To be honest, I arrived in Bellagio eager for some stillness. Founding the Ownership Capital Lab was a massive sprint—if you’ve seen our 2024 Year in Review, you know how much we pushed to launch with momentum: two major publications, over 1,000 people educated in a matter of months, public speaking, convenings, coalition work, and a great deal of behind-the-scenes effort. We wanted to show up from Day 1 with purpose, clarity, and impact—to be both disruptive and strategic in a space with huge untapped potential for growth and impact.

Bellagio gave me this rare gift of stillness and of spaciousness—not to disengage, but to reconnect with vision. Our days were largely unstructured: I read a ton, poured thoughts and lots of questions onto blank pages, spent time outdoors in the beautiful setting. The most incredible part of the experience was sharing every meal and evening with a dozen extraordinary individuals—scientists, artists, authors, climate experts, podcasters, organizers, academics and all around just beautiful people—most not from the U.S.. Despite our different disciplines, our conversations often circled back to similar questions: What do we need to see or do differently to transform our world? What will it take to shift culture, behavior, and systems at scale to address the most pressing issues of our time?

I was moved by the many creative ways other residents approached systems change. Several artists in the group asked: What is the role of art in shaping public consciousness and behavior? In influencing the emotional and cultural narratives that make new norms possible? It challenged me to think more deeply about the emotional landscape of wealth inequality in the U.S., and the narrative work still needed to build a movement around alternative forms of ownership. More recently, I’ve also witnessed the role that games and play can have in helping people see the world from different perspectives—in sometimes very deeply, meaningful ways, creating mindset shifts that just sharing stories or data couldn’t match.

Professionally, my time at Bellagio sharpened the strategy behind the Ownership Capital Lab. It reaffirmed our focus on Ownership as Agency, which is ultimately about the freedom to have access to economic mobility, which gives us control over our lives and our futures. It helped me hone in on critical leverage points for our work. It also underscored the central need for a focus at the field and systems levels to create lasting shifts in who owns and controls capital, businesses and the very agency and sense of opportunity that families and communities need and hold dear. At the Lab, we aren’t—nor could we ever be successful in—doing this work alone. We are working to advance employee ownership on behalf of hard working individuals, their families, their communities and local economies, and we do it in deep partnership with many organizations and individuals and movements.

Some of that thinking led to a collaborative effort that we have kicked off with some key partners to co-develop a shared logic model / theory of change for the work to grow employee ownership capital. We’re now in conversation with funders about using that model as a foundation for a joint funder briefing—a way to bring more aligned, catalytic funding and capital into our space, and to foster stronger coordination based on an understanding of each other’s work. We are also leaning into the facilitation of a field-wide Roadmap for Employee Ownership Capital that we are inviting the entire field to co-create alongside input from dozens of expert interviews. We aim to lift up the near-term efforts that are already happening as well as those that our space might need to invest in, and also to sketch a credible path to much larger growth based on learnings from adjacent impact investing spaces.

Most of all, the Bellagio Residency, and the spaciousness it offered, renewed my energy. Being surrounded by a global group of changemakers reminded me that systems work is rooted in solidarity, creativity, and collective vision. I returned with an even deeper sense of possibility for the Ownership Capital Lab—not just as an organization, but as a platform to unlock a more equitable economy that helps bring Agency back to workers, families and communities.

We have big work ahead. But now, I approach it with more clarity, more strategy, and a wider lens. And for that, I’m incredibly grateful.

We must all make the time for stillness and spaciousness and relationships if we want our ability to continue to pour ourselves into the work to be lasting, and if we want to unlock the deepest possibilities. Thank you to The Rockefeller Foundation, my fellow residents in the Bellagio Residency Program, and to you all for your partnership!