Kristen Barker is a social entrepreneur and President and Co-Founder of the Cincinnati Union Co-op Initiative (CUCI). CUCI creates jobs that are accountable to workers and our communities by developing and launching worker owned businesses based on the Mondragon-United Steel Workers Union co-op model, (worker ownership + solidarity and collective bargaining). CUCI has launched two co-ops and has five projects in various stages of feasibility/business planning. Our first co-op, Our Harvest, has been operating since April of 2012, growing food, training new farmers, and aggregating food from other local growers. Sustainergy (an energy-retrofitting co-op, a construction contractor) launched in early 2014, The other co-ops in the planning stages include a Railway machine tool manufacturing co-op, Sarah Center Jewelry Co-op, Yucky Cookies, and Apple Street Market (a full service grocery store for low food access areas). Renting Partnerships, an innovative approach to affordable housing that builds equity and community for renters, is also a part of our CUCI family.
Since July of 2012, Kristen has been working for Mondragon USA and 1worker1vote.org to build a national network of unionized worker-owned cooperative businesses to overcome inequality of opportunity, mobility, and income. Prior to working full-time for the union co-op movement, Kristen worked at the Intercommunity Justice and Peace Center (IJPC) for 12 years as a community organizer. In this capacity, she coordinated the Peace and Nonviolence program, directed an innovative dialogue training program, and fostered collaboration and connection between faith, labor, and community groups. Before working at IJPC she spent a year and a half in El Salvador volunteering with CRISPAZ on a listening project with a repopulated community. She is the mother of a resilient 12 year old child with special needs. She had lived in Cincinnati all her life (with the exception of her time in El Salvador).
