Blog
Published August 2025
Reflections from NextGen impactful leaders: Gratitude & appreciation for our Summer Associate team
Thank you, 2025 Summer Associates!
This summer, our work at the Lab was strengthened and accelerated by the talents of four extraordinary Summer Associates. From conducting deep-dive research and investor interviews, to refining tools for the field and surfacing new insights for the EO Capital Roadmap, their efforts moved forward some of our most important initiatives. Each Associate brought fresh perspective and expertise, helping us build momentum toward our mission to mobilize capital to scale employee ownership, transforming our economy to support everyday workers.
In their own words, Kevin, Katy, Noragh, and Scout share reflections about what they worked on, what they learned, and their hopes for the future of employee ownership.
Let’s hear from: Kevin Hak Hyun Yu, Affiliation: MBA Candidate, UC Berkeley Haas
“As a Summer Associate, I interviewed a diverse range of capital allocators in the employee ownership space, refined the EO Fund platform to highlight their work, and developed proprietary fund models that demonstrate the competitive risk-return potential of employee ownership investments. Sharing these models with investors such as endowments and family offices allowed me to further refine them into compelling investment vehicles. I also learned how the silver tsunami creates a once-in-a-generation opportunity to address wealth inequality in the US, with multiple players seeking to capture this moment (from search funds and private equity rollups to strategic horizontal acquisitions); yet the EO sector, despite its rapid growth and innovation, still faces structural constraints that limit its ability to compete at scale. While business school has provided the economic and financial frameworks to understand market dynamics, this summer offered the market-specific insights and candid conversations that academia rarely captures.
My hope is that a stronger focus on data and technology will help quantify the relationship between employee ownership and financial performance, reframing EO from “impact first, returns second” to a mainstream investment strategy capable of attracting significant capital, fueling innovation, and challenging entrenched wealth-concentrating paradigm.”
Connect with Kevin on LinkedIn.
Let’s hear from: Katy Sheridan, Goldman School of Public Policy, UC Berkeley
- Embrace the tension of simultaneous learning and unlearning: Entering the field of impact finance, I’ve been absorbing the knobs, gears, and levers of how capital flows. But equally important has been loosening my grip on inherited assumptions and making room for solutions that live outside of conventional thinking.
- Treat consensus-building as a necessary art: In an environment of divergent interests and urgent timelines, cultivating genuine alignment is less about winning agreement and more about weaving shared purpose.
- Anchor ambition in systems thinking: Lasting change emerges when policies, markets, culture, and human behavior move in concert. Recognizing this is the foundation of sound strategy (and investments).”
Connect with Katy on LinkedIn.
Let’s hear from: Noragh Devlin, Innovative Finance Consultant
“This summer, I focused on identifying capital resources that already exist within the world of employee ownership and how they might be leveraged to support the future of employee ownership. I conducted dozens of interviews and developed a large market analysis. It was a fascinating deep dive into how the space overall is thinking about the use of capital and how it is being allocated right now. This investigation also allowed us to understand what these investors need and want from EO investment, and how the Lab can build infrastructure to help catalyze these resources for the future of the space. My work this summer convinced me that many investors in the space are excited about the ownership economy, but don’t yet have the tools or context to get involved — which is why I think the work of the Lab could be such a potent catalyst for investment in EO.”
Connect with Noragh on LinkedIn.
Let’s hear from: Scout O’Beirne, MBA Candidate, UC Berkeley Haas
“My role at The Lab this summer was to take a wide lens and research what it takes for a field to be successful—as a set of individuals and organizations working to address a social issue or problem. Diving into books like Impact Networks by David Ehrlichman and How Change Happens by Leslie Crutchfield, I discovered the transformative potential of network dynamics and their capacity to drive deep, lasting systemic change. Crutchfield finds ‘Effective movement leaders share power, authority, and limelight and lead from behind, embracing a long-term view,’ calling this approach ‘leaderfull.’
Employee ownership is the embodiment of creating a movement that is “leaderfull.” When workers become owners, this provides opportunities for people to lead from their distinct vantage points, bringing their specific expertise, perspectives, and community connections to bear on business decisions. I believe success in transitioning to a broad-based ownership economy will not only create more equity and justice, but also may be one of the critical components needed to help mend our disjointed and disaffected civil society. I thoroughly enjoyed working with the Ownership Capital Lab team this summer and look forward to seeing how they continue empowering individuals and organizations in the employee ownership space by bridging capital gaps and making the field increasingly ‘leaderfull’—and thus more resilient and transformative.”
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As we prepare to preview the Employee Ownership Capital Roadmap this fall, release a searchable platform of EO funds, and pilot innovative financing vehicles to strengthen the field, we know these milestones will carry the fingerprints of our Summer Associates. Their contributions have made our work more rigorous, more creative, and more impactful.
Please join us in celebrating and thanking Kevin, Katy, Noragh, and Scout—and connect with them on LinkedIn to learn more about their inspiring visions for the future.