Event - Community wealth building: Growing a democratic economy in cities across America

Join The Democracy Collaborative along with our panel: Candace Moore, Chief Equity Officer for the City of Chicago, Jaime Kinder, Mayor of Meadville, PA, Hilary Abell, Project Equity and TA Taskforce Member, and TDC's Co-Founder and President Ted Howard for a 90-minute webinar to learn how they are working in partnership with communities to deliver transformative change on the ground, and discuss what we need to go further!

The webinar will take place on July 19, 2022 at 11 a.m. ET. Be sure to register for the webinar using this link. In the meantime, learn a little about the speakers below.

Candace Moore, Chief Equity Officer for the City of Chicago

Upon taking office, Chicago’s new mayor, Lori Lightfoot, appointed Candace Moore to serve as the City’s first Chief Equity Officer. Charged with leading the new Office of Equity and Racial Justice, Candace has been tasked with advancing policies and practices that promote equitable outcomes across city services and resources. 

Prior to serving as the City’s Chief Equity Officer, Candace advocated for educational equity through a lens of racial and social justice at the Chicago Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights. She was instrumental in the Chicago Lawyers’ Committee’s re-launch of the Educational Equity Project. Candace’s work with the Chicago Lawyer’s Committee focused on organizing legal advocacy resources to address disparate school discipline and barriers to enrollment for students throughout Chicago and its surrounding communities. As a next generation civil rights advocate, she believes that it is imperative to work in partnership with community-based advocates and institutional policy makers to achieve sustainable and meaningful solutions.

Jaime Kinder, Mayor of Meadville, PA

Jaime Kinder is a mother of three and lifelong resident of Meadville along with her mother, grandparents, and great grandparents. Jaime attended Edinboro University as an adult student and studied sociology and African American history. Jaime has worked in sales and management for most of her life, and she has a wide range of work experience, including cleaning services at Allegheny College, cashiering and factory work in Meadville. Currently, Kinder is the co-owner of Evolution Printing Systems, a custom printing and promotional product retail store that has been a part of the Meadville community since 2017. Jaime was elected Mayor in 2021 to be an advocate for people of all stripes, not just the privileged few, and to help build a diverse and thriving community for local businesses and residents.  

Hilary Abell, Project Equity and TA Taskforce Member 

Hilary Abell is Co-founder and Chief Policy & Impact Officer at Project Equity. She has been an employee ownership practitioner, thought leader, and advocate since 2003 and was a worker-owner herself in the 1990s with a company called Equal Exchange. One of the inspirations for launching Project Equity and its focus on transitioning successful businesses to employee ownership was Hilary’s previous work developing high-impact worker cooperatives that created quality jobs and drove 40-80% increases in family income for low-income women. While co-leading Project Equity, Hilary has been a fellow with Echoing Green, Common Future, and the Institute for the Study of Employee Ownership and Profit Sharing at Rutgers University. Her recent publications include The Case for Employee Ownership and California Cooperatives.

Ted Howard, Co-Founder and President of TDC 

Ted is the Co-founder and President of The Democracy Collaborative, an action-oriented think tank established 22 years ago in the United States. Among the Collaborative’s signature initiatives is Community Wealth Building, a new approach to inclusive, equitable and sustainable economic development that is being implemented in many cities in the US and elsewhere. Ted has been named by the Utne Reader as one of “25 visionaries who are changing your world” and identified by the Guardian newspaper as “the de facto spokesperson for community wealth building” internationally. In 2008, he led a team that developed the comprehensive job creation and wealth building strategy that resulted in the Evergreen Cooperative business network in Cleveland, OH. Evergreen, in turn, inspired the community wealth building movement now underway in England, Scotland, Northern Ireland, Australia and elsewhere. He is co-author of “The Making of a Democratic Economy: Building Prosperity for the Many, Not Just the Few.” (July 2019, Berrett-Koehler), and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts in Great Britain.