Team

Ricardo Samir Nuñez (he/him) is a worker cooperative ecosystem development specialist supporting cultural practices, policies, organizations, and systemic changes that allow communities to build beyond the interlocking systems of imperialist white supremacist capitalist patriarchy. He is currently the Director of Economic Democracy at the Sustainable Economies Law Center where he co-coordinates educational programs, legal services, policy advocacy, and regional and national ecosystem development to restore human labor to right relationship with people and the planet. He is board president of the US Federation of Worker Cooperatives and at-large board member at the California Center for Cooperative Development and the Southern California Focus on Cooperation. He is also becoming a lawyer without going to law school through California’s Law Office Study Program (likelincoln.org). Check out Ricardo’s Favorite Cooperative Resources here! 

Thomas Beckett (he/him) has for most of his career worked as an attorney serving the needs of small and startup businesses. For the past twelve years, he has been focused on cooperatives, providing business & legal education and guidance to co-ops throughout North Carolina and the South. He has significant experience working with agriculture enterprises in the region, including cooperatives, quasi-cooperatives, and nonprofits, as well as with working farmers. Thomas has completed and is certified by the CooperationWorks! Cooperative Business Development Training Program. Beckett has presented on the Business Law for Worker Cooperatives at the US Federation of Worker Cooperatives conference and at the Eastern Conference for Workplace Democracy. He has taught Business Law at Warren Wilson College and is certified to present the FastTrac TechVenture program, the Kauffman Foundation’s entrepreneurial training curriculum. He is currently on the Board of Directors of Shared Capital Cooperative Development Fund. Beckett previously served on the Boards of CooperationWorks, the Center for Participatory Change and the Appalachian Sustainable Agriculture Project (ASAP).

Camy Seitz-Cherner (They/them) is a cooperative professional passionate about building a non-extractive economy focused on serving needs rather than generating profit. They are particularly passionate about contributing to wealth redistribution, land back, reparations, and working in solidarity with communities striving for economic self-determination. They are currently the Legal Toolkit Project Manager at the Sustainable Economies Law Center, building a tutoring co-operative Redwood Learning Collective, and are completing the Saint Mary’s Masters in Management in Cooperatives and Credit Unions (’22). As the Guild’s Admin, Camy is stewarding CPG’s development into a fully fledged organization.