Founding board member and board President
Mordecai Cargill is a co-founder and partner of the ThirdSpace Action Lab, a grassroots research, strategy & design cooperative, dedicated to prototyping creative place-based solutions to complex socioeconomic problems. Mordecai is a community + institutional organizer, committed to Activating Space + Activating People. His personal, professional + intellectual pursuits converge in an unwavering belief in the creative potential of everyday people.
Founding board member
Deborah was born and raised in Hough, where her father was the first Black homeowner in the neighborhood. She is a founding board member of The BC Block Club, a group that is restoring Hough's legacy and reimagining its future, and President of St. Paul AME Zion Church Credit Union, a Black-owned financial institution founded in 1956.
Founding board member and board Treasurer
Michael is a co-founder of Rust Belt Riders, a worker-owned cooperative dedicated to transforming regional food systems through the creation of value-added products derived from locally squandered resources to build a circular economy that improves food security and combats climate change. When he's not making compost with the RBR crew, Michael spends his time reading, fermenting foods, and taking early morning walks around the neighborhood.
Board member
Adam Drue King is a technologist and creative whose work focuses on digital access, equity, inclusion and innovation as means for community and economic development in northeastern Ohio and beyond.
Board member
Indigo Bishop is a lifelong Clevelander, facilitator, and strategist specializing in sustainable development. Guided by her passion for cross-cultural dialogue and creative community building, Indigo is dedicated to designing for and with the next generation, building wealth in black and brown communities, and leveraging existing assets to strengthen our neighborhoods. She works as a Program Officer at the St. Luke's Foundation.
Board member
Michael S. Russell works as a lawyer for the Legal Aid Society of Cleveland (LASC) where he represents community groups, nonprofits, and cooperatives as part of Legal Aid’s Community Engagement Practice Group. He strives to use community lawyering principles to support low-income people organizing to build collective power, wealth, and community in the solidarity economy.
Board member
Dawn N. Mayes is the Director of Design Entrepreneurship and Inclusion at Kent State University, where she creates viable pipelines for HBCU students to attend graduate school, provides technical assistance to startup diverse Architecture firms including Black, Hispanic, Native American, and the Asian population, and brings lectures to the university to bring awareness to Design Entrepreneurship and Diversity.
Lead Organizer, founding board member
Jonathan is a co-op developer and community organizer who fights for economic democracy as the Executive Director and a co-founding board member of Cleveland Owns. He first tasted the power of economic democracy in 2009 when a group of working class women in rural Dominican Republic invited him to join them in starting a cheese cooperative. The cheese was delicious, the solidarity even better, and he was all in.
Energy Democracy Organizer
Craig is a committed organizer passionate about advancing democracy on and off the shop floor. Originally from Portland, Oregon, Craig worked for a local SEIU affiliate, helping to build healthcare justice for Oregon’s homecare workers. Now in Cleveland, Craig is excited to build collective ownership of our power! When not organizing, Craig enjoys riding his bike and spending time with his two cats (though not at the same time!).
Co-op Organizer
Bogdan is learning to cooperate and organize, putting them both into practice as he works to energize a solidarity economy as a new team member with Cleveland Owns. He believes doing this work well involves striking many balances and staying aware of the trade-offs all must make when building a new world in the shell of the old. He enjoys the seasons, gardening, the water, and growing along with his friends and comrades.