Past Conferences

2023: Affirming Institutions: Co-ops for Social Change

2022: Growing Back Together, Keynote: Kai Cheng Thom, Rooting in Resilience — Building Transformative Conflict Culture

2021: Mutual Aid, Keynote: Dean Spade, Survival and Resistance in Times of Disaster

2020: Choose your own future, Keynote panel: Naomi Alexis, Suparna Kudesia, Laurent Levesque, Megan K. Quigley

2019: Cooperate Locally, Keynote: Dr. Tane Ward, How Housing Can Heal Us All

2018: A Legacy of Cooperation, Keynote: Esteban Kelly, Seizing Social History: How Co-ops and Movements Help Us Build the World that We Want

2017: Breaking the Mold : Grassroots Cooperation, Keynote: Rawa Ghirmatzion, Achieving a Regenerative Economy Through a Just Transition

2016: Cooperative Resilience, Keynote: Ed Whitfield, Changing the World in a World that is Changing

2015: Common Interest: Co-ops Investing in Community Wealth, Keynote: Steve Dubb, Building Community Wealth: Connecting Our Co-ops to the Movement for Social and Economic Justice

2014: Co-ops for Life: Owning our Future, Keynote: Nikki Marín Baena, Owning our Neighborhoods: Our mission, should we choose to accept it

2013: A Fire in Our Bellies: Food Justice & Cooperatives, Keynote: Malik Kenyatta Yakini, Building Co-ops to Foster Community Self-determination

2012: Cooperating to Survive and Thrive Beyond Capitalism: Building a Solidarity Economy, Keynote: Andrew Cornell, Building Up and Winning Back Our World: The Role Cooperatives Might Play in Creating a Solidarity Economy and a Participatory Society

2011: CREATIVE INTERSECTIONS: Education, Media, and Cooperatives, Keynote: Adrienne Maree Brown, We are in the Future

2010: Cooperative Cartography: Where People, Places, and Movements Intersect, Keynote: Liz Mason-Deese, Tim Stallman, and Daniel Tucker, Counter-Mapping for a Co-op World

2009: In our Backyards , Keynote: Omar Freilla, Green Worker Cooperative Business Incubator: A Case Study

2008: Grassroots Run Deep, Keynote: Wendy Wolford

2007: Cooperative Tools for Economic Justice, Keynote: Andrea Smith, Women of Color Organizing Beyond the Nonprofit Industrial Complex

2006: Our Story: Connecting the Threads of Cooperative Experience, Keynote: Grace Lee Boggs

2005: Hands on Democracy: Grassroots Change Through Cooperation, Keynote: Morgan Cousins and Paula X. Rojas (Sista II Sista Collective)

2004: Beyond the Co-op Wall: Connecting with Local Communities, Keynote: Pete Crear (Credit Union National Association)

2003: Facing Ourselves: Examining Power and Privilege in Our Co-ops, Keynote: Tim Wise

2002: Imagining a Cooperative Revolution, Keynote: Deborah James (Global Exchange)

2001: Growing from our Roots, Sowing the Seeds of Tomorrow, Keynote: Francie Ferguson

2000: The Many Faces of Cooperation, Keynote: Michael Rotkin (former Mayor, Santa Cruz, CA)

1999: Economic Democracy: Working Together for Change

1998: Co-op History