Business View Magazine - May 2024

members of the NCEO realized that ESOP companies were most prevalent in the states that had advocacy centers within them. This resulted in the formation of a task force to figure out how to best support them, which eventually led to the establishment of the Pennsylvania Center for Employee Ownership “It ran for a couple of years… and due to its early success, they decided they should take the model on the road and see how they could open more state centers,” Storkan explains. So, on July 4th, 2018, EOX was officially incorporated in Philadelphia, and on January 1st,2019, the company began operating officially with its first staff member, which turned out to be Storkan himself. From that point on, it has operated on a larger guiding mission, which, according to Storkan is “to create and support a network of independent nonprofit centers for employee ownership.” The results have led to incredible growth: a blooming network of 23 state centers and counting! These centers serve as hubs for education, outreach, and support, ensuring a cohesive and informed community of employee-owned enterprises. Underneath its main mission to expand and promote employee ownership is a secondary mission to ensure its current network is as cohesive and refined as possible. Through annual symposiums, quarterly calls, and collaborative endeavors, EOX fosters knowledge exchange and best practices dissemination among these centers, a crucial part of its strategy. “They’re the ones with boots on the ground providing free, unbiased resources to business owners, community leaders, advisors…anyone that’s involved with or is a business owner,” Storkan explains, referencing the vital role these state centers play. This dual-pronged approach of state-level expansion and community-level support has generated fantastic results so far and is the current basis of the EOX 82 BUSINESS VIEW MAGAZINE VOLUME 11, ISSUE 05