As Employee Ownership Month draws to a close, RDA Consulting is celebrating our 10th month as an employee-owned trust (EOT). We have set up a Board of Directors and a Trust Stewardship Committee, both made up primarily of employees. We have governance documents and decision matrices, and are working on our first strategic planning process as a social purpose corporation. And as the end of our first fiscal year as an EOT approaches, we are looking forward to profit sharing with all RDA employees!

But beyond all the administrative and governance developments, there is the existential question of who we are as an employee owned company. What does ownership mean to each of us, and to RDA collectively? How do we live both our social purpose and employee ownership in our values and practices? How do we onboard our colleagues to ownership in a way that acknowledges positionality across the organization?

In the past few months, RDA has embraced these questions at every level of the organization. This week, we will all gather together in Oakland for our first in-person retreat since the COVID pandemic. At that retreat, we will engage in a series of discussions about trust and connection, as we reframe our organizational culture around the paradigms that are manifested by adopting the EOT model of corporate governance.

Organizational culture is the set of values, beliefs, attitudes, systems, and expectations that influence behavior within an organization. For RDA to thrive and continue to grow, all staff members need to feel that sense of shared culture. Further, we need to fully explore what it means to be truly inclusive as an ownership group.

RDA has always operated on a mission to help public and social sector organizations best meet the needs of those communities most affected by poverty, racism, and institutional limitations. In the coming year, we will further explore what that means in terms of our own diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) principles “inside the building”.

We are excited for this next stage of growth and how it will support our continued fulfillment of our mission, and I look forward to providing further updates via our blog.

Warm regards,

Amalia

Amalia Egri Freedman
Chief Executive Officer