We are a member-run organization with a Board of Directors, operating as a sociocracy with guidance from outside advisors.
Meet Our Board Of Directors
Mastress (they/them) | Board Director (President) & Team Service Co-Lead
Mastress is a grassroots community organizer with the Workers Revolutionary Collective focused on systemically humanizing and liberating themselves and others. As a skilled facilitator, multi-disciplinary artist, healer, teacher, visionary, and warrior of love and truth, Mastress is committed to quitting capitalism and getting free to thrive.
mishmish (they/them) | Board Director
mishmish is a part-time jeweller who also works in UK higher education teaching sociology and researching the digital society. They are a long-time labour organiser and committed to resisting Big Tech. Contact mishmish for all your fine jewellery commissions or check their limited range of ready-made options at jewellery by mishmish.
Meagan (she/her) | Board Director (Secretary)
Megan is an experienced mechanical engineer, beginner web developer, an all around maker and DIYer - and a mom. She is a founding member of the co-op, having stumbled upon it somewhere online and joining instantly. If you meet her, you will definitely be told all about the co-op! Megan is committed to changing the world for the better.
Julie (she/her) | Board Director (Treasurer)
Julie's background may be in office management and small business operations, but she's a crafter at heart. Having grown up helping with her father's construction and home improvement business, she's always had a love for hands on work, which largely shows itself in crocheting and taking care of her many house plants. Since moving to South Carolina for a calmer life near the coast, she enjoys more time to work crochet, snuggle with her cat Luna, and walk the beach. Find Julie on the marketplace at Luna Blue Turtle.
Adam (he/him)| Board Director
Adam is a founding member of the Artisans Coop and a member of the tech team. He comes from the open source community and hand makes electronics, focusing on easy to use hardware devices to store passwords securely, which is sells on the marketplace in his shop Open Source Gadgets. While it is an unusual craft, it is hand crafted.
Alexis (he/him) | Board Director
Alexis joined the Coop because he'd love to see a way for more artisans to be able to dedicate themselves to their craft and meet their economic needs. His priorities are to make the coop a well run organization with a healthy process and culture. "It will always be demanding, but it has to be sustainable". He brings 15 years of company-building and -running experience to the co-op.
Meet Our Leadership Team
Cathy (she/her) | Team Money Co-Lead
Cathy is a creative entrepreneur and connector with a physics degree. She combines her love of nature and interest in science in many of her photographic art and jewelry creations. Her creative business is Eclectic Design Choices. Cathy has worked as a secondary math and science teacher. In addition to her creative endeavors she currently tutors and continues her volunteer work of almost three decades for her city, in various roles, as a member of the City Council.
Erin (she/her) | People Team Co-Lead, Former Interim Board Secretary
Erin found her niche as a full-time potter, of Stella NC Works, after 22 years in personnel roles, both in the US Army and as the owner/operator of a third-party corporate recruiting business. She finds satisfaction in her extremely hands-on creative process, endless experimental possibilities where science and art intersect, and exploration of natural and human values in her work.
Kelly (she/her) | People Team Co-Lead
Bio coming soon.
Miya (she/her) | Team Money Co-Lead
Miya Kressin lives in Wisconsin with her husband and three teenage children, drinks a lot of coffee, plays with her two rescue dogs, manifests glitter, collects and makes shiny math rocks (aka dice for TTRPGs), and tries not to spend all day writing and crafting. Find her at Pixie Wolf Publishing.
Rhi (they/them) | Email Marketing
Rhi aspires to make positive changes to the world and has been a passionate member of many political and people-driven movements since they were a teenager. Growing up Wiccan taught them to love the dirt beneath your feet which inspired them to create Honeysuckle Witches Brew - a business that brings healthy self-love to any who enjoy their teas. When they aren’t at local markets painting children’s faces, they can be found furiously drawing new sticker designs with their pets.
Sara (she/her) | Team Data Lead
Sara is a neurodivergent software developer who lives in the greater Cincinnati area. Several years ago, she happened to see a glass installation by artist Dale Chihuly during a trip to Las Vegas and immediately fell in love with art glass. Other creative interests include beading, knitting, crochet, cross-stitch, spinning, and weaving. When she’s not writing code or crafting, she enjoys performing as a pit musician for local theatre productions. You can find her on the marketplace at Night Shift Art Glass.
Shannon (she/her) | Team Service Co-Lead
Shannon is a hobby farmer in Nova Scotia Canada where she lives with her wife, and various animals. Shannon is passionate about regenerative agriculture, and community led food support. You can find her farm blog at GrowingHope.ca
Thera (she/her) | Tech & Visual Design Team Lead, Former Interim Board Member
Miss Thera is an Educator, Artist and Playwright as well as a passionate neurodiversity advocate. Her shop Atypically Artistic is her safe place to express herself freely without the confines of neurotypical expectations. She is also a Marketing and Communications Director and Consultant and loves the creativity that goes into communicating beyond words. She has worked with multiple non-profits over the past decade as an administrator and board director and is thrilled to be bringing her experience and knowledge to the team.
Advisors
Danny Spitzberg (he/him) | Exit to Community Collective
Danny leads user experience research for a cooperative economy. He has been lead researcher at ownership conversion collective Exit to Community, staffing co-op Turning Basin Labs, and digital services co-op CoLab. Find him on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Medium.
Greg Brodsky and the Entire Team at Start.coop
As a member of the Spring 2023 Accelerator funded by the AARP Foundation, we are grateful for the advice, mentorship, and resources of Start.coop and the nine other cooperatives in our accelerator cohort.
Natalia ("Nati") Linares (she/her) | Art.coop
Nati is a communications and culture organizer based in Salt Lake City, Utah and originally from New York City. Coming to the world of solidarity economy after a decade plus working in the live music industry, she spent 6 years learning and supporting the solidarity economy movement in the United States while at the New Economy Coalition, a network of over 150 groups prefiguring post-capitalist solutions. In 2021, she co-authored "Solidarity Not Charity: Arts & Culture Grantmaking in the Solidarity Economy," for Grantmakers in the Arts, which chronicles artists' role in economic justice organizing throughout history and pushes funders to consider making large investments in artists today who are organizing themselves to address the root issues of our system failure. Since then, she co-founded and has been part of an ecosystem of artists and organizers building Art.coop, a future hub for artists making the solidarity economy and systems change irresistible - in the ways they live and what they create - so that they are connected, get resourced and strengthen their communities. Learn more about her at: www.conrazon.me
Shavon Prophet (she/her) | ICA Group
Shavon is the Program Director for MassCEO and an Employee Ownership Advocate at ICA Group, the oldest US national organization dedicated to the development of worker cooperatives. Find her on LinkedIn and the ICA Group.
USFWC Co-op Clinic
As a start-up member of the US Federation of Worker Co-ops and a participant in the Co-op Clinic funded by the USDA, we are grateful for the advice, mentorship, and resources of the clinic’s advisors.
Valerie (she/her) | Founding Artisan Member, Former Interim Board Treasurer
Valerie was one of the original founders of Artisans Cooperative, which evolved from her work on the #EtsyStrike. She has over 20 years professional experience as a non-profit director, event planner, project manager for multi-million dollar renewable energy projects, and most importantly, 14 years running an artisan business as one-half of the husband-and-wife leathercrafting business, Walnut Studiolo. She is also a freelance writer. Find her on Medium or LinkedIn.
Zia Dione (she/her) | Trunk of My Car
Founder – Trunk of My Car Cooperative; Maryland licensed attorney; MFA student at Pacific University; Writer; Nature Whisperer; a Soul Whose Intentions are Good…