New leaders and a new era for The Democracy Collaborative

Contact: Sili Recio, (202) 559-1483 ext. 3035

Stephanie McHenry, Joe Guinan to take over when Ted Howard steps down at year’s end

Washington, DC – The Democracy Collaborative today announced a new leadership team, with Joe Guinan, currently the organization’s vice president for strategy and programs, becoming its president and Ohio-based Stephanie McHenry, currently the chief operating and financial officer, becoming its chief executive officer. The new team will begin its duties on January 1, 2023.

Ted Howard and Gar Alperovitz founded the Democracy Collaborative 22 years ago, and Howard has served as its president ever since. In that time, the organization has become a highly respected, action-oriented think tank and learning laboratory for the democratic economy. The esteemed organization has blazed a trail on community wealth building and other strategies designed to make the economy work for the common good, instead of just producing wealth for a select few.

“The Democracy Collaborative is positioned to offer meaningful solutions to many of the emerging and entrenched challenges we are facing, including racial violence and injustice, economic disparities, public health failures, voting rights challenges, and violent threats against our democracy,” McHenry said. “I am honored to be part of the organization’s new leadership team and dedicated to ensuring that we facilitate projects and advance policies that will give more underserved people opportunities to improve their lives.”

“At the Democracy Collaborative, we demonstrate in theory and practice different ways of owning and controlling the economy, of building institutional sources of democratic, community and popular power capable of standing up to, offsetting, and displacing the corporate and elite power that governs our current system,” Guinan added. “And to do so in ways that place much of that power directly in the hands of communities and of marginalized groups and constituencies. We recognize that the real basis of political power is ownership and control of capital. We intend to help build a racially just and ecologically sustainable democratic economy.”

Guinan and McHenry said that, over the next few years, the Democracy Collaborative will continue to focus on next-generation community wealth building practice and politics, as well as democratic economy policy and strategy. It will be laser focused on providing real-world, actionable solutions to the systemic crises — of race, climate, the economy, and the immediate Covid/cost-of-living challenges — and on building the new system we all deserve.

“I am immensely proud of the Democracy Collaborative’s accomplishments and enthusiastic about its future as we turn the organization over to a new generation of brilliant, talented leaders who are poised and ready to take the organization into an exciting new phase of its work,” said Howard, who will assume emeritus status and continue to provide thought leadership and fundraising support. “We know the Democracy Collaborative’s brightest days are ahead.”

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The Democracy Collaborative is a research and development lab for the democratic economy and has worked with communities around the world on strategies that, by enabling people and communities to have more ownership and control over their economic lives, fosters equity, sustainability, and collective wellbeing.