Anna-Lisa Miller and Ownership Works: Reimagining Equity to Build Wealth for All

In this episode of Capital for Good we speak with Anna-Lisa Miller, the Executive Director of Ownership Works, and a long time advocate of economic inclusion, empowerment and mobility.  Miller started her career in corporate law at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton and Garrison, and transitioned to the nonprofit sector – the Kohala Center and Project Equity – to pursue her passion for creating opportunities that uplift workers and families.  Today, at Ownership Works, she leads an organization and movement focused on employee ownerships models that “reimagine equity to build wealth for all.”  In 2024, Miller was named as one of Business Insider’s top 10 business leaders spearheading industry-transforming change.

In this wide ranging interview, we learn how Miller’s commitment to finding pathways to economic opportunity and mobility for workers and families is rooted in her childhood experiences; she moved to the U.S. at a young age and was raised by a single mother who rebuilt her career as a nurse, supporting three children paycheck to paycheck -- and never far from financial insecurity.  Trained as a corporate lawyer, Miller moved into the nonprofit sector to test various models of employee ownership and economic mobility before meeting Pete Stavros, who had been successfully experimenting with owner equity in various portfolio companies he oversaw at KKR.  Both understood the broader potential of the approach as a way to build employee wealth and improve business performance, and in 2021 formally launched Ownership Works (OW).  Today, with 30 employees, nearly 100 partners (including 37 private equity firms, publicly traded companies, professional service firms, institutional investors, labor groups and foundations), and 130 companies across a wide range of industries implementing the model, OW aims to create $30 billion in wealth by 2030 and create proof points that influence how companies across the private sector harness the power of employee engagement and ownership.

Miller walks us through various components of the OW model, sharing the example of Charter Next Generation, an Illinois manufacturing company that has used employee ownership to improve substantially employee engagement, retention and company profitability.  She hopes that the long-standing bipartisan support for employee ownership as a path to economic inclusion and opportunity serves the movement well in this moment.  In the meantime, she and OW are focused on collecting additional data and case studies that demonstrate employee ownership’s value and feasibility, to encourage broader adoption and new norms in business.  “You hear a lot about win-wins,” Miller says.  “This truly is.”

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Mentioned in this podcast:

• Ownership Works
• Private Equity Is Starting to Share With Workers, Without Taking a Financial Hit New York Times January 2024
• Charter Next Generation: Follow a Real Life Journey to Shared Ownership