Aspen is a place for leaders to lift their sights above the possessions which possess them. To confront their own nature as human beings, to regain control over their own humanity by becoming more self-aware, more self-correcting, and hence more self-fulfilling.
Amid heightened public sentiment that inequality is a pressing issue and that businesses should treat workers better, employee ownership has gained attention as a tool for rebalancing the economy and ensuring that workers, particularly people of color and women, share in the nation’s prosperity.
The North Carolina Employee Ownership Center (NCEOC) takes an affirmative approach to incorporating equity into its mission to expand employee ownership. It also stands as an example of the importance of the Employee Ownership Expansion Network (EOX). Together, NCEOC and EOX demonstrate the vital role state centers play in linking diverse local actors, connecting local efforts with the national employee ownership movement, and ensuring responsiveness to a state’s unique social and economic conditions.
This profile of NCEOC and EOX provides an overview of ongoing efforts to build infrastructure supporting the adoption of employee ownership. Focus is given to the strength of the North Carolina approach in centering racial equity, which may provide guidance for employee ownership work in other states. Philanthropic investors and others interested in addressing the racial wealth gap may also gain insights about how employee ownership can advance their goals.
The Aspen Institute Economic Opportunities Program advances strategies, policies, and ideas to help low- and moderate-income people thrive in a changing economy.
Join Our Mailing List
To receive occasional emails about our work — including new publications, commentary, events, fellowships, and more — join our mailing list.
To create a future-ready workforce system, we must move beyond outdated credentials and analog processes to one that is skills-first, transparent, data-driven, and aligned with the evolving needs of workers, educators, and employers.
This publication examines how fragmented skills, credentialing, and workforce data systems limit the potential of skills-based hiring and advancement, and outlines a shared vision for building the interoperable infrastructure needed to create a connected skills ecosystem that benefits workers, employers, educators, and governments.
In this interview, Chelsea Miller of Upskill America speaks with Nick Greif of InStride about how employers can design education benefits that are more accessible, strategic, and aligned with workforce goals.
The future of America’s economic strength depends on immigration. As the US birth rate declines and the median age goes up, fewer US-born workers will enter the labor force.
This is the final event in our Job Quality in Practice series. In this conversation, hosted by the Aspen Institute Economic Opportunities Program on May 7, 2026, we hear from the Institute’s Job Quality Fellows who are embedding job quality into their work across a range of contexts and strategies — from employee ownership models that give workers a direct financial stake in their company’s success, to apprenticeship programs that create structured pathways to higher-wage careers, to worker advisory committees that bring employee voice into business decision-making.
This brief shares key lessons and takeaways that could be used to implement internal job quality practices to strengthen CDFIs and other small business support organizations.
Putting people at the center of the systems we are building means accepting that career paths are rarely linear. It requires us to build infrastructure that accommodates life transitions, recognizes informal learning, and values a worker’s agency over their own data.
