-profit, he feels passionate about contributing to The Co-op Funeral Home of People’s Memorial. “It’s an honor to serve each family,” he says. “Every family should have access to the widest possible variety of options. I’m grateful to be able to offer that.”
In his free time, Chris enjoys domestic travel and local casinos. He does not enjoy spiders or mushrooms.
Presentation: Funeral Cooperatives and the Evolution of End-of-Life Care in Washington
Christina Bowen (Track 3) is co-founder and knowledge ecologist at Socialroots. She has specialized in helping networks of organizations navigate complexity and coordinate effective action for over a decade. Christina applies living systems principles to strengthen cooperation across organizational boundaries. As a systems consultant and network mapper, she makes adaptive pathways visible for communities tackling interconnected challenges. Her mapping helps coalitions, cooperative networks, and multi-scalar movements identify strategic leverage points and clear next steps. Her work focuses on the coordination challenges that emerge when independent groups attempt to work together at bioregional or international scales—exactly the dynamics that a regional Cascadian cooperative network would need to establish to sustain cross-network cooperation over time.
Presentation: Building a Self-organizing Cascadian Cooperative Network of Networks: A Multi-Track Workshop
Denise Henrikson – Executive Director at EcoThrive Housing
Denise is is a community builder and cultural animator. Her creativity and persistence has helped launch many enduring cultural happenings in the region. Her faith in humanity remains strong.
She helped organize the first twenty Fremont Summer Solstice Parades and helped build the Fremont Troll. She taught the lantern workshops that launched what is now the annual Luminata Lantern Festival at Green Lake.
Denise initiated the Village Project, an elementary school program where students applied academic lessons around creating classroom businesses, including worker-owned cooperatives. Local business owners mentored the classrooms’ start-ups. The program ran for 25 years..
Denise’s success in building joyful community coalitions led to a career in workforce development for the US Department of Labor & Job Corps. She coached multi-stakeholder partnerships for education and training programs throughout the country, using asset-based assessments and appreciative inquiry to connect people to their passion, strengthen programs, and inform policy.
In 2007, she founded Arts A Glow, an annual lantern festival, in collaboration with the city of Burien. In 2015, she led the Salmon Is Life performance troupe to Paris for the COP21 climate talks. It was there that she had a revelation into the interconnection of climate change, food sovereignty and attainable housing.
The seed of ecoTHRIVE grew from Susan Russell, an artist and Real Change vendor. She had a vision of making art with people experiencing homelessness. Susan and Denise went on to host over 40 art pop-ups at homeless encampments and public spaces throughout King County. They asked “What do you need to thrive?” Listening to hundreds of people tell of heartbreak and resilience was life-changing. Susan and Denise were inspired to convene the ecoTHRIVE team with a mission to create affordable, beautiful villages where people have the time and security to thrive.
In the spring of 2019, Denise approached the city of Burien with a proposal. She needed zoning flexibility to build a small cottage village. The City passed the Affordable Housing Demonstration Program in November 2019 which created a pathway for the ecoTHRIVE project and other missing middle housing.
Denise holds a Master’s Degree in Human Development from Pacific Oaks College and a BFA in Textiles/Crafts from Virginia Commonwealth University. She knows that we are all made of stardust.
Presentation: Building a Scalable Statewide Network for Sustainable Housing Co-ops
Devra Gartenstein – Farm Business Support Specialist – Business Impact NW
Presentation: Who Are CDFIs and How They Finance Cooperatives
Matthew Epperson (he/him) is the Athens (GA) Local Outreach Coordinator with the Georgia Center for Employee Ownership [www.gaceo.org/]. He educates business owners about exit planning, including employee ownership (EO) buyouts. His career began in Athens (at Daily Groceries Co-op) in ’10, and he collaborated with the Economic Justice Coalition to form the first worker co-op in Athens, Peachy Green Clean Co-op, in ’15. He recently (’24) served as the EO Domain Expert for Zolidar (including hosting the podcast Bicycle for the EO Mind[zolidar.com/podcast]). He is a ’15 graduate of a Co-op MBA program from Saint Mary’s U in Halifax, NS. In ’17 he founded the Georgia Co-op Development Center. He is a contributing author to the newly released report The Practice and Promise of Social Co-ops – www.rmeoc.org/programs/social-cooperative/.
Presentation: The Promise of Social Co-ops
Emily Daley (she/her) – Project Steward at Inland Cooperative Services which is a business services provider, as well as a Seed Commons Peer Fund. Emily was recently introduced to cooperatives in 2023 after moving to Spokane, WA and being hired as an Executive Assistant at Spokane Workers Cooperative. Emily quickly became integrated into the cooperative management world transitioning into the role of both Human Resources and Compliance Manager, and part-time Project Steward at Spokane Workers Cooperative.
Presentation: Let’s Talk About Non-Extractive Lending
Gregory A. Dronkert – ZEV Co-op – Greg Dronkert is a board member of ZEV co-op which represents a new model for providing transportation services in underserved areas. ZEV co-op is a nonprofit consumer cooperative established to provide zero-emission transportation services in Washington State. It’s a member owned, democratically controlled, enterprise with an emphasis on underserved, low-income, and rural communities.
Presentation: Cooperation in Mobility
John McNamara – Co-Executive Director of NWCDC. John joined the Northwest Cooperative Development Center (NWCDC) in the Spring of 2014 and became Co-Executive Director in January 2023. Prior to joining NWCDC, John has 26 years of practical experience in the worker cooperative world with Union Cab of Madison. John holds a Ph.D. in Business Administration and a Masters in Management: Cooperative and Credit Unions from Saint Mary’s University (Halifax) and now teaches in the Master’s program as part-time faculty. John participated in developing the Co-op Index Tool and has taught at The Evergreen State College and Presidio Graduate School. He co-edited a collection of essays titled Co-operatives for Sustainable Communities (2015) with a chapter on Social Auditing and wrote a chapter in Humanistic Governance in Democratic Organizations (2022). John serves as Vice-Chair of the Washington State Employee Ownership Commission and Co-Chair of the Washington State Center for Employee Ownership and serves on Executive Committees of the Union-Coops Council and the Policy and Advocacy Council of the US Federation of Worker Cooperatives. As co-director of NWCDC, John heads the education and general cooperative development programs and the communications and networking teams for NWCDC.
Presentation: Cooperative Development for Microenterprises
Josh DeWitt is the current Kitsap Fresh board Treasurer and the previous board President. He acted as the Kitsap Fresh liaison with the Washington FoodHub Network for two years. Josh’s first farm Barn Swallow Meadows in Kingston was a Kitsap Fresh producer/member and he is a strong believer in cooperatives as a catalyst to relocalizing our food system. He is currently co-owner of Indigo Moon Farm and Fiber on Lopez Island.
Presentation: How Farmer-Owned Food Hubs are Changing the Food System Landscape Through Cooperative Networking
Josh Glickenhaus is a Senior Loan Officer at the Local Enterprise Assistance Fund (LEAF Fund).
Presentation: Who Are CDFIs and How They Finance Cooperatives
Lisa Smith is the Executive Director of the Washington State Microenterprise Association (WSMA) that provides technical assistance, grants and resource coordination support for microenterprise focused nonprofits. She has been working to strengthen the smallest businesses in Washington for over 25 years through her collaboration with business, academic, policy, environmental, tribal and nonprofit partners. This experience has helped WSMA build the capacity of nonprofit partners who are assisting thousands of entrepreneurs every year to launch, grow and finance their small businesses. Her work and advocacy have helped hundreds of microenterprises launch and grow and many dozens scale up and blossom to become leaders in their communities and make significant contributions to their local business economies.
Presentation: Cooperative Development for Microenterprises
Luis Sierra – Luis joined NWCDC in 2021 and serves a cooperative development specialist for ROC Northwest. Luis brings a dozen years of experience in limited-equity housing cooperatives- as an educator and technical assistance provider for boards, and as a member, director, and treasurer of the cooperative he lived for 11 years. Luis‘s experience also includes agricultural cooperative development in fresh fruit and vegetable distribution and meat processing. Luis‘s first cooperative experience was in college as a member of the UC Berkeley’s Composting Collective..
Presentation: Overview of Cooperative Housing and Land Sharing Arrangements
Marco Rosaire Rossi is the executive director for Washingtonians for Public Banking, and nonprofit advocacy organization that promotes public banking in Washington state. He has a PhD in political science from the University of Illinois-Chicago and is an adjunct professor in political science at Cascadia Community College and Olympic College. .
Presentation: Understanding Public Banking and Credit Unions
Matthew Epperson is a co-op developer and a lead researcher on the Rocky Mountain Employee Ownership Center’s recent report on social co-ops.
Presentation: The Promise of Social Co-ops
Michael Peroni is Executive Director of the Northwest Agriculture Business Center (NABC). NABC provides business development resources and hands-on technical support to agricultural producers and other agriculture-related business in western Washington.Mike has over 30 years of experience in leadership roles in regional agriculture in western Washington, and extensive knowledge of agricultural business formation and management, brand support, public/private partnerships, market development, and regulatory compliance.As the leader of a team dedicated to developing solutions to issues facing agriculture in western Washington, Mike facilitates the organizational development and ongoing management of producer owned cooperatives; the development of agricultural infrastructure; and the management of multiple complex and ambitious grants serving the agricultural community.
Presentation: How Farmer-Owned Food Hubs are Changing the Food System Landscape Through Cooperative Networking
Micheal Snow (he/him) – General Manager and Project Steward at Inland Cooperative Services. Micheal was introduced to cooperatives in early 2000 when he was apart of a breakfast cafe called New Moon in Olympia which converted to a worker co-op, he’s since been apart of several worker co-ops most recently being Northwest Construction Cooperative, and Spokane Workers Cooperative.
Presentation: Let’s Talk About Non-Extractive Lending
Miles Nowlin – Place-based Solutions – Drawing on over 15 years of experience in place-based land use, research, and affordable housing development, Place-based Solutions offers tailored services in capacity building, training, research, and political organizing. Their work is centered on shared equity homeownership models, including Community Land Trusts (CLTs) and Limited Equity Cooperatives (LECs), and is grounded in a deep commitment to long-term affordability, community self-governance, participatory planning, and collective ownership. They often partner with nonprofits, coalitions, municipalities, and private developers to advance justice-centered, place-based solutions.
Presentation: A Cooperative Response to the Housing Crisis
Nigini A. Oliveira (Track 2) is a research engineer in human computer interaction with a Ph.D. in Computer Science, currently cooperating with the Socialroots team. He studies collaborative systems and cross-cultural human-computer interaction. He’s excited to understand how technology can benefit human cooperation and socialization. With Socialroots, he’s applying his knowledge to help design and build technology that supports cooperation, multi-scale and multi-cultural collaboration, and community development.
Presentation: Building a Self-organizing Cascadian Cooperative Network of Networks: A Multi-Track Workshop
Paulette Delacoeur – Washington Homecare Cooperatives
Presentation: Funeral Cooperatives and the Evolution of End-of-Life Care in Washington
Rick Dubrow – Retired CEO – After owning and operating A-1 Builders (now A1DesignBuild), a local, design/build, Sub-S, contracting corporation for 43 years, it is the transformation of the company into a worker-owned cooperative that tops Rick’s sense of personal and community accomplishments. In retirement now, nothing surpasses his joy in observing the employee owners thrive and evolve as a team so active in building responsibly and promoting community and environmental well-being. Rick is driven to help other aging business owners embrace employee ownership as their preferred exit strategy into their next phase of life.
Presentation: A1DesignBuild, a Worker-Owned Cooperative, is Born. 3 Perspectives on its Conversion
Sean Park is currently a Program director for the Illinois Institute for Rural Affairs at Western Illinois University. As Director of the Value-Added Sustainable Development Center, he works with rural communities to develop sustainable business models that address community needs. Sean has worked as an Economic Development Director, an SBDC Advisor, and the owner/operator of a grocery store in rural Illinois for 10 years. He currently leads the technical assistance for the Illinois Grocery Initiative, a state program providing grants for grocery startups in food deserts.
Presentation: Grocery Co-ops in Rural Communities – What’s Worked, What Hasn’t, and Where We Are Now
Shannon Bly is the Executive Director for Whidbey Island Grown Cooperative, and was part of the original organizing group that developed the Co-op and Food Hub project starting in 2019. Her job includes running the Co-op’s three programs – a Food Hub, place based marketing brand, and newly built rentable storage facilities. Shannon is a third generation north Whidbey Islander raising a fourth generation in Oak Harbor, and believes in the benefits of food systems work to protect her island community.
Presentation: How Farmer-Owned Food Hubs are Changing the Food System Landscape Through Cooperative Networking
Shawn Serdahl – A1DesignBuild Construction Manager, Worker Owner – Shawn is a founding member and current board president of A1DesignBuild, a worker cooperative dedicated to sustainable, high-quality residential construction. As part of the core development team, Shawn played a key role in the organization’s bold transition to a worker-owned cooperative model in 2017 — a story he remains passionate about sharing to inspire others in the industry. With over 25 years in the residential building industry and a degree in Building Construction Technology, Shawn combines deep field expertise with a commitment to ethical business practices and collaborative ownership. A Certified Passive House Builder, he brings a focus on energy-efficient, high-performance building to every project, while championing a more inclusive and resilient model for the future of construction.
Presentation: A1DesignBuild, a Worker-Owned Cooperative, is Born. 3 Perspectives on its Conversion
Sky Blue (they/them) has been active in the cooperative and intentional communities movements for over 25 years as an organizer, educator, consultant, and cooperator/communitarian.
Presentation: Cooperative Land Stewardship and Community Building
Uchi Okesi – Real Estate Development Director at HomeSight
Presentation: Building a Scalable Statewide Network for Sustainable Housing Co-ops
Victoria O’Banion currently serves as the Housing Cooperative Development Manager at Northwest Cooperative Development Center out of Olympia, Wash. Since March 2020 she has guided the acquisition of over a dozen cooperative purchases of manufactured home communities. This represents nearly $50M in assets and over 600 affordable and attainable homeowner opportunities preserved. Previously Victoria lead program implementation and the project management team at the national office of Rebuilding Together. Victoria is well versed in the affordable housing arena and is passionate about the preservation of affordable housing.
Presentations: Overview of Cooperative Housing and Land Sharing Arrangements + A Cooperative Response to the Housing Crisis
