Short Film: Restoring An American Ideal | Wealth Through Employee Ownership

EMPLOYEE OWNERSHIP | A Gary Community VENTURES ownership INVESTING STRATEGY
 

Employee ownership is a powerful wealth creation tool that has been championed by everyone from Ronald Reagan to Bernie Sanders. And yet, it’s a tool that has not been socialized to most Americans.

There have been many white papers on the subject. As it turns out, our team at Gary Community Ventures has also written extensively on the subject of ownership, as we believe owning assets that increase in value over time — such as stock in one’s company — is one of the most expeditious ways to help families achieve economic mobility. It’s why we’ve made investments in firms like Apis & Heritage Capital Partners, a Black-owned private equity firm that focuses on acquiring and converting privately-held companies with large workforces of color into 100% employee-ownership models. We think this approach has the potential to narrow our country’s widening racial wealth gap.  

But we’ve seen little done to humanize the concept of ownership, specifically employee ownership and what it truly means for those who work at employee-owned companies. This short documentary is an effort to change that.

As we set out to produce the film, it didn’t take long to confirm our belief about the need for this type of story. One of our first interviews was with Luis Villalobos, the commercial project manager at Apex Plumbing, an employee owned company in Arvada, Colorado. Luis isn’t just a senior manager, he’s a highly educated civil engineer with a degree from the prestigious Colorado School of Mines. And yet, when we rolled the camera and asked about employee ownership, even he admitted “I don’t really know what employee ownership means for me — at least not yet.”

We feel the “not yet” part is crucial.

For all of the compelling economic theory around employee ownership, we have heard few stories about rank-and-file employees retiring with millions of dollars in their bank accounts. Thankfully for us, one of those stories was floating around in our own backyard here in Colorado at a place called StoneAge Inc. — and there are many more developing within Colorado’s innovative Office for Employee Ownership.

This short film is an effort to get a few of those stories out into the world.

If you’d like to join us for a future screening of the film, if you’d like to host a screening, if you’d like to play a role in the distribution of this film, or if you’d just like to gain access to this story for your own purposes once the film is finished — please feel free to reach out to us at communications@garycommunity.org.

CO.creators

CO.creator | Philip Reeves, Apis & Heritage Capital Partners

CO.creator | Kerry Siggins, StoneAge Inc. 

Kerry Siggins is the CEO of StoneAge, Inc., a global leader in the design and manufacturing of high pressure waterblasting and sewer cleaning tools and equipment used in the industrial cleaning industry. Based in Durango, Colo., StoneAge sells and supports its products throughout the world and has over 170 dealers in 45 countries. Under Kerry’s leadership, StoneAge became an ESOP Company in 2015, and as of 2024, she was the Chair of the Colorado Employee Ownership Commission, which supports the Colorado Office of Employee Ownership.

Director | Algernon Felice Jr, Gary Community Ventures

Algernon Felice Jr has been recognized nationally and regionally as an award-winning producer, having won a Chicago/Midwest Emmy® for writing, producing and directing a campaign that explores the humble roots of a historic business. He has also won multiple Wisconsin Broadcasters Association awards for his work in brand development and television production, and was featured on CNN for his filmmaking and cultural storytelling.

Writer & Producer | Will C. Holden, Gary Community Ventures

Will C. Holden is a writer, producer and storyteller with deep experience in the marketing and communications sectors. He has been awarded by the Emmys, Associated Press and Society of Professional Journalists for his reporting as well as The Telly Awards, Public Relations Society of America and AMA Colorado for his creative campaigns. He currently teaches a CU-Boulder course on digital storytelling and serves on the Denver Commission on Cultural Affairs.

Associate Producer | Catherine Toner, Gary Community Ventures

Catherine leads investing and product structuring for Gary Community Ventures’ family economic mobility outcome area, with a focus on housing finance, community and employee ownership, and the future of work. She structured The Dearfield Fund for Black Wealth, a fund launched by Gary to close the racial wealth gap by increasing Black families’ access to homeownership, and conceptualized the tenant equity structure as well as the financing strategy for Proposition 123, the first successful ballot measure in the U.S. to create a statewide solution to the affordable housing crisis.

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