KEYNOTE ADDRESSES

Speaker Bios

Tree Bressenis a skilled group facilitator serving a wide variety of organizations. Her gifts include elegant process design, holding space for tough conversations, and using good process to achieve excellent product. Her original training comes from the Ògraduate school of communal living,Ó working with groups using full consensus decision-making. She takes pride in being an eclectic practitioner, with the flexibility to respond to what your group needs in the moment. Practicing on a gift economy basis since 2004, Tree helps organizations put their ideals into action.

Ava Churchill graduated from UC Davis with a B.A. in World Trade and Latin American Studies in 2009. She has traveled extensively in Latin America and has a comprehensive view of development issues in a global context. Ava spent her college years living in the Tri Co-ops at UC Davis, where she was trained in the consensus decision-making process and headed up multiple outreach projects to preserve and recruit for her community. She hopes to use the skills she acquired as an intern at the California Center for Cooperative Development to develop worker-cooperatives in her community.

Tree Bressen is a skilled group facilitator serving a wide variety of organizations. Her gifts include elegant process design, holding space for tough conversations, and using good process to achieve excellent product. Her original training comes from the Ògraduate school of communal living,Ó working with groups using full consensus decision-making. She takes pride in being an eclectic practitioner, with the flexibility to respond to what your group needs in the moment. Practicing on a gift economy basis since 2004, Tree helps organizations put their ideals into action.

E. Kim Coontz is the Executive Director of the California Center for Cooperative Development and provides staff support for the Western Worker Co-op Conference. She has been working with cooperative enterprises for over 20 years. She has assisted in the start-up of more than 20 cooperatives, authored and co-authored more than 10 publications about cooperatives (including Steps to Starting a Worker Co-op) and written numerous articles. Prior to her employment with CCCD, Kim was Executive Director of Yolo Mutual Housing Association, a nonprofit developer of cooperatively-governed affordable housing in Davis, CA. She also spent 14 years working for the Center for Cooperatives at the University of California at Davis (prior to its closure in 2004).

Rosalinda Guillén is the executive director of De Comunidad a Comunidad (Community to Community Development), a women-led grassroots organization that works on practical solutions to social injustice through self-organizing by dis-empowered communities to build their own institutions to meet their own self-identified needs. She is working to create a culturally appropriate cooperative development center in order to support local farmworkers in their efforts to establish worker cooperatives. She will share stories of success in forming farmer cooperatives in Whatcom county, WA and Eugene, OR, as well as the issues involved with organizing in multi-ethnic groups in the current farmer - farmworker paradigm. Coming from Mexico as a youth, and raised as a farmworker on a farm in WA, she shares the unique perspective of her personal journey.

Melissa Hoover has worked in cooperatives and collectives nearly all her working life. She uses her experience to support the development of worker cooperatives in many ways. Melissa is Executive Director of the US Federation of Worker Cooperatives, a developer/member of the Arizmendi Development and Support Cooperative, and a contractor providing financial services to Bay Area worker cooperatives. Melissa leads the organization of the bi-annual conference of the US Federation of Worker Cooperatives and presents at conferences throughout the country on various issues related to worker cooperatives and cooperative finance.

Daniel Khalid Horton has a lifelong commitment to social justice and anti-oppression work in various forms. Daniel has been on the Anti-Oppression Working Group at People's Food Co-op (Portland, OR) sine 2008. He sees great opportunity and necessity in this work being well integrated into the co-op movement.

Tim Huet is one of three founders of the Association of Arizmendi Cooperatives, an enterprise dedicated to the development of successful worker cooperatives. As part of the Association's Development & Support Cooperative, Tim participates in writing business plans, raising start-up capital, negotiating leases, and training workers in democratic business management and also serves as in-house legal counsel. Tim has also served as a trainer and curriculum development advisory board member for CooperationWorks! , has been a featured speaker at cooperative conferences throughout the United States, in Canada (at conventions of the Canadian Worker Co-operative Federation), and at the annual meeting of CICOPA, the international federation of worker cooperatives. Tim completed his undergraduate studies at the University of Michigan and his law degree from UC Hastings College in San Francisco.

Sarah Kennedy began working at Rainbow Grocery in 2006. Before that she worked at the worker owned co-op Good Vibrations for 10 years. She is a trained mediator and served on the Good Vibrations Conflict Resolution Team and Facilitation Team for many years, and is currently on Rainbow's Conflict Resolution Team. Sarah was on the first WWCC Board of Directors and served again on the Board in 2003. She lives at Project Artaud (www.projectartaud.org), an artist's live/work cooperative of 93 people and six theater/performance spaces where enjoys being secretary to the Board.

Yonatan Landau is the co-founder and director of the Cooperative Food Empowerment Directive (CoFed), a network, training program and research institute that helps students create sustainable food cooperatives on their campuses. After launching a successful campaign to prevent the first fast food chain from opening at UC Berkeley, he helped raise over $120,000 for a cooperative alternative, the Berkeley Student Food Collective. He loves to cook vegetables in his North Oakland kitchen and enjoys improv theater, singing and smiling.

Rae Levine was a member of Red Star Cheese Collective, part of the vibrant network of co-ops and worker collectives in the San Francisco Bay Area in the late 1970s, and co-founded a worker-run interstate trucking company in California's Central Valley. With over twenty years of experience as an organization development consultant/facilitator, she is currently studying to serve as a cooperative developer. She volunteers with the SLICE Roundtable working to grow the co-op economy in Seattle and the Urban Circle of Cooperation Works! to identify resources for urban cooperative development.

Leslie Leyba, WWCC board member, is a worker/owner at Rainbow Grocery in San Francisco, CA where she wears many hats. Formerly she has been a staff member and Membership Director of the US Federation of Worker Cooperatives and has assisted in organizing two national worker co-op conferences. She was a founding Board member of the Looking Glass Collective, the organized workers who successfully converted the Lusty Lady Theater to a worker—owned cooperative. She lives in Oakland, CA and loves cats. This will be her fourth Western Worker Cooperative Conference.

Jake McCollum (Southern California Regional Director) is a Linguistics and Middle Eastern Studies major in Santa Barbara, California. He has acted as a coordinator for the Santa Barbara Student Housing Cooperative, helped to organize events featuring names like the Myth Busters and is a founding member of the UCSB Student Food Collective. He is constantly inspired by cooperatives and their unique power to transform poverty and need into equity and hope. In his spare time he likes vigorous exercise, reading, cooking and getting to know you better.

Stephanie Neely is the Member Coordinator & Conference Planner at the US Federation of Worker Cooperatives. She was a worker-owner at Other Avenues for 3 years, a bookkeeper for the student-run book store coop on her college campus and is currently an apprentice with Democracy at Work Network (DAWN). Currently residing in Portland, she also assists Alberta Co-op Grocery, People's Food Coop and the Make House with board administration.

Melissa Perry has been thinking about inequality since she realized that life was not fair at 4 years old. She is passionate and committed to working on ending oppression. Examining her own privilege has been an essential part of this work. She has been on the Diversity and Anti-Oppression Working Group at People's Food Co-op for five years.

William Ramirez is a Graphic Designer with Design Action Collective. A transplant from the Dominican Republic, William holds a Graphic Design and Illustration degree from the Universidad Autonoma de Santo Domingo. Previously, William worked as a graphic designer for over ten years. He was a founder of the award winning independent arts & culture magazine, La Vaina, as well as having worked for commercial companies, non-profit organizations, and independent artists.

Dan Thomases is a co-founder and worker-owner at Box Dog Bikes, in San Francisco, and is on the planning board of this year's Western Worker Co-op Conference. Dan helped found the Peer Resource Group for NoBAWC (the Network of Bay Area Worker Cooperatives) and was its active host for a few years. He has also organized and spoken on a few local panels discussing worker cooperatives in the context of his own experience at Box Dog Bikes. Dan hopes this will be the best WWCC yet!

Eris Weaver is a facilitator, consultant, trainer, and public speaker known for her clarity, forthrightness, and humor. She is deeply committed to the use of consensus and other cooperative decision-making processes to improve life within our communities and the world at large. Her most significant training ground for her work as a facilitator & communications consultant has been eleven years with FrogSong, a cohousing community in Cotati. She became a facilitator because she has little patience for poorly run meetings — given how much of our work and community living time is spent in meetings, it is important that we make the best use of our precious time. A modest amount of time and attention devoted to meeting planning and good facilitation pays back with increased efficiency, a decrease in conflict, better decision-making, and greater group cohesiveness. She is a Fellow of the Leadership Institute for Ecology & the Economy and a member of the International Association of Facilitators and the International Forum of Visual Practitioners.

Carmen White has worked at Rainbow Grocery Cooperative in the refrigerated department since 2006. She is currently serving on the Conflict Resolution Team for Rainbow and is a trained mediator. This year, Carmen is celebrating Fancyland's 10 year anniversary! Fancyland is a queer-identified collective DIY land in Northern California. It is set on 12 acres of hilly terrain in the mixed fir and oak woods of Humboldt County. She currently serves on the Advisory Board for Fancyland. Her other passions include music, cheese, conversation and candlelight.