NCBA CLUSA is pleased to announce the candidates running to fill five seats on the 2025 Board of Directors: Jeff Braun, Erbin Crowell, Michael Droke, Fred Gibbs, Christina Jennings, Nathan Schneider, Alex Stone and Debbie Wege.
The online election will open on March 11 and close on April 8; during this period, eligible NCBA CLUSA members will be able to cast their votes. Eligible voters are Cooperative Members that have joined or renewed their 2024 memberships. Lifetime members are also eligible to vote. Current members are available to view on this list. To confirm your membership eligibility status, send a message with the subject line “Voting Member Eligibility” to membership@ncba.coop.
Each eligible cooperative and associate member can designate one staff member to serve as the voting member for their organization.
Update your voting contact here
Election results will be announced at NCBA CLUSA’s Annual Membership Meeting & Virtual Town Hall, scheduled for May 6, 2025 in Washington, D.C. Your participation helps us set the strategic vision for the organization, ensuring that NCBA CLUSA remains a dynamic voice in the cooperative space.
Learn more about this year’s candidates below.
Jeff Bruan
Chief Executive Officer
Primera
Jeff Braun is the Chief Executive Officer of Primera, a leading cooperative in the green industry. With more than 25 years of experience, Jeff is a visionary leader committed to driving transformational growth, empowering organizations, and fostering collaboration within the cooperative sector.
Jeff’s journey began in a small town in Connecticut, where he demonstrated leadership early on by founding a Leadership Corps program, serving as a sports team captain, and achieving the rank of Eagle Scout. These formative experiences built the foundation for his lifelong dedication to service and excellence.
After graduating from Farmington High School, Jeff pursued a degree in Communications at Middle Tennessee State University, where he played for the nationally ranked Blue Raiders football team as a placekicker. Despite a knee injury ending his athletic career, Jeff persevered and completed his studies at Towson University.
Jeff’s professional career started with an internship at DEWALT Industrial Power Tools, evolving into a 22-year tenure at Stanley Black & Decker. Rising to Vice President of Field Sales for the U.S. Commercial Division, Jeff led a $950 million portfolio, implemented a new go-to-market strategy and delivered record-breaking growth. His success was driven by his strategic vision and ability to cultivate a culture of accountability, teamwork and trust.
In 2019, Jeff founded the Jeff Braun Company, providing consulting and keynote speaking services to organizations nationwide. As a certified speaker and trainer with the Jon Gordon Company, Jeff inspired teams to embrace leadership, accountability and cultural transformation.
Since joining Primera as CEO in 2020, Jeff has propelled the cooperative to new heights through strategic initiatives aligned with its pillars of Growth, Influence, Value and Engagement (G.I.V.E). Under his leadership, Primera has strengthened its member-owner relationships, enhanced supplier partnerships, and delivered measurable value to its stakeholders.
A passionate advocate for cooperative principles, Jeff focuses on operational excellence, data-driven decision-making and fostering an inclusive, high-performance culture. His leadership has positioned Primera as a model for success in the green industry and beyond.
Outside of his professional achievements, Jeff values family above all. He enjoys traveling, competitive mini-golf and creating lasting memories with his wife Lisa, daughters Taylor and Michelle, son-in-law Gardner and granddaughter Ravyn. Jeff Braun’s career exemplifies resilience, leadership and a relentless pursuit of excellence. His ability to inspire and lead continues to leave a lasting impact on Primera, the cooperative community, and the individuals and organizations he serves.
Read Jeff’s Candidate Statement
Erbin L. Crowell
Executive Director
Neighboring Food Co-op Association
Erbin Crowell serves as Executive Director of the Neighboring Food Co-op Association (NFCA), a secondary cooperative of grocery co-ops and startup initiatives in New England and New York State dedicated to supporting the shared success of its members through peer collaboration and innovation, education and advocacy, and regional food system development.
He was born in inner city Washington, DC, and grew up there and in rural Virginia, Arkansas and New Mexico. Erbin received bachelor’s degrees in the Visual Arts and Anthropology from Brown University, where he worked with fellow students to develop and propose a Native American Studies program and completed his thesis on “Native American Self-Determination in Education.” While at Brown, he participated in a group independent study course on socially responsible business where he learned about the worker co-op and alternative trade organization Equal Exchange, which he later joined as a salesperson in 1997.
Continuing in the marketing and education department, he established and led an innovative initiative dedicated to partnerships with international relief and development organizations to expand the impact and understanding of Fair Trade and the cooperative movement among communities of faith, leading numerous delegations to visit coffee farming co- ops in Latin America and Africa. He later created a program applying Fair Trade principles to domestic products, including a partnership with the Federation of Southern Cooperatives/Land Assistance Fund to market pecans grown by Black farmers in the Southeast. He remained with Equal Exchange for more than a decade before leaving to pursue a deeper understanding of the potential for growth of the cooperative sector, including work with nonprofit organizations such as the Cooperative Fund of New England and the Cooperative Development Institute.
Erbin received his Master of Management: Co-operatives and Credit Unions from Saint Mary’s University in Nova Scotia, thanks to a scholarship from the National Cooperative Bank (NCB), completing his capstone project on “The Valley Alliance of Worker Co-ops: Exploring the Potential for Co-op Led Development.” He has designed and delivered undergraduate courses on the cooperative movement at the University of Connecticut, Storrs; and the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, where he also worked with the Department of Economics on the development of an undergraduate Certificate in Applied Economic Research on Co-operative Enterprise. Currently, Erbin is an adjunct professor with the International Centre for Co-operative Management at Saint Mary’s University, where he teaches a graduate level course on Co-operative Business Strategy.
He also serves in the boards of the Co-operative Management Education Co-operative, New England Farmers Union, and DotCooperation, LLC. For the past few years, he has served on the International Cooperative Alliance’s Cooperative Identity Advisory Group, which is tasked with coordinating a global dialog on the relevance of the Statement on the Cooperative Identity to the challenges and opportunities of our contemporary world. Erbin lives with his family in Western Massachusetts. He may be contacted at erbin@nfca.coop.
Read Erbin’s Candidate Statement
Michael Droke
Co-Chair – Food, Beverage and Agribusiness Industry Group
Dorsey & Whitney LLP
Mike is a member of Dorsey’s Cooperative Law Practice Group and firm-wide Co-Chair of Dorsey & Whitney law firm’s Food, Beverage and Agribusiness Industry Group. Mike’s practice is devoted to representing cooperatives in the areas of natural food, agriculture and other types of organizations. He has established dozens of co-ops. He has assisted existing co-ops redesign their membership into a multi-stakeholder model.
He has advised consumer, worker, agricultural and hybrid co-ops. He has advised on cutting-edge multi-stakeholder cooperatives in the technology and other sectors. He acts as outside primary/general counsel in the industry, handles corporate governance, and manages complicated domestic and international transactions.
Read Michael’s Candidate Statement
Fred Gibbs
President and Registered Cooperative Manager
National Association of Housing Cooperatives
Fred Gibbs is the owner and founder of FKGibbs Company, LLC, a Kansas City based Property Management Company, serving client organizations throughout the United States. He has earned the designation of Registered Cooperative Manager from the National Association of Housing Cooperatives (NAHC), where he also serves as President.
For more than 13 years, he has worked in various capacities with NAHC to support the achievement of its mission and to promote the housing cooperative concept, in new development and continued preservation of existing co-ops. He is honored serve as the President of NAHC. With more than 30 years of experience in subsidized housing management, Fred is uniquely suited to help you explore the ever-changing world of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, as it relates to multi-family housing communities.
FKGibbs Company currently enjoys business relationships in the states of Kansas, Missouri, the District of Columbia, California and Iowa and therefore has a good working knowledge of the Management and Occupancy Review process, the Real Estate Assessment Center inspection protocol, Housing Assistance Payment contract renewal procedure and Budget Preparation process.
Fred uses his career connections to enable him to fulfill one of his life’s missions: helping others realize their potential and thereby making a difference.
Read Fred’s Candidate Statement
Christina Jennings
Executive Director
Shared Capital Cooperative
Christina Jennings is the Executive Director of Shared Capital Cooperative, a national Community Development Financial Institution (CDFI) dedicated to financing the growth and development of cooperatives across the United States. Headquartered in Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minnesota, Shared Capital is a $25 million loan fund with a 45-year track record of investing in worker, food and housing cooperatives. As a cooperative association itself, Shared Capital is owned and governed by 330 cooperatives across more than 40 states, creating a unique model where borrowers are also investors and decision-makers.
With more than 25 years of experience in community development finance in the U.S. and microfinance internationally, Christina has dedicated her career to advancing economic justice and expanding equitable access to capital. Since joining Shared Capital in 2008, she has provided strategic leadership, overseen lending operations and has led capitalization efforts. Under her leadership, the fund has tripled in size, undergone a successful national expansion and rebranding, and introduced innovative lending and investment strategies to better serve cooperatives.
Before joining Shared Capital, Christina worked with CDFIs managing a citywide micro-loan fund, developing business training programs, and providing technical assistance to small businesses and nonprofits. She also spent four years managing international investment funds that supported microfinance institutions in Central America, where she had previously lived and worked. Her background includes founding and managing small businesses and social enterprises, giving her a deep understanding of the challenges and opportunities faced by mission-driven organizations.
Christina holds a master’s degree in Community Economic Development and Nonprofit Management from the University of Minnesota’s Humphrey School of Public Affairs and a bachelor’s degree in Gender and Development from Hampshire College. She has served on multiple nonprofit boards and currently holds leadership roles on the boards of the National Cooperative Business Association CLUSA International (NCBA CLUSA), the Cooperative Development Foundation, and the City of Lakes Community Land Trust. Additionally, she serves on the loan committee of the Latino Economic Development Center, a Minnesota-based CDFI.
Read Christina’s Candidate Statement
Nathan Schneider
Assistant Professor of Media Studies
University of Colorado Boulder
Nathan Schneider is a leading advocate for cooperatives in the digital economy. He is an Assistant Professor of Media Studies at the University of Colorado Boulder, where he leads the Media Economies Design Lab. There, he works with students and collaborators from around the world on exploring new frontiers for cooperative ownership in fields such as journalism, social media, artificial intelligence, blockchain technology and the gig economy. Concepts he has developed, such as “exit to community” and “governable spaces,” have been adopted by companies and organizations seeking to learn lessons from the cooperative legacy.
Schneider has been active in several organizations working to advance the cooperative movement. In 2015, with Trebor Scholz, he co-organized the first conference on platform cooperativism in New York that helped launch a global movement. He co-founded and serves on the board of Start.coop, a unique accelerator for emerging cooperative businesses. He has also served on the boards of Metagov (a research network for online governance), Zebras Unite (a community of purpose-centered entrepreneurs), Waging Nonviolence (a news organization that covers social movements), and We Own It (which organizes co-op members to advocate for reform). He co-founded Social.coop, a new kind of cooperative social media network, which grew out of a 2017 shareholder proposal at Twitter to encourage the company to explore cooperative ownership. Locally, he is a member of the Colorado Solidarity Fund, a co-op investment club.
He has written numerous works on the future of the cooperative movement, including the books Everything for Everyone: The Radical Tradition That Is Shaping the Next Economy, which collects his journalism on the rising generation of cooperators; and Governable Spaces: Democratic Design for Online Life, which calls for bringing cooperative legacies to online networks. He also co-edited the anthologies Beautiful Solutions: A Toolbox for Liberation, a collection of stories from the solidarity economy; and Ours to Hack and to Own: The Rise of Platform Cooperativism, a New Vision for the Future of Work and a Fairer Internet.
Before academia, Schneider worked full-time as a reporter. His writing has appeared in publications including The New York Times, The New Republic, The Nation, The New Yorker and Harper’s. He continues to be a Contributing Writer for America, a magazine published by the U.S. Jesuit order. He has been quoted in outlets such as Time, Fast Company, C-SPAN, The San Francisco Chronicle, The Sydney Morning Herald, The American Conservative, The Washington Post and Cooperative News.
Schneider was born in Arlington, Virginia, and now lives in Boulder, Colorado, with his wife and two children. His grandfather, who grew up as a tenant farmer in northeast Colorado, later led a national purchasing cooperative in the hardware industry.
Read Nathan’s Candidate Statement
Alex Stone
Executive Director
CooperationWorks!
Alex Stone is the Executive Director of CooperationWorks! (CW), the national network of cooperative developers. CW consists of 40 cooperative development centers and 20 individual developers providing technical assistance, business support, education and training to new and growing cooperatives across the United States. This network plays a vital role in supporting sustainable economic development that empowers communities to meet their needs through cooperative enterprise.
In her leadership role, Alex frequently refers to herself as a professional cat herder. Her duties with CW include administration, member engagement, overseeing CW’s professional development programs, coordinating outreach and networking opportunities, managing member collaborations, building partnerships with aligned organizations, and ensuring that members efficiently connect and share resources to build a strong national cooperative ecosystem.
Alex’s cooperative journey began in college, when she found the Berkeley Student Cooperatives, which she promptly joined and was a resident-owner of for three years, frequently taking on house-level management and board roles. She went on to co-found the Berkeley Student Food Collective, a student-run and collectively managed nonprofit grocery store. She served as its first Operations Manager and sole employee through its successful startup phase. She co-founded the Cooperative Food Empowerment Directive, recruiting its initial cohort and leading its early efforts in youth training on the cooperative business model and sustainable food systems. She has been with CW since 2016. During this time, membership has grown by 40 percent, professional development programming has been redesigned and expanded, and the organization has become widely recognized as a leader in the field of cooperative development nationwide.
Alex is committed to growing her professional skills and network. In Fall 2024, she received a Master of Management, Co-operatives and Credit Unions from the Sobey School of Business at Saint Mary’s University. She was also a fellow with the Just Economy Institute in 2022-2023 and maintains strong connections with this national network of financial activists who are shifting the flow of capital and power to solve social and environmental problems.
Outside of her role with CooperationWorks!, Alex finds still more ways to get involved with cooperatives. She recently joined the Artisans Cooperative as an artisan member. She’s a Co-op 5k enthusiast who enjoys including her dog in the race. When not immersed in co-ops, she can be found at the local ceramics studio, on her bike, or dreaming of ways to fish for crawdads from her kayak in the Sacramento Delta.
Read Alex’s Candidate Statement
Deborah Wege
Cooperative Community Advocate
BECU
Deborah (Debbie) Wege is a seasoned professional with nearly 40 years of experience in the credit union movement, bringing a wealth of knowledge and passion for the cooperative structure. She is dedicated to connecting credit unions with their members and communities, ensuring that cooperative principles resonate deeply with those they serve.
As the Cooperative Community Advocate at BECU, a leading community-based credit union in Washington state, Debbie is at the forefront of driving organizational change and building meaningful connections across the credit union system. She leads the development of dynamic programs that inspire commitment to credit union values, focusing on purpose-driven decision-making. Her leadership extends to nurturing partnerships with local cooperatives, fostering collaboration and advancing the cooperative movement on a broader scale.
Debbie has been a proud member of the National Cooperative Business Association CLUSA International (NCBA CLUSA)’s Board of Directors since 2022, where she continues to advocate for the expansion of cooperative businesses nationwide.
Her unwavering commitment to creating an inclusive and empowering environment is reflected in her work at BECU. Through her involvement with BECU’s BILD Council, she played a pivotal role in shaping initiatives that support and amplify the voices of diverse employee groups. Formerly the Community Chair for the Women’s Leadership group, Debbie has also championed numerous programs that create opportunities for individuals from all walks of life to thrive.
A certified National Credit Union Development Educator (CUDE) since 1993 and an International-CUDE (I-CUDE) since 2010, Debbie has long been a leader in cooperative education. As Chair of the Northwest CUDE Network, she brings together regional CUDEs for continuous learning and development, impacting the professional growth of credit union leaders across the Pacific Northwest. Additionally, she played a central role in creating BECU’s internal Purpose Workshop, helping hundreds of employees align their personal values with the principles of the credit union movement.
Debbie has held various leadership roles in community giving, philanthropic strategy, financial education, and programs focused on increasing opportunity and access for all. Her leadership extends to her role as Chair of the Northwest Cooperative Development Center and her emeritus position on the board of the Seattle Good Business Network, where she works to build a more equitable and sustainable economy.
Her work has earned her numerous accolades, including the 2018 BEING BECU Award for exemplifying the credit union’s core values and recognition as a CU Rock Star by Credit Union Magazine. In 2025, she will be honored with the prestigious Herb Wegner Award for Individual Achievement, the highest recognition in the Credit Union Movement.