20 ESOP and Employee Ownership Experts to Follow in 2026

Rieger started WEBIT Services in Naperville in 1996. The company became employee-owned in 2022, a date CertifiedEO says it corroborated from Department of Labor Form 5500 filings. What makes him worth an hour is that he says the numbers out loud. On the episode he describes six years of research and about twenty minutes of signing, private equity arriving as handwritten letters to his home address, and six or seven offers in a single week once revenue crossed $5 million. He puts setup at about $70,000, administration at five to six thousand a year, and an annual valuation at $10,000 to $15,000.

On the episode he also describes the shape of the deal: 30% into the trust in 2022 on a seller note, which made him the bank rather than a lender, then the remaining 70% sold by merging into an employee-owned holding company. His own site puts the rarity plainly, calling WEBIT one of only 270 employee-owned companies in Illinois and 6,900 nationwide. WEBIT also appears on the 2019 Forbes Small Giants list at number 24 of 25. He says on the episode that he is writing a book about the route he took.

The origin story on SRC's own about page is not a tidy one. In 1983 Stack and a group of managers scraped together $100,000 to buy a struggling International Harvester division and save the jobs in it, financed by an $8,900,000 loan at 18% interest against that equity, a deal the company still calls the worst loan in corporate American history. What they built to survive it is the open-book management method he has taught since: give people the financials, teach them to read them, and let them own the result. greatgame.com puts the company today at annual sales of more than $500 million and a workforce of over 2,000 employee-owners.

What makes him useful to an owner is that the method is written down. He wrote "The Great Game of Business," co-wrote "A Stake in the Outcome" with Bo Burlingham, entry 20, and co-wrote "Change The Game" with Darren Dahl. srcholdings.com counts 60 individual business spin-offs since 1983, so the model has been run more than once. His greatgame.com bio also has him as the first sitting CEO named to an Executive Fellowship at the Rutgers institute behind much of the research this page cites.

Rosen came into employee ownership through legislation rather than through a deal. He took a doctorate in political science at Cornell in 1973 and taught politics at Ripon College, then spent five years on Capitol Hill, where his NCEO bio says he helped initiate and draft the legislation on ESOPs and employee ownership. In 1981 he left and formed the NCEO. The same bio says he has been called the leading expert on employee ownership in the world, which reads as the organisation's standing description of its founder rather than a dated award or ranking.

What he offers a reader is the long view, mostly in writing. He co-authored "Equity" with John Case and Martin Staubus (Harvard Business School Press, 2005) and "Ownership: Reinventing Companies, Capitalism, and Who Owns What" with John Case in 2023. The NCEO page counts the rest of the output as dozens of books, articles and research papers rather than giving a number. He also sits on several ESOP company boards, so the arguments in the books have a boardroom test attached to them.

Rodgers entered the field in 1995 as a consultant, joined the NCEO in 2005 as its research director and became executive director in 2011. That makes him the person running the organisation Corey Rosen founded. His bio states the volume plainly: hundreds of companies worked with, tens of thousands of people presented to. He also holds a visiting executive fellow appointment at the Rutgers Institute for the Study of Employee Ownership and Profit Sharing, so the membership body and the academic side meet in one person.

His stated range is wider than transactions. The NCEO page lists corporate governance, employee motivation, communications and business literacy next to ESOP transactions and operations. That last item is the one owners tend to underestimate. An ESOP hands shares to people who may never have read a set of accounts, and what employees understand about the business is a separate problem from getting the deal closed. He holds a master's degree in public policy from the University of Michigan.

Blasi holds Distinguished Professor rank twice over at Rutgers, in Human Resource Management and in Labor Studies and Employment Relations, and he is Director Emeritus of the Institute for the Study of Employee Ownership and Profit Sharing. The NCEO reported on 1 July 2025 that he had stepped down from the directorship after sixteen years and would carry on at Rutgers as a researcher and mentor. That announcement does not say exactly when the handover happened, and his faculty page does not date it either.

The work most owners will meet first is "The Citizen's Share: Reducing Inequality in the 21st Century", written with Richard Freeman and Douglas Kruse and published by Yale University Press in 2013. It builds the case for broad-based ownership out of American history and data rather than out of one company's story, which makes it a useful counterweight if everything you have read so far is founder testimony. His Rutgers page publishes no client count and no transaction record, because an academic seat does not produce those. It produces the evidence other people on this page quote.

Kruse holds the J. Robert Beyster Distinguished Professorship at Rutgers in two departments at once, Human Resource Management and Labor Studies and Employment Relations, and his faculty page lists him as Research Director of the Institute for the Study of Employee Ownership and Profit Sharing. His Rutgers work also runs beyond ownership, since he co-directs the Program for Disability Research, so his output is not all about this field.

With Joseph Blasi he writes the recurring "Employee Ownership and ESOPs: What We Know from Recent Research" briefs, published through the Aspen Institute alongside the Rutgers employee ownership forum, with editions dated April 2024, April 2025 and May 2026. We verified those briefs by title, authors and year from the published files rather than by reading them line by line. If you want the state of the research in one short document instead of a sales deck, that is the series to start with. He co-authored "The Citizen's Share" with Blasi and Richard Freeman in 2013.

Scharf is a sociologist, and her Rutgers page puts her work on organisations, work and ownership, with particular expertise in employee-owned business models. She joined the institute in 2019 to run CLEO and became its Director on 1 July 2026, succeeding Bill Castellano, per the NCEO's announcement in August 2026. The same announcement notes she was a keynote panelist at the NCEO's 2022 annual conference in Seattle, and that she recently launched a Research to Practice Hub connecting research on employee ownership outcomes to strategies companies and workers can act on.

CLEO is the practical thing to know here. Its own site describes it as the largest online library for teaching materials on employee ownership, and counts more than 600 items: videos, cases, syllabi, teaching modules and reading collections. Owners rarely need another opinion about employee ownership. What they need, usually at the point they have to explain the idea to a management team who did not ask for it, is teaching material that somebody else has already made. That is what she is in charge of.

Stavros joined KKR in 2005 and led the firm's industrials team, where his bio says he "pioneered an innovative employee engagement and ownership model". He is now Partner and Co-Head of Global Private Equity. The same page puts the reach of that model at "more than 80 KKR companies" and "more than 180,000 workers". Those are KKR's own figures for KKR's own portfolio, and they are worth keeping apart from the movement-wide count below, which spans many sponsors rather than one firm.

Outside the day job he is "Founder and Chairman of Ownership Works, a non-profit focused on building a worker ownership movement globally", and founder and chairman of Expanding ESOPs, which his bio describes as working to expand the number of ESOPs in corporate America. Ownership Works publishes its own numbers: "192 Companies with shared ownership", 45 liquidity events "resulting in $2.2 billion in payouts to tens of thousands of workers", and a stated target of "$20 billion of wealth for workers by 2030". His KKR page links a CBS News 60 Minutes segment on the work and a TED talk.

Moriarty runs the Lafayette Square Institute, and his bio there describes him as "a lead architect of the bipartisan American Ownership and Resilience Act (AORA) legislation introduced in 2025". The same page says he came to the institute "after founding Ownership America, a public policy organization committed to turning Americans into owners". Ownership America no longer runs a site of its own, and the institute is where the work now sits.

The substance is about money rather than sentiment. Per the notes for his earlier ESOP Podcast appearance, Ownership America's marquee proposal, the Employee Equity Investment Act, would create federal loan guarantees for private investment funds that focus on forming ESOPs in mid-sized companies, modelled on the existing Small Business Investment Company program. AORA carries a similar idea into a bipartisan bill: use public guarantees to pull private capital toward deals that leave employees owning a share. His institute describes him as a lead architect of that bill, which makes his one of the policy seats to watch on how employee ownership gets financed.

Bonham took over The ESOP Association on 1 March 2019 and also serves as President of the Employee Ownership Foundation, "whose mission is to educate and expand employee ownership throughout the United States". His bio credits "more than 25 years of experience as a high level government official, advisor, and business leader" across taxes, labor, financial services, manufacturing, healthcare and government contracting. That background explains the shape of the job: he runs a membership body with 19 state and regional chapters, and he is the person who turns up when Congress asks about ESOPs.

He did exactly that on 22 July 2025, testifying at a House Education & Workforce subcommittee hearing titled "Restoring Trust: Enhancing Transparency and Oversight at EBSA", the Employee Benefits Security Administration, on the invitation of the committee chair, Representative Tim Walberg. Between hearings he hosts "The Ownership Effect", a show that lands every two weeks and runs "candid conversations with company founders, policymakers, and employees whose lives have been transformed by ownership". The association's own scale claim is about gatherings: more than 23,000 people a year across its meetings, and a Las Vegas conference it calls the largest ESOP event in the world.

The DOL names her directly on its own Employee Ownership Initiative page: "EBSA's Office of Outreach, Education and Assistance welcomed Hilary Abell as its first Chief of the Division of Employee Ownership." EBSA is the Employee Benefits Security Administration, the part of the department the division sits inside. Project Equity, announcing her move, put the same title in its own words as "Chief of the Employee Ownership Division at the U.S. Department of Labor".

She arrived with a decade behind her. Project Equity's own site says she and Alison Lingane, entry 12 here, "founded Project Equity more than 10 years ago" and dates it to 2014. The two of them jointly received the 27th Heinz Awards in the Economy category, cited "for their leadership in the movement to create better jobs and a fairer economy by advancing employee ownership". That combination is what makes the government seat worth watching: someone who spent years converting companies now sets the tone for how the federal side talks about it. The division's published output, rather than her personally, is the thing to follow.

The Lab's about page introduces her plainly: "The Lab is founded by Alison Lingane, as a next chapter following a dozen years as the co-founder of Project Equity, a well-respected national nonprofit with a major focus on growing awareness of EO." Project Equity dates its own founding to 2014 and names her and Hilary Abell, entry 11 here, as the pair behind it. The two of them jointly received the 27th Heinz Awards in the Economy category for advancing employee ownership.

Her new work starts from a diagnosis about money: "Capital is both a barrier to, and the biggest opportunity for, the growth of employee ownership." The Lab's stated focus is "strategies for financing employee ownership at greater scale with capital that allows for a slice of the value and return to accrue to the employees." The first thing to come out of it is the EO Fund Accelerator, a tuition-free, nine-month program running September 2026 to May 2027 for an inaugural cohort of 8 to 10 investment platforms. Applications for that cohort have closed, and the site invites people to register interest in later ones.

EOX's own page says Storkan "has been involved with employee stock ownership plans for over 25 years", and that he came to the job from "Director of ESOP Administration at Alerus Retirement and Benefits". That is the plan administration side of employee ownership, the ongoing annual work rather than the deal, which is a useful background for someone whose job is now explaining the structure to people who have never met one.

EOX describes what it does as building "a network of State Centers for Employee Ownership", and its site points visitors at an interactive map: "Click on any state in blue to be taken to that State Center's website." A Project Equity article records that EOX was established in 2019, and that the network's stated goal was to have centers "covering 70% of the country" by 2025. We could not confirm how many exist today. The EOX page that lists them blocked our requests twice, so the current total is not something this page can state.

Josephs founded Verit Advisors and runs it. Her bio credits her with "more than 30 years of experience advising, structuring, and closing over 300 transactions for the ownership transition of middle-market companies", and it places the origin of that record inside a bank: she "founded and built the ESOP group at Chicago's LaSalle National Bank into the nation's leading middle-market ESOP advisory team", in the site's own words. The work is described in transaction terms throughout, advising, structuring, closing, rather than as a planning exercise.

For an owner trying to picture what a partial ESOP looks like, she has written about one. On a verit.com post about Clif Bar's sale to Mondelez she says, "I was privileged to work with Clif Bar when they established a 20% ESOP plan in Spring 2010", a reminder that these deals do not have to be all or nothing. She holds a master's of business administration in finance from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, sits on the ESOP Association's board of directors and chairs its advisory committee, and Mergers & Acquisition magazine named her one of the most influential women in mid-market mergers and acquisitions in 2017, 2018, 2019 and 2020.

Finnell has spent "more than 40 years helping business owners design and execute ESOPs", by his firm's count, and a large part of that record is spoken rather than transacted: execfin.com credits him with "experience presenting at more than 300 conferences and meetings throughout the U.S. and abroad in London and Sydney". The firm's own history page describes what it does as "a very narrow focus on the use of ESOPs in Ownership Succession Planning". Its homepage puts it more bluntly: ESOPs are all we do.

The book is the easiest way in. "The ESOP Coach: Using ESOPs in Ownership Succession Planning" came out in 2010, and execfin.com says it has sold thousands of copies since. Behind him sits a firm established in Memphis in 1981, whose history page counts "100+ Transactions" and work "in 45 cities in 22 states". His bio lists him as an active member of the NCEO and The ESOP Association. The framing throughout is succession, an owner working out how to leave, rather than a sale process looking for the highest bidder.

Michael's site says he "founded the first financial services firm in the country dedicated to assisting business owners sell their company to an Employee Ownership Trust (EOT)", and that he is "responsible for introducing the EOT as a new financial, tax, and legal mechanism to the United States". Both are his own claims on his own site, and they are worth reading as such. The practice runs under two names that share his bio, his New York address and his phone number: EOT Advisors on the financial side and EOT Law on the legal side.

The numbers behind it are stated identically on both domains: he "has facilitated the transfer of roughly $750m in capital assets to over 3,000 workers in the course of more than 30 transactions". He has also argued the case in print, with articles on the concept in peer-reviewed journals including Tax Notes and Probate & Property. Since 2017 he has taught at Rutgers University, where he is a director of the Institute for the Study of Employee Ownership and Profit Sharing. For a longer version in his own voice, he talked the structure through on The ESOP Podcast in May 2021.

Menke founded Menke & Associates in 1974 and is listed today as its president, with his own email and phone number on the firm's advisory professionals page. Before that he was a senior tax attorney with the Law Offices of Louis O. Kelso, from 1972 to 1974. His bio also credits him with co-drafting "the original ESOP legislation which helped to spawn employee ownership in this country".

On volume, menke.com puts the firm's count at "over 4,000 ESOPs, the most by any single organization" since 1974, and calls the group "America's largest and oldest ESOP advisor". Both are stated at firm level, not attributed to him personally. Day to day the group is now led by Trevor Gilmore, promoted to chief executive officer (CEO) after Kyle Coltman retired, per a news post on the firm's site. Menke stays listed as president, a separate role from the one Gilmore now holds. Undergraduate degree at the University of Texas, law degree at Yale.

MBO Ventures describes itself as "a business exit planning firm and investment partner" that designs transactions letting owners "sell a portion or all of their company", and Gleeman founded it. He came to the work from quantitative finance: the about page starts him at Wharton, with "hard work, modeling, and the scientific method", before the move into mid-market advisory. The site's own claim about him is specific: "He led the first fully ESOP-owned cannabis company in the country."

That is the distinctive part. mboventures.com calls him "a recognized expert in structuring ESOPs for cannabis operators" and puts the offer plainly: "If your company is plant-touching or adjacent, we can map a path that respects compliance and still delivers a fair deal." An Authority Magazine interview on Medium adds detail his own site does not carry, reporting that in 2023 he "received a patent pending for his ESOP methodology used in completing the cannabis industry's first ESOP, alleviating tax implications of 280E for a plant-touching multi-state operator, Theory Wellness", and that he took the Green Market Report 2024 Top Financial Advisor Award. No email is published on the site, so the way in is the contact form.

The archive is the reason to bookmark him. The ESOP Podcast, which parts of the site brand as The EO Podcast, numbers its main feed into the 280s, and runs a separately numbered ESOP Summer School series alongside it that reaches 44. The homepage describes the show as inviting listeners from all over the world to hear insights from the best in the employee owned business, and the back catalogue is close to that: getting on for 300 numbered interviews, searchable, on a subject most owners run into once in a career.

One thing to be precise about, because it changes how you use the show rather than what it is worth. The most recent episode we could find dates from 2024: the site's own list stops in May 2024, Apple Podcasts shows nothing after 14 August 2024, and the underlying feed carries no item published after 1 December 2024. So the sensible way to treat this entry is as a library rather than a subscription, and to ask him where the show currently stands before planning around it.

Burlingham spent 33 years at Inc. magazine as senior editor, executive editor and editor at large, and the two books from that career are the ones owners get handed. "Small Giants: Companies That Choose to Be Great Instead of Big" is about companies that decided not to scale, and his bio says its popularity led to the creation of the Small Giants Community. "Finish Big: How Great Entrepreneurs Exit Their Companies on Top" is the one to read before an exit, and the subtitle is the whole argument. Neither book is an advice manual with a structure to sell. The authority is a reporter's, built over decades of writing about companies of this kind.

He now produces the annual Small Giants section for Forbes, per that same bio, which does not date when the relationship began. The 2019 edition of the list included WEBIT Services, entry 01, at number 24 of 25. His bio also credits him as co-author with Jack Stack, entry 02, of "The Great Game of Business" and "A Stake in the Outcome," and he co-wrote "The Knack" with Norm Brodsky. Read those credits together and the lineage on this page stops looking accidental.