Our Community
If we want to build a new economy, it’s going to take the whole community.
We think about our community like an ecosystem– an interconnected system where every actor has a diverse role to play in relationship with others.
Co-op Rhody is a hub for diverse community members to meet, build relationships, and organize their work into real impact. Community is a practice sport!
Building unionized worker-owned businesses is no small task. It takes entrepreneurs, organizers, creatives, advisors, funders, policy advocates, good neighbors, conscious consumers, and many more sorts of folks–all working together from a place of trust.
Co-op Rhody is a hub for these community members to meet, build relationships, and organize their work into real impact. Community is a practice sport!
The Co-op Rhody community is ever-growing, as is the broader groundswell towards worker ownership in Rhode Island. We’re proud to walk in the footsteps of our friends at Fuerza Laboral and White Electric Coffee, and participate in the budding RI Worker Cooperative Association with nearly a dozen more local cooperatives.
Want to get involved?
We’d love to collaborate!
Our Team
Co-op Rhody is led by a grassroots network of worker-entrepreneurs, organizers from local organizations including UFCW Local 328, Reclaim RI, and Break the Cycle Cooperative Hub; and national cooperative and industry experts who believe in the vision for a worker-owned economy in Rhode Island.
Our Board
Vanessa Urena
Board Chair, Cooperative Founder
Vanessa Urena is a certified medical assistant with over 15 years of customer service and healthcare experience across Rhode Island in both retail, corporate and various healthcare settings. She has completed seminars in worker-cooperative bookkeeping management, cooperative development training, and cannabis education. Vanessa currently serves on the Board and Communications Committee for Co-op Rhody, as well as on the board of Urban Greens Food Co-op in Providence and is a passionate advocate for cannabis descheduling, anti-war initiatives, & housing justice.
Tre Miller (Vice Chair)
Board Member, Cooperative Founder
Tre Miller is an artist, entrepreneur, and cannabis industry professional with over 10 years of experience. His lifelong dream has been to create a more equitable society by proliferating the solidarity economy. His work with Co-op Rhody has been a fruitful opportunity to help achieve that goal.
Elliot Hardy III
Board Member, Cooperative Founder
Elliot Hardy III is a law student and entrepreneur. Balancing his legal studies with business, he brings a unique blend of academic and entrepreneurial skills. An avid photographer, Elliot captures the world with a keen eye for detail. His journey reflects a commitment to professional and personal growth, marked by creativity, dedication, and a drive to make a meaningful impact.
Rebecca Glynn
Board Member, Cooperative Founder
Rebecca Glynn is a cannabis compliance officer and front-end manager with a background in journalism, video production, and corporate marketing. Based in Tiverton, RI, she has worked in cannabis since 2018, when she founded a CBD wellness brand focused on infused products. Rebecca brings deep knowledge of plant medicine and regulatory processes as well as a devotion to pursuing socioeconomic justice and an equitable cannabis market.
Deborah Groban Olson
Secretary
Deb Olson has specialized in creating & advising employee- owned companies & co-ops since 1981. She is a former chair of the National Center for Employee Ownership, Board Chair of the employee-owned Once Again Nut Butter Collective, a board member of Circle Pines Center, & served from 2007-2019 as Executive Director of the Center for Community Based Enterprise, Inc.
Sarah Owen
Treasurer
Sarah Owen is an MBA graduate from the University of Chicago and prior to that, served in the U.S. Marine Corps. Leveraging her experience in investment banking, Sarah brings a unique blend of finance and leadership skills. Currently the CFO of a medical marijuana processing business in Arkansas and a Texas-based hemp business, Sarah is dedicated to advancing sophisticated and sustainable business practices in the industry.
Emma Karnes
Board Member, Organizer
Emma Karnes is a union organizer with the United Food and Commercial Workers Union Local 328. Previously, she worked with growers in Northern California working to cooperatize their supply chains through the Cooperative Agricultural Network, and has supported democratic governance design with the large dairy cooperative Organic Valley.
Emma can be reached at emma@cooprhody.org
David Folcarelli
Board Member
Dave is a political organizer and public policy & communications professional in Providence, Rhode Island. He currently serves as senior advisor to Lt. Governor Sabina Matos, a role in which he has drafted antitrust legislation to regulate the grocery industry and developed a proposal for a Rhode Island employee ownership center. He has previously held communications roles at the Rhode Island Department of Education and the office of former Governor Gina Raimondo. He is also chair of the Wayland Neighborhood Association in Providence.
Sanjay Pinto
Board Member
Sanjay Pinto is a researcher whose work addresses the intersections of racial capitalism, care labor, worker surveillance, & strategies for building grassroots worker power. A fellow at the Worker Institute at Cornell & the University of Illinois Chicago, he co-directs the program on Unions & Worker Ownership at Rutgers SMLR & serves on the advisory boards of Citizen Share Brooklyn, the Model Alliance, & the Real Utopias Collective.
Rebecca Lurie
Board Member
Rebecca Lurie serves on faculty at the City University of NY, School for Labor and Urban Studies where she founded the Community and Worker Ownership Project. As a union carpenter she then transitioned into worker education through the union’s apprenticeship school, later devising economic development strategies for equity, inclusion and cooperative business solutions.
Our Advisors
Eduardo Cabral
Advisor
Eduardo Cabral is a cooperative finance, private equity, & community organizing consultant with Triple Beam Advisors. Previously, he led corporate development for Obran Health (CA’s largest home healthcare co-op), worked as an associate at Bengal Capital, & managed progressive political campaigns.
Dennis Olson
Advisor
R. Dennis Olson is a Senior Research Associate & Policy Analyst for UFCW International, where he advises the national director of the meatpacking division and provides strategic analysis for organizing programs, collective bargaining activities, union co-op development, legislative initiatives and strategic alliances. Dennis is specifically focused on helping UFCW develop farmer- and worker- owned union cooperatives in the food sector.
Andre Dev
Organizer, Cooperative Founder
Andre Dev is a non-practicing MD and entrepreneur who has lived in Providence for 19 years. An alum of Brown’s entrepreneurship and medical schools, Andre most recently served as a director at a game development company and an organizer with ReclaimRI.