Making change today: A profile of TDC CEO Stephanie McHenry
March 31, 2025
Stephanie McHenry is CEO of The Democracy Collaborative. She shares responsibility for leading the organization with President Joe Guinan. Karen Kahn spoke to McHenry about who she is, her leadership role, and her vision for the organization and its work.
Originally from Little Rock, Arkansas, Stephanie McHenry landed in Cleveland in the mid-1990s, as an executive at ShoreBank, which she describes as “the first modern-day Community Development Financial Institution in the country.” ShoreBank’s entire strategy was to invest in underinvested communities. Having been with the bank since 1986, when she began as an intern in Chicago, McHenry saw real opportunity for ShoreBank to use its resources to positively impact Cleveland’s marginalized neighborhoods.
“What made Cleveland exciting,” says McHenry, “was that there was some real economic energy. A lot was happening, just not for all people. The Glenville neighborhood, where ShoreBank was located, was poor but it was right next to University Circle, which had the world’s best orchestra, one of the world’s best museums, and so on. That gave us something to build on.”
“We approached our task of helping Cleveland by discovering the city’s assets and building on those: investing in home ownership, supporting small businesses, developing strategic real estate initiatives” to improve neighborhoods.
“We approached our task of helping Cleveland by discovering the city’s assets and building on those: investing in home ownership, supporting small businesses, developing strategic real estate initiatives” to improve neighborhoods.
A building in the Glenville neighborhood, owned by ShoreBank’s nonprofit affiliate, rented space to Evergreen Cooperative Laundry, the signature business associated with The Democracy Collaborative’s Community Wealth Building strategy. Partnering with the Cleveland Foundation, TDC had formed a network of green industrial enterprises to supply goods and services to large local anchor institutions like Cleveland Clinic and Case Western Reserve University.
“I fell in love with TDC when [the laundry] located in our neighborhood. It was the perfect story, not only bringing jobs but taking advantage of economic power that already existed.” Cleveland Clinic, a local anchor institution, was already doing laundry — but they were sending it to be cleaned by a large national corporation. By choosing to have their laundry cleaned by the Evergreen cooperative, they provided jobs and helped to build wealth for the workers and local community.
Evergreen Laundry workers
As a community investment banker, McHenry was taken with the Community Wealth Building model. “I was drawn to it because of its simplicity,” she says. “It isn’t about generating new economic activity but about spreading value to people who should be benefiting.”
Community Wealth Building, she notes, spreads value through numerous mechanisms: anchor institutions spending locally, cooperatives that share profits among the workers, community land trusts that allow communities to keep housing and commercial space more affordable. “My degree is in economics, so I appreciated that lens for improving local communities. TDC brought a lot of my worlds together.”
McHenry joined TDC as a board member in 2017. In 2021, she joined the leadership team as Chief Financial Officer, and in 2023 took on the responsibilities of CEO, following founder Ted Howard’s decision to step down to focus on a related project.
As co-leader of the organization in a particularly difficult political climate, McHenry says her “number one priority is to create an exciting, challenging, and realistic vision of who we can be over the next two decades. Our first 20 years, we spent time trying to convince people that we needed to do things differently, that democracy can’t survive an economically unbalanced society.” Now, as McHenry notes, “the dog has caught up with the car it’s been chasing."
“I need to create a vision of how we put our theories into action. We need to answer the question, How do I change my community today? Not 20 or 30 years from now. We had the luxury of talking way into the future for a long time, but now it is about today.”
“I need to create a vision of how we put our theories into action. We need to answer the question, How do I change my community today? Not 20 or 30 years from now. We had the luxury of talking way into the future for a long time, but now it is about today.”
With her long history in Cleveland, McHenry says, her greatest asset is already having “done work on the ground as the person that ran purchasing and finance for an anchor institution, Cleveland State University.
“I’ve seen the power of anchor institutions. I did some work with the organization that oversees and helps Community Development Corporations here in Cleveland, so I know the power of locally driven community and economic development. My job now is to help us demonstrate that there is a way to improve local economies through democratic methods.”
Notably, McHenry explains, this work can’t be vilified as “socialist” or “government takeover.” Democratically run businesses still need good business practices, accountability, and hard work to create value. “It’s just a matter of structuring things so that those who help create the value get a bigger piece,” she says.
In our current system, those with the most capital get the most value from an enterprise. But, McHenry asks, why do they have the most capital? Answering her own question, she says, “Because of racism, extraction, externalizing environmental costs on to the rest of us. People holding the most capital did so in a biased economic system; they didn’t get it by being nice guys.”
That takes us to the current moment.
“What’s happening is that the people with the most capital are creating an agenda and infrastructure that supports them. The consequence is that others who are not part of that group have less and less of a voice.”
“What’s happening is that the people with the most capital are creating an agenda and infrastructure that supports them. The consequence is that others who are not part of that group have less and less of a voice and stake.”
The Democracy Collaborative was founded with the idea that by including more people in the economy and giving them a voice, we could build a more equitable society. In the intervening years, the demonstrations of success have grown to include not only Cleveland’s Evergreen Cooperatives but Community Wealth Building in places as diverse as Preston, England; Denver, Colorado; and Atlanta, Georgia. These communities are finding ways to include multiple stakeholders in growing local economies that work for all people, not just the ultrawealthy.
Or, as McHenry would have it: “What goes on in the economy has a big impact on our political life. This has always been true but often hidden; now the light is shining on it.”
