Blog
Published February 2026 by Katherine Katcher
Why I keep coming back to ownership: reflections on a transformative chapter
This month, we’re sharing a personal reflection from our outgoing Director of Capital Mobilization & Action Lab, Katherine Katcher, who has played a pivotal role in building the Lab’s field-building, investor-activation, and innovation work.
As I transition out of my role at the Ownership Capital Lab, I’ve been reflecting on what my time in this role has meant—and why the work of building an ownership economy continues to feel like such a promising path toward a more equitable future.
For most of my career, I’ve circled the same stubborn questions: Why does such economic insecurity and inequality—especially along racial and gender lines—persist generation after generation? And what actually changes it?
In the community lawyering, policy & advocacy work I have done, I’ve seen firsthand how so many hardworking people–and communities—remain locked out of the ability to build stability, resilience and wealth.
Meanwhile, wealth concentration accelerates. It is increasingly clear that if we want different outcomes, we need different ownership structures—models that allow the people who create value to also share in it.
This conviction is what brought me to Ownership Capital Lab. And what makes it deeply inspiring to step back now, knowing the momentum ahead.
Ownership lens investing – the larger shift
Ownership lens investing–an umbrella that includes employee ownership, community ownership, shared equity models and other structures–gives people real stakes in the assets, enterprises and decisions that shape their lives. Where traditional capital markets extract, ownership-based models root value in place, in people and in shared prosperity. Employee ownership is one of the most powerful pillars within it. EO can reshape a company, a community and a worker’s life.
In this role, I’ve had the privilege to meet and learn from communities, practitioners, fund managers and innovators who are designing creative solutions to wealth inequality—from worker cooperative conversions, to community land trusts, to ESOPs and innovative financing tools, to new funds centering women, BIPOC and next-gen investors.
This is a movement, not a niche—and it is accelerating—but it needs all of us, working from our respective corners of the world, to invest in it in all the ways we can.
Creativity in action: the people driving the movement
When I look back at my time at Ownership Capital Lab, what stands out most isn’t a single report or program. It’s the relationships, and the people: fund managers building first-time vehicles, policy advocates pushing for smarter incentives and ecosystem builders working city by city and town by town to expand access to ownership.
Through our Roadmap research and focus groups — and through courses, webinars and events — I had the privilege of meeting people who truly eat, live and breathe employee ownership. Practitioners who have spent decades converting companies, advising worker-owners, navigating messy succession challenges and holding the long arc of this work with extraordinary persistence. Their dedication is humbling.
And I saw the impact up close.
I visited Yolo Eco Clean Coop in Davis, California — a Latina woman–owned cleaning cooperative — and the power of ownership was tangible. The women spoke about the autonomy and agency they gained when they became owners: being in a position to choose and only work with clients who treated them with respect and paid fair wages; using clean, non-toxic products that were safe for themselves and their families; setting schedules that allowed them to be present as working mothers. Ownership means earning more, but it also means dignity. It means building a community of support together.
In this work, I have also learned that there is far more innovation happening across the ownership economy than most people realize. What I saw, again and again, was creativity in action: people testing new models for the first time, taking real risks and iterating — motivated by a deep commitment to building stronger businesses, broader wealth and a more equitable economy.
The constraint is not imagination. It is resources. Capacity. Flexible capital. Sustained attention from larger pools of investment. And spaces designed to support and propel this kind of creativity and to drive investment, like the Lab’s EO Fund Accelerator program, launching in the fall of 2026.
Why I leave hopeful
Transitioning from Ownership Capital Lab is bittersweet, but it is also full of hope.
What I was able to help build and what the Lab continues to build—together with so many partners—has created shared momentum. We developed frameworks, data, tools and relationships that will outlast any single person. And we did so in a spirit of collaboration, humility and experimentation.
Most importantly, I leave with a deeper conviction than ever that ownership is one of the most powerful levers for economic justice in this country — and that the energy behind this movement is only growing.
I am excited to continue supporting ownership-based models from new vantage points, to work alongside many of you in different ways and to watch the Lab team make 2026 a breakthrough year.
Here’s to the next chapter—for all of us, and for the ownership movement we are building together.