About us
Leadership

Evan Edwards
Chief Executive Officer

Alison Lingane
Co-founder, Chief Strategy & Innovation Officer
Prior to launching Project Equity, Alison held executive roles at mission-driven businesses that are designed to have human impact at scale, including Benetech (where she built and launched their first product, a digital book service for individuals with visual or reading disabilities), GreatSchools (the 6th largest parenting website, a nonprofit using information to drive school improvement), and InsideTrack (a venture-backed scaled services company that has delivered 1:1 coaching to millions of college students, resulting in increased college completion rates). She brings those scaling lessons back full circle to her work at Project Equity, turning businesses into community change agents through employee ownership.
A serial ‘social entrepreneur,’ Alison co-founded a thriving PreK-8th grade dual immersion school in Oakland (Escuela Bilingüe Internacional) that serves over 360 students. Alison has her B.A. from Harvard University and her MBA from the Haas School of Business. She has been selected as a 2014 Echoing Green Fellow, a 2017-18 Aspen Institute Job Quality Fellow and a 2019 Ashoka Fellow.

Hilary Abell
Co-founder, Chief Policy & Impact Officer
Hilary was “bit by the cooperative bug” when she was a worker-owner at Equal Exchange in the 1990s and forever changed by witnessing how Latin American farmers used coops to transform their communities. After a decade of international community empowerment work, Hilary has been advancing cooperative development and employee ownership in the U.S. since 2003. As Executive Director of WAGES (now Prospera), she led the organization in creating a network of five worker-owned green cleaning businesses that sustained 100 healthy, dignified jobs for low-income women. Worker-owners increased their family incomes by 40-80%, built assets through robust profit sharing, and gained business skills and social capital.
In co-founding Project Equity, Hilary hoped to make these profound benefits of employee ownership a reality for millions more workers all over the country. For her work with Project Equity, Hilary was awarded Presidio Graduate School’s Big Idea Prize (2013), an Echoing Green Fellowship (2014), a 2016 Local Economy Fellowship, and a 2020 Executive Fellowship with the Institute for the Study of Employee Ownership and Profit Sharing at Rutgers University.
Hilary is a passionate advocate, practitioner and thought leader and has authored or co-authored several publications, most recently The Case for Employee Ownership (2020) and California Cooperatives (2021). She has her B.A. from Princeton University and her MBA in Sustainable Management from Presidio and, in her spare time, loves to explore redwood forests, California’s coastline, and good books and movies.

Stacey Smith
Vice President, Program Operations & Client Experience
Business Development

Annie Palacios
Business Engagement and Partnership Manager

Donna Sky
Business Engagement and Partnership Manager

Miyaka Cochrane
Business Engagement and Partnership Manager
Client Services

Alicia Ijewere
Senior Manager
Alicia is a well-seasoned business strategy and planning professional with prior experience supporting multinationals and organizations such as the United States Departments of State and Defense over the last two decades. She is passionate about business sustainability, quality jobs and financial security. At Project Equity, Alicia helps business owners and employees derive value from the ownership transition process. She also conducts employee ownership research through partnerships with other institutions.
She holds a BSc in Applied Mathematics from the State University of New York at Stonybrook, an MBA in Finance from the New York Institute of Technology and is currently working on a doctorate in Business Administration. Alicia also has a post graduate certificate in Data Science and Business Analytics from the University of Texas at Austin. When not working, she enjoys reading, crafting, exploring new destinations and sampling cuisine.

Courtney Kemp
Senior Manager

David Gray
Senior Manager

Laura Flores
Senior Manager

Melissa Gjerde
Program Associate
Communications and Marketing

Dallas Shelby
Director, Communications and Marketing
With a background that spans both commercial and nonprofit organizations, Dallas has worked as a journalist, a filmmaker, a writer, an entrepreneur, a teacher, consultant and marketing strategist. Before coming to Project Equity, he served as a Director at National Arts Strategies, a nonprofit that provides leadership training and coaching for nonprofit leaders in the arts and culture sector. He also consulted with purpose-driven organizations on strategy, planning, leadership development, branding and communications.
He is an active volunteer in his hometown of Carmel, Indiana, where he is involved in state and local politics as a communications consultant, Democratic Precinct Chair and Indiana State Convention delegate. He also serves as the President of the Board of Trustees of the Carmel Education Foundation, which provides scholarships to students and innovation grants to teachers.

Franzi Charen
Communications and Marketing
Franzi has been an independent business owner in Asheville, North Carolina for nineteen years. She is the founder of the Go Local Asheville and organized over 550 small business members to advocate for a strong and healthy local economy. She was also a downtown business owner from 2006 – 2023. A first generation American, she grew up in a textile family in the South and experienced the devastation of mill towns with the loss of a core heritage industry. Franzi joined the team part-time at Project Equity because she is passionate about employee ownership and documenting its impact. Her expertise is in building data visualizations and storytelling through photography and videography. She has a Bachelor of Science in Ecology as well as a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Georgia. She is an avid gardener and loves jogging and hiking in the mountains.

Genevieve Adams
Senior Manager, Communications and Marketing
Development

Amanda Fasenmyer
Director of Development
Amanda brings over a decade of multi-sectoral leadership expertise in forging meaningful relationships and bringing diverse stakeholders together for collective impact. Most recently as the Director of Corporate Philanthropy and Membership at the San Francisco Bay Area Planning and Urban Research Association (SPUR), she developed relationships with corporations, foundations, individuals, governments and community partners to advance a more equitable, sustainable and prosperous region. Previously, she worked in the private sector consulting with small businesses on human resources solutions and in business development. Amanda holds a B.A. from Gettysburg College and a dual MBA / MPA from Presidio Graduate School. She has been named by the Silicon Valley Business Journal as a “40 Under 40” honoree and as a “Changemaker” by Gentry Magazine.

Ben Platt
Development Manager

Kiara Williams
Development Associate
Kiara Williams passionately supports and advocates on behalf of people of color marginalized by negative statistics and cyclic struggles. Based in Orange County, CA, her work is largely driven by her desire to be of service to at-risk communities, and to eradicate barriers faced by socio-economically disadvantaged groups of people.
Kiara has over ten years experience as a community advocate in Southern California working on various initiatives and partnering with organizations to lift up low-income communities through high quality, accessible resources. For the past 5 years, she has built a solid background in the nonprofit sector working at social services organizations, serving homeless veterans and families affected by neurodiverse disabilities.
As the Development Associate with Project Equity, Kiara supports a range of efforts related to fundraising, grants and donor stewardship. She is eager to expand employee ownership by cultivating funder relationships that align with the mission of improving racial equity and minimizing unjust wage gaps nationwide. In her free time, she enjoys exploring the outdoors, writing creatively and nurturing her family.
Operations

Jason Eby
Chief of Staff and Senior Manager, Operations

Shermany Hickman
Operations Coordinator and Executive Assistant
Shermany holds a bachelor’s degree in English from Michigan State University. She also gives back to her local community as an advocate for mental health research. In her free time, she enjoys learning new languages, starting DIY projects, and wrangling cats.
Product Management

Emily Bergstrom
Senior Manager, Investments & Partnerships
For over a decade, Emily worked at McMaster-Carr Supply Co, a privately held industrial supplies distributor much loved and respected by makers worldwide. That work developed her passion for the domestic manufacturing industry. At McMaster, Emily experienced first-hand the incredible power of company profit sharing to engage, retain, and benefit employees.
At Project Equity, Emily advises owners on the benefits of transitioning their company to an employee-owned structure. Emily has an MBA from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business with a focus on operations and economics. She received a Fulbright scholarship and spent two years abroad in Latin America, becoming fluent in Spanish. She earned her undergraduate degree at Michigan State University and comes from a long line of hard-working Detroiters. Emily lives in Chicago with her family and is usually found outside in the garden, on a hike, or biking.

Peter Lucas
Senior Product Manager, Service Provider Adoption
Peter’s career has been focused on learning product development. He has done this work as an entrepreneur, as a learning partner with Fortune 1000 corporations, with nonprofit organizations and for both professional and trade associations. Peter’s work focuses on supporting our strategy to increase awareness and adoption of employee ownership by service providers, builds capacity in the business ecosystem and helps drive additional revenue. He is passionate about learning and creating scalable systems that enable people to do their best work. In his spare time he likes to enjoy time with his family as well as mentor and volunteer on boards in his community.
Regional Engagement

Max Chaoulideer
Program Specialist, Public Sector Engagement

Sarah McBroom
Director of Regional Engagement
Sarah has spent her career committed to building shared prosperity and well-being. She began her career in state-level economic development and most recently was an equity officer at a private, regional foundation in Arkansas. She is driven by a commitment to economic and racial equity and passion for developing partnerships, collective strategy, and infrastructure to advance systemic change. At Project Equity, Sarah focuses on building regional partnerships with government, non-profit, private sector, and philanthropic organizations to support, scale, and sustain a local employee ownership ecosystem. Sarah has a joint Master of Public Service and MBA from the University of Arkansas Clinton School of Public Service and Walton College of Business and BA from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Outside of work, she loves canoeing, camping, and hiking with her family.
New updates!
Our latest study across the United States indicates millions of businesses are at risk of closing and point to employee ownership as a solution.
Free consultation
for businesses interested in employee ownership
