Jeroen Douglas is Director General of the International Cooperative Alliance, the global body that has kept the cooperative movement united since 1895. In this episode, Jeroen describes cooperatives as the largest enduring alternative to shareholder capitalism. He explains how the cooperative model supports hundreds of millions of workers worldwide, and reflects on the challenges of acting as the unifying voice of such a diverse and sprawling movement.
Jeroen describes how their Practice, Promote, Protect strategy came together in a way that reflects the movement's own principles, drawing on passionate expert volunteers rather than big consultancies. That same instinct toward member control runs through one of its boldest commitments: a sovereign cooperative cloud, giving all members an alternative to giving their data to a handful of technology giants.
The conversation then moves from the practical to the philosophical: why cooperatives are expert in resilience rather than speed, how Jeroen sees democracy as the ability to disagree without going to war, and why he believes real purpose is found and held in local communities. Against a backdrop of geopolitical fragmentation, he argues that the cooperative movement has proven its durability over the 20th and 21st centuries, and thus will endure whatever the next era brings.
Listen here and on Apple Podcasts and Spotify, and check out the ICA’s website.
A special thank you to Norman Broadbent’s Nadan Hadzic for the introduction to Jeroen, which made this fascinating conversation possible!
Supported by Norman Broadbent.
Jeroen Douglas