A coalition of more than 100 organizations driven to make every worker an owner

Daniel Massey brings more than 25 years of experience as an award-winning journalist, communications strategist and campaigner to Expanding ESOPs. For more than a dozen years, he helped build BerlinRosen's labor practice into a national powerhouse and played leading communications and strategy roles on some of the most innovative, groundbreaking worker organizing campaigns in recent history. Through his work on the Fight for $15, which "entirely changed the politics of the country,” according to MSNBC, Daniel helped nearly 30 million workers win raises totaling more than $200 billion. The campaign put nearly half the country's workforce on the path to $15/hour, turning it from "absurdly ambitious to mainstream," according to the Washington Post.

Daniel also was part of the core strategy teams that won first-of-their-kind sector-wide bargaining opportunities for half a million fast-food workers in California and 70,000 rideshare drivers in Massachusetts. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, New York Daily News, Newsday, Crain's New York Business, the Star-Ledger, Newsweek and Salon, among other outlets. And his book, Under Protest, uncovers the hidden history of South Africa's first Black university and the role its students played in toppling apartheid. Daniel graduated magna cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa from Brown University, and holds Master’s degrees in journalism from the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY and in history, with distinction, from the University of Fort Hare in South Africa.

Michael Sinacore leads Expanding ESOPs’ efforts to develop policies that grow employee ownership across the American economy. He previously worked in the U.S. Senate, where he was at the center of federal retirement and employee ownership policy. As Pensions Policy Director for the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee, Sinacore ran the Committee's employee ownership portfolio and helped lead unanimous Senate passage of two ESOP bills — which established employee ownership as one of the few bipartisan issues in American economic policy.

Prior to this, Sinacore served as Economic Policy Advisor to Senator Rob Portman (R-OH), where he was a principal architect of the Senator's retirement security agenda and helped pass SECURE 2.0— the most consequential retirement savings legislation in more than a decade. Prior to his government service, Sinacore worked at J.P.Morgan’s London office.

Sinacore holds an M.B.A. from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, where he was his class's graduation speaker, and a B.A. from Boston College.

Pete is the Founder and Chairman of Expanding ESOPs. His interest in employee ownership began with his father, who spent 40 years as an hourly construction worker in Chicago. Through his father’s experience, Pete saw firsthand how little opportunity many workers have to share in the value they help create or build wealth through their jobs. His interest deepened early in his investing career, when he first encountered an ESOP, and later at Harvard Business School, where he studied ESOPs and employee ownership in depth. He has worked to develop and scale new models of employee ownership ever since.

Pete joined KKR in 2005 and co-leads its Global Private Equity business, which manages more than $250 billion in assets across Europe, Asia and the Americas and spans traditional large- and mid-cap private equity, impact, core and growth equity.

Earlier in his career at KKR, Pete led the firm’s Industrials industry team, where he pioneered an employee engagement and broad-based ownership model. He has since helped scale that approach across nearly 100 KKR portfolio companies, reaching hundreds of thousands of employees. Pete has also worked to expand broad-based employee ownership beyond KKR as the Founder and Chairman of Ownership Works, a nonprofit organization that partners with companies and investors to provide all employees with the opportunity to build wealth at work. Through Expanding ESOPs, he is focused on removing barriers to ESOP formation and making partial ESOPs a practical option for a much broader range of companies.

Before joining KKR, Pete was an investor at GTCR, where he focused on the healthcare sector. He holds a B.S. in Chemistry, magna cum laude, from Duke University and an M.B.A. with high distinction from Harvard Business School, where he was a Baker Scholar.

Elyse Bluth was a managing director in the Chicago office and leader of the ERISA/ESOP Advisory service line, which incorporates Kroll’s investment banking, opinion, and valuation services related to Employee Retirement Income Security Act plan investments and for employee stock ownership plan companies. Elyse has over 30 years of experience in advising companies and fiduciaries on valuation and transaction issues.

Elyse’s clients included some of the country’s largest privately owned businesses. She advised her clients on a wide variety of corporate finance, valuation and fairness opinion issues for mergers, acquisitions and divestitures; ESOPs and ESOP transactions; and financing and general corporate purposes.  Elyse advised shareholders, companies, trustees, and fiduciaries of ERISA plans that hold employer securities or illiquid investments on transaction, valuation, proxy voting, and restructuring issues, tender offers, share repurchases, spinoffs, and ESOP loan restructurings; and advised selling shareholders, company management, boards of directors and fiduciaries in numerous financial and ESOP and ERISA transactions for public and private companies.

Her experience covered a wide range of industries including, among others, agribusiness and food processing, distribution, industrial manufacturing, building products and construction, healthcare, and financial services.

Prior to Kroll (f/k/a Duff & Phelps), Elyse worked for an investment management company.

Elyse received her M.B.A. with a specialization in finance and concentration in accounting from the University of Chicago Booth Graduate School of Business and her A.B. in mathematics from Bryn Mawr College. Prior to retiring, she was a certified financial analyst (CFA) charterholder and member (former chair) of the Valuation Advisory Committee of The ESOP Association, the National Center for Employee Ownership, the Advisory Committee of Employee-Owned S Corporation of America, the Institute of Chartered Financial Analysts, the Chicago Finance Exchange, the CFA Society of Chicago, and is a former member of the Board of Directors of The ESOP Association.

Aziz El-Tahch, CFA, is the President of the ESOP Advisory group at Stout, where he leads the firm’s valuation, transaction advisory, and consulting services for companies already owned by an Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP), or companies considering ESOP ownership. He advises ESOP trustees and fiduciaries, business owners, boards, and management teams across the full spectrum of ESOP-related services, from initial feasibility and transaction advisory (including fairness opinions) through ongoing valuation and ESOP sustainability consulting, with a particular focus on large and structurally complex situations. Aziz has played a central role in some of the largest and most complex ESOP transactions ever completed.

Beyond transaction and valuation advisory work, Aziz is responsible for the strategic direction of Stout’s ESOP Advisory practice and is widely recognized as a thought leader in the industry. He has presented frequently at national conferences and has published numerous articles on ESOP-related topics. He is an active participant and serves in a leadership or advisory Board capacity of ESCA, Expanding ESOPs, the Rutgers University Center for Employee Ownership, and the NCEO.

Aziz also serves on the boards of several ESOP-owned companies, including Integration Innovation, Inc. (i3), an aerospace and defense firm; Cathedral Holdings, Inc. (d/b/a Essential Ingredients), a specialty chemicals distributor; and Paddock Publications, Inc., publisher of The Daily Herald. He previously served on the boards of Stout, Point B, Inc., Dynetics, Inc., and Pinnacle Solutions, Inc.

Prior to joining Stout, he was a Senior Investment Analyst at a New York-based alternative assets fund with approximately $500 million under management, where he focused on structured credit, CDO and CLO securities, and mezzanine lending to middle market companies. Before that, Aziz held various roles in the transfer pricing groups at Deloitte and Arthur Andersen.

Mary is a nationally recognized expert in ESOPs with more than 40 years of experience advising, structuring, and closing over 500 transactions for the ownership transition of middle-market companies. Prior to Verit, Mary founded and built the ESOP group at Chicago’s LaSalle National Bank into the nation’s leading middle-market ESOP advisory team. Mary also co-founded and launched a leading ESOP Advisory practice for ABN AMRO LaSalle Corporate Finance. Upon LaSalle’s acquisition by Bank of America, Mary led the ESOP Solutions Group for all of Bank of America-Merrill Lynch, before going on to form Verit Advisors LLC, a nationally recognized boutique investment banking advisory firm focused on consulting to privately held and ESOP owned middle market businesses.

Mary has spoken at hundreds of conferences nationally, and frequently authors pieces on issues related to succession and liquidity alternatives for closely-held businesses, including ESOPs, ESOP financing, ESOP M&A, and other corporate finance solutions. She was also selected as one of the most influential women in mid-market M&A by Mergers & Acquisition magazine in 2017, 2018, 2019 and 2020. Mary sits on the board of Big Shoulders, is a member of the Economic Club of Chicago, serves on the boards of numerous ESOP companies including Proponent, Inc., Manson Construction Company, and Performance Contracting Group and has continually held leadership positions spanning the ESOP community including serving on the boards, committees, and advisory boards of Employee-Owned S-Corporations of America, the National Center for Employee Ownership and The ESOP Association. Mary is one of two lifetime members of The ESOP Association. She has a Bachelor of Arts in Economics and French from Marquette University; a Master of Business Administration in Finance from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business; and is a member of FINRA.

Rob Portman’s career in public service has spanned three decades and included service in three presidential administrations, as well as two terms in the United States Senate and six terms in the United States House of Representatives.

In the George W. Bush administration, he served in two cabinet-level jobs, as Director of the Office of Management and Budget as well as United States Trade Representative. Under President George H.W. Bush, he served as Associate Counsel to the President and Director, White House Office of Legislative Affairs. Known for his civility, successful bipartisan policy making, work ethic, and grasp of a broad range of complex issues, over 220 of Portman’s bills were signed into law by Presidents Biden, Trump, and Obama during his tenure in the Senate.

He served as the lead Republican negotiator on the bipartisan infrastructure law that is making historic improvements to our nation’s roads, ports, rails, bridges, broadband and more. He played a key role in U.S. foreign policy through his seat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and as co-chair and founder of the Senate Ukraine Caucus.

Portman currently serves as the Founder and Chair of the Portman Center for Policy Solutions at the University of Cincinnati and is a Distinguished Visiting Fellow in the Practice of Public Policy at the American Enterprise Institute. He also serves on the Board of Directors of the Procter and Gamble Company, Bechtel Group, Inc., Habitat for Humanity International, the National Parks Foundation and the Atlantic Council, and as an advisory board member of other nonprofits. He is also involved in commercial real estate in the Cincinnati area and, along with his brother and sister, owns the historic Golden Lamb hotel and restaurant in Lebanon, Ohio.

Laura Delgado is a warehouse supervisor at Proponent, an employee-owned aviation parts manufacturer based in Brea, California. Read her ownership journey here.

Keith Dixon is supply chain manager and executive team member at AMBAC International, an employee-owned manufacturer of diesel fuel systems based in Elgin, South Carolina. Read his ownership journey here and watch it here.

Lisa M. Gomez is a nationally respected expert in employee benefits, retirement equity, multiemployer plans, plan governance, fiduciary responsibilities, workplace mental health and access to mental health care, and worker empowerment.

Lisa was nominated by President Joseph R. Biden, Jr. in July 2021 to serve as the Assistant Secretary of Labor for Employee Benefits Security, and was confirmed by the U.S. Senate for this position in September 2022. During her time leading the Employee Benefits Security Administration, Lisa led the formation of the Department of Labor’s Employee Ownership Initiative and implementation of the WORK Act, and focused on collaborating with the employee ownership community. After leaving government service, she was selected as an Executive Fellow of the Rutgers University Institute for the Study of Employee Ownership and Profit Sharing. Lisa is a Board member of the Employee Ownership Expansion Network and a member of the National Center for Employee Ownership.

Prior to her government service, she led the employee benefits practice at a New York City law firm, where she practiced for nearly 30 years, and was very active in the employee benefits, labor organization, and worker protection communities.

Earl Pomeroy served as North Dakota’s at-large U.S. Representative from 1993 to 2011. As he describes it, “I came with President Clinton and left with the Affordable Care Act.” Ending his public sector experience working on landmark health insurance legislation brought Pomeroy’s career full circle: he was the state’s insurance commissioner and president of the National Association of Insurance Commissioners before joining Congress.

In 2011, Pomeroy joined Alston & Bird, where he worked on the firm’s Legislative & Public Policy Group. He provided strategy and advocacy services to clients in a variety of sectors, including health care delivery and reimbursement, energy, employee benefits, social security, tax, and trade.

While in Congress, Earl was a senior member of the Ways and Means Committee and chair of the Social Security Subcommittee. He applied his unique experience as a financial regulator to a variety of issues before the committee and was widely regarded as a leader on pensions and retirement income security issues. At Alston & Bird, he co-chaired the firm’s Washington, D.C. pro bono committee and served on the boards of the National Job Corps Association and the National Academy of Social Insurance. The Best Lawyers in America® recognized Earl in their annual ranking.

Ethan Rouen is the Terrie F. and Bradley M. Bloom Associate Professor of Business Administration and the faculty co-chair of The Ownership Project at Harvard Business School. In his research, he works with companies to examine how to effectively implement broad-based equity programs.