In this three-part video series we chat with Start.coop’s Jessica Mason about her work building coops, how coops can help advance a child care equity agenda, and how to grow the “cooperative commonwealth” in the child care industry.
If [equity] is indeed a core value of ours now, we need to start to redesign everything we’re doing for equity at the forefront. Shifting the way we think about ownership, about governance, about worker engagement… – Jessica Mason
About Jessica
Jessica Mason is an entrepreneur, strategist, and designer with deep experience leading innovation ventures in the social and public sector. Jessica wears many hats in her professional life. Most relevant to our conversation today, she is Co-Director of Start.coop, an accelerator for scaleable co-operative start-ups and Co-Founder of YellowNest, a worker-owned child care co-operative start-up in the UK.
Previously, Jessica spent six years at Harvard University’s Center on the Developing Child, where she directed a portfolio of early childhood innovation labs in Latin America and served as a technical expert on innovation methods. She is a certified facilitator and coach of human-centered design, an Instructor of Executive Education at Harvard University, and a faculty member at Foster America.
Jessica holds an A.B. Magna Cum Laude from Brown University, an Ed.M in International Education Policy from Harvard Graduate School of Education, and postgraduate certificates in Behavioral Science and International Business Management from the Harvard Kennedy School and Georgetown University, respectively.