David Hammer is the Executive Director of the ICA Group and a leading practitioner in the employee ownership field. He has assisted in the conversion, launch and growth of dozens of employee-owned firms and social enterprises.
Dave speaks frequently about the potential for employee ownership to address income inequality and improve job quality and is an experienced trainer on the nuts and bolts of employee ownership and business strategy. He is the author of numerous publications and resource guides, including Co-op Conversions at Scale: A Market Assessment for Expanding Worker Co-op Conversions in Key Regions & Sectors; Building Assets, Saving Jobs: Employee Ownership as a Job Stabilization Strategy in Massachusetts Gateway Cities; and The Framework for Democratic Control: An Introduction to Articles of Incorporation & by-Laws for Democratic Firms.
David joined the ICA Group in 2008 and served as a Senior Business Consultant until assuming the position of Executive Director in June 2013. He has spent his career supporting workers in their efforts to achieve meaningful economic control over their lives. Prior to joining ICA, he served as Assistant Director of Research of 1199SEIU, the largest health care union on the east coast. Previously, he was a Senior Research Analyst for UNITE in New York City and the United Steelworkers of America in Pittsburgh. David has worked on a wide variety of projects throughout the country in industries as diverse as long term care, child care, industrial laundries, apparel distribution, food retail, tire manufacturing, temporary staffing, hospitality, aluminum can manufacturing, as well as various small manufacturing settings.
David earned a Master’s of Science from the Labor Relations and Research Center at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and a Bachelor’s degree in History from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.
On my best days, I am a coach, guide, and thought partner. I am responsible for much of our sales and development work, and I play a role in various coalitions and partnerships across the country. I also help to shape ICA’s long-term goals.
Lately I’ve been particularly inspired by the home care cooperatives we work with. For instance, Home Care Associates of Philadelphia has taken a major business challenge – recruitment and retention in a sector with a major workforce shortage and low wages that are largely dictated by public payment rates – and doubled down on ownership as a way to build meaningful connections with workers. In a sector with turnover approaching 80%, HCA is seeing more and more workers joining the cooperative as members.
“Will automation take away our jobs?” by David Autor. When we let middle skill jobs die, we create a chasm between bad jobs and good jobs that can’t be bridged. Autor’s work is one of the few places where this issue is being addressed, and his analysis has had a significant influence on ICA’s approach to our employee ownership conversion work.
A good day for me will involve time in the garden. Digging in the dirt is incredibly relaxing and I love that my mistakes often take a whole season to be truly understood. I also enjoy playing board and card games with my children, especially now that they are old enough to give me a run for my money.
I am based out of Northampton, a place I lived for a number of years when I went to UMass Amherst as an undergrad and grad student.
Building trusting relationships is really what leadership is really about and Thanks for the Feedback: The Science and Art of Receiving Feedback Well by Douglas Stone & Sheila Heen is a great guide for giving feedback and having effective and engaging conversations. I also appreciate one of the central ideas in Building Long-Term Value: Developing a High-Performance Ownership Culture by Virginia J. Vanderslice and Alexander P. Moss – effective leaders treat information as a common resource for everyone to share, not a commodity that is only shared on a need-to-know basis.
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