Gail Patrice Lockert Anthony
Owner, Black Label Consulting, Ithaca, New York
In the past 20 years, Patrice has sat on several boards, both nonprofit, and for profit. She is the past president of GreenStar Cooperative Market’s Board of Directors (three years in regular service and three years as its President). Their membership in co-ops goes back thirty-four years. Their relationship with cooperative principles goes back even further; their mother raised their sibs and Patrice with an understanding of them through the Kwanzaa principles, one of which is “Ujamaa” which translates as “Cooperative Economics”. Patrice owns Black Label Consulting and Coaching and does the work of undoing racial inequities. Their clients are mostly white-led organizations (primarily nonprofit), who are in the agriculture industry and who are embracing the work of food justice in values. These clients are shifting their organizational paradigm to a kaleidoscopic-lens which embraces all cultures and perspectives, and considers all voices at the table as being central to increasing value, committing to purpose, and uplifting whole communities. She is a community advocate, an educator, and trainer/mediator/facilitator. 

Thomas Beckett
Executive Director, Carolina Common Enterprise, Durham, North Carolina
Thomas Beckett has, for most of his career, worked as an attorney serving the needs of small and startup businesses. He has been professionally focused on cooperatives for the past seven years. He has completed and is certified by the CooperationWorks! Cooperative Business Development Training Program. Beckett speaks regularly on small business legal issues at regional and national conferences. He also provides business & legal education and guidance to cooperatives throughout North Carolina and the South. He has taught Business Law at Warren Wilson College and is certified to present the FastTrac TechVenture program, the Kauffman Foundation’s entrepreneurial training curriculum. Beckett has significant experience working with agriculture enterprises in the region, including cooperatives, quasi-cooperatives, and nonprofits as well as working farmers. He is currently on the Board of CooperationWorks, and previously served on the Boards of the Center for Participatory Change and the Appalachian Sustainable Agriculture Project (ASAP). Beckett received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Duke University and earned his law degree and an MBA at the University of North Carolina. Beckett was elected to the Shared Capital Board of Directors in 2015. He was nominated by Hendersonville Community Co-op. Beckett serves on the Loan Committee.

Alex Betzenheimer, President
Finance Manager, Seward Community Co-op, Minneapolis, Minnesota
Alex Betzenheimer has been Finance Manager for Seward Community Co-op, a large consumer cooperative in Minneapolis since 2011. Betzenheimer has more than twelve years of experience in financial and operations management with consumer and worker-owned cooperatives. He worked at North Country Co-op, a worker-owned retail grocery cooperative, from 2001-2007, where he led the transition from collective management and served as the first General Manager from 2005-2007. From 2007 to 2011, Betzenheimer was Finance Coordinator for the Hub Bike Co-op, a worker-owned bike retail and repair business in Minneapolis. He served on the Shared Capital Loan Committee as a non-board member starting in 2011 and was elected to the Shared Capital Board of Directors in April 2013, where he represents Seward Community Co-op. Betzenheimer is President of the Board and serves on the Executive and Finance Committees.

Terence Courtney
Director, Co-op Development & Strategic Partnership, Federation of Southern Cooperatives, Epes, Alabama
Terence has been involved in Cooperative Development for the last 6 years. In that time, Terence has worked in the South to create food buying, fisherman, health/wellness, childcare, housing, farm/rancher and worker owned cooperatives. Since 2018, Terence has served as the Director of Cooperative Development & Strategic Initiatives for the Federation of Southern Cooperatives. In this role, he coordinates with State Directors on Regional Cooperative Development Strategy. At the grassroots level, support local development in States where the Federation does not have regular staff. Internationally, he led the Federation’s effort to create multi-lateral partnerships based in Cooperative Economics.

Dana Curtis, Treasurer
Worker/Owner, Key Figures, Austin, Texas
Dana Curtis is a native Texan and attended the University of Texas at Dallas where she studied Literature and Philosophy before attending graduate school at Texas Woman’s University. She left academia to join the labor movement as a union organizer before getting involved in cooperatives. As one of the founding members of the Workers’ Assembly at Black Star Co-op Pub and Brewery, Curtis oversaw the membership and investment campaign which brought the co-op from a dream to reality. She currently serves as the Board President of the US Federation of Worker Cooperatives and is a worker-owner at Key Figures, an accounting and business services firm in Austin. She has committed her life to social justice and strongly believes in the transformative power of the cooperative model. Curtis was elected to the Shared Capital Board of Directors in 2016 after being nominated by Black Star Co-op Pub and Brewery. She has served as Treasurer and Chair of the Finance Committee since 2016, and also serves on the Executive Committee.

Jacqueline Hannah, Vice President
Assistant Director, Food Co-op Initiative, Champaign-Urbana, Illinois
Jacqueline Hannah moved to Champaign-Urbana (C-U) from the Chicago area in 1996 to help a friend move her business the Chicago area. A year later the business had moved, but she was still in C-U, which she had quickly fallen in love with and made her home. Hannah has worked exclusively for independent local businesses for over 18 years, and has been in retail management for over 18 years. It was only in the fall of 2006 when she was hired as the General Manager of Common Ground Food Co-op (CGFC) that she finally found a job that combined her passion for business, management, and sustainable food as well as her belief that businesses should exist to enrich the communities they operate in. During her time with CGFC, Hannah led the co-op through two expansions, the founding of their Food For All economic access program, a rebrand, and was named the fastest growing retail food co-op in the nation from 2008-2013. Hannah joined Food Co-op Initiative, a nonprofit organization that supports people working to start retail food co-ops in their communities in 2015 and currently serves as Assistant Director. Hannah was nominated by Common Ground Food Co-op and was elected to the Shared Capital Cooperative Board in April 2015. She serves as the Chair of the Marketing and Outreach Committee as well as on the Executive Committee. She was elected Vice President of the Board in September 2020.

Camille Kerr
Founder/Principal Upside Down Consulting, Chicago Illinois
Camille is a workplace democracy consultant, advocate, and developer. For 10 years, she has worked to promote worker cooperatives, including in leadership roles at both the Democracy at Work Institute and the ICA Group. Camille has also served on the board of the Staffing Cooperative, start.coop, Prospera, the Council of Cooperative Economists at the National Cooperative Business Association, and more. Camille started her own consulting firm, Upside Down Consulting, that focuses exclusively on workplace democracy. Through Upside Down, she is helping develop ChiFresh Kitchen Cooperative, whose members are formerly incarcerated Chicagoans. 

Repa Mekha, Secretary
President & CEO, Nexus Community Partners, St. Paul, Minnesota
Repa Mekha serves as President and CEO of Nexus Community Partners, a Community Building Intermediary that works at the intersection of community building and community development, engaging communities of color to achieve equitable, sustainable neighborhood revitalization in the Twin Cities region. Mekha has more than 30 years of experience in community-based leadership, community capacity building, asset and wealth building strategies, organizational leadership and development, and systems change work. He is recognized locally and nationally as an innovative and visionary leader and heads up Nexus’ work with national partners. Mekha is also a founding member of the Northside Funders Group and is currently on the Advisory Committee, and the working committee leading the funder group’s racial equity work. He is co-founder of the Twin Cities African American Leadership Forum, and he sits on the Board of the Minnesota Council of Foundations, where he is also a member of its Government Relations & Public Policy Committee. Mekha is a 2005 Bush Leadership Fellow, a 2004 James P. Shannon Leadership Institute Alumni, and holds a Master’s Degree in Public Administration from Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government with a focus on community development; a pending Master’s in Counseling and Psychological Services from Saint Mary’s University of Minnesota and; a Bachelor’s Degree in Sociology and Urban Studies from the University of Wisconsin. Mekha was nominated by Cooperative Principal CP001 and was elected to the Shared Capital Board in 2017. He is Secretary of the Board and serves on the Executive and Loan Committees.

Julie Ristau
Executive Director, Main Street Project, Northfield, Minnesota
Julie Ristau has a broad practical expertise in organizational, community, and business development. A focus of her work is animating new possibilities for a wide range of organizations and people. Her work includes collaborative planning, detailed problem solving, strategic visioning practical implementation and an orientation for collaborative process and cooperative structures. Plus she is a whiz at numbers, cashflow—she got her training as a farmer. At Main Street Project she helped to acquire—with a new paradigm shifting ownership model—the first Regenerative Farm that has been sanctioned by the Minnesota Department of Agriculture. Ristau was elected to the Shared Capital Board in 2017 and serves on the Marketing and Outreach Committee.

Holly Jo Sparks
Executive Director, MSU Student Housing Cooperative, East Lansing, Michigan and Director, Oryana Community Co-op, Traverse City, Michigan
Holly Jo Sparks is currently Executive Director of the MSU Student Housing Cooperative, in addition to being a cooperative, community, and housing development consultant. Through Collective Seeds Consulting Co-op, she has assisted clients nationally with shared-equity homeownership and financing, strategic research and nonprofit financial management. Since 2001, Sparks has held the position of Executive Director for three cooperative housing organizations, including the North American Students of Cooperation (NASCO), where she served from 2003–2009. She has volunteered for the boards of the National Cooperative Business Association(NCBA), North American Students of Cooperation (NASCO), and National Association of Housing Cooperatives (NAHC) and Oryana Community Co-op. Prior to this, Sparks studied housing, community, and economic development at University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill and at MIT, from which she holds a Master in City Planning. Holly Jo was nominated by Oryana Community Co-op. Sparks was elected to the Shared Capital Board in 2017 and serves on the Finance Committee.

Pamela Standing
Executive Director, Minnesota Indigenous Business Alliance, Saint Paul, Minnesota
Pamela Standing left a 16-year international business career in 1991, at the invitation of her Principal Chief, Wilma Mankiller to return home and assist in grass roots organizing and rural tribal economic development. It was during this time she was able to draw upon her unique and diverse experiences from business and international travel to move into Indigenous-led organizational and business development. It was during this time she worked with a group of Cherokee women to form the Native Women’s Cooperative in partnership with Rural Development Leadership Network. The women of this cooperative were invited to present and attended the UN World Conference on Women in Beijing, China. Standing specializes in culturally based business, and strategic planning. Her experience has shown her that Indigenous-led organizations and small-businesses can be healthy and demonstrate a clear quadruple bottom focused on cultural, social, environmental, and financial prosperity of most importance to Indigenous communities. She endeavors to close the disparity gap through cooperative work, collaboration and forming partnerships and alliances that ultimately result in the sharing of resources. Pamela has served on numerous boards such as Native Women’s Cooperative, White Earth Tribal and Community College, Indigenous Education Institute, MN Women’s Foundation Social Change Grant Committee, American Independent Business Alliance, Minnesota Project, Service Dogs for America, and Assistance Dogs International.