Elevating Home Care Together

Caregiver-owned home care cooperatives provide better jobs for caregivers by changing the balance of power and rewards. But worker cooperatives don’t just strive to provide better jobs, they strive to provide quality jobs–jobs that pay life-sustaining wages, offer comprehensive benefits, and deliver state-of-the-art training and career advancement opportunities.

Joining together through collective voice and action home care cooperatives can increase profits, benefits and pay; invest in advanced training and on-the-job supports; increase the growth and scale of the home care cooperative model; and push for meaningful policy change. Working together, home care cooperatives can elevate home care.

Elevate Cooperative’s mission is to drive the profitability, growth and influence of home care cooperatives for the mutual benefit of caregivers and clients.

At Elevate Cooperative...

Elevate Cooperative was born out of a strong and growing national network of home care cooperatives, developers and supporters engaged in strategy, best practice sharing, and peer learning. Elevate Cooperative builds upon this culture in new and innovative ways, elevating what’s already been accomplished through enhanced cross-cooperative collaboration to take the model to the next level. Today, there are 17 home care cooperatives in operation across 9 states and Puerto Rico, employing over 2500 caregivers, and over a dozen new start-up initiatives underway in as many states.

Learn About Membership

Members are home care cooperative businesses and caregiver priorities are front and center.
Member cooperatives inform the development and roll-out of new products and services.
Cooperatives have access to a robust set of member benefits and preferred rates for value-added services that support efficient and effective operations and governance.
Cooperative and caregiver priorities are elevated in national policy debates through coordinated efforts.

Elevate Leadership

Advisory Group

As a cooperative owned and governed by home care cooperatives, the voice of cooperative leaders is central to our work. Elevate Cooperative’s Advisory Group, made of home care cooperative leaders from around the country, is guiding the development of Elevate until its formal launch. Once legally incorporated, a formal board of directors will be elected by the membership to govern the new cooperative.

Adria Powell

President & CEO, Cooperative Home Care Associates

READ ADRIA'S BIO

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Tatia Cooper

President & CEO Home Care Associates of Philadelphia

READ TATIA'S BIO

Debra Schultz

Finance Manager, Cooperative Care

READ DEBRA'S BIO

Aquilina Soriano Versoza

Executive Director, Pilipino Workers Center of Southern California, incubator of Courage Home Care Cooperative

READ AQUILINA'S BIO

Deborah Craig

Cooperative Development Specialist, Northwest Cooperative Development Center

READ DEBORAH'S BIO

Karen Kulp

Consultant and Former President & CEO of Home Care Associates

READ KAREN'S BIO

Katrina Kazda

Program Director, ICA Home Care

Katrina joined the ICA Group in January 2017 and has been leading the organization’s home care work since. As Director of ICA’s Home Care Program, Katrina leads the development and implementation of ICA’s national home care strategy, including Elevate Cooperative, and participates in a variety of hands-on development activities including strategic growth consulting, start-up consulting, educational programming--for the National Home Care Cooperatives Conference and the National Home Care Cooperative Initiative—sector benchmarking, and more. Katrina has co-authored over a dozen research studies and articles on home care cooperative development and scale including Profitability, Growth, and Influence: Elevating the Home Care Cooperative Sector with Formalized National Collaboration (January 2021) and The Cooperative Solution to the Caregiver Crisis: A National Strategy Analysis (January 2017).

Katrina received her BA from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst in Visual Anthropology and her MA in Sustainable International Development from the Heller School for Social Policy at Brandeis University.

Iwona Matczuk

Senior Social Enterprise Consultant, ICA

Iwona Matczuk joined The ICA Group in August of 2019 as a Social Enterprise Consultant for ICA's home care team, and advanced to a senior role in August 2020. In her role, Iwona leads data analytics for the home care team, including the annual Home Care Cooperative Benchmarking Survey, provides strategic growth consulting to start-up and growing home care cooperatives, develops products and systems that increase operational and financial sustainability and efficiency for home care cooperatives, and assists home care agency owners looking to transition to employee ownership. Iwona also leads ICA Home Care’s Market Assessment and Business Planning practice.

Iwona brings to ICA ten years of experience directing projects in the fields of international development, healthcare, and the non-profit sector. She is the founding member of a social enterprise. Iwona received her BA in Anthropology from the University of Illinois at Chicago, her MBA in Social Impact with a concentration in Social Entrepreneurship and Impact Management and her MA in Sustainable International Development from Brandeis University.

Fay Strongin

Senior Consultant

As a Senior Business Developer on ICA’s home care team, Fay acts as lead on major projects for the home care team, conducting research, leading interviews, managing clients, and producing final deliverables. She also provides direct technical assistance to home care cooperative start-ups and develops tools and resources to support the growth and stability of home care cooperatives and the home care cooperative sector. Fay brings wide experience in farms and agriculture, cooperatives, housing, and stormwater management. Fay served as a consultant for the NYC Office of the Mayor for Strategic Policy Initiatives supporting the Employee Ownership NYC initiative and worked at the Philadelphia Water Department where she led community engagement for Philadelphia’s green stormwater infrastructure plan. Previously, in Providence, RI, she helped launch and then managed Little City Growers Cooperative, a vegetable producers cooperative, served on the board of Urban Greens Co-op Market, and was an employee and member at Park Slope Food Co-op in Brooklyn, NY. Fay holds a master’s in city planning from M.I.T., and a B.A. from Haverford College.

Stephanie Sucasaca

Cooperative Growth Consultant

Stephanie Sucasaca was raised by a tribe of entrepreneurial women; her grandmother, mother and aunt run a Peruvian food truck based in Queens, NYC. Stephanie was brought up on the mantra la union hace la fuerza (unity is strength) and it’s a core value that has fueled Stephanie’s mission to empower immigrant and first generation artists and entrepreneurs in overcoming the obstacles that are holding them back from their dreams. Stephanie believes that together we can work to make a brighter future for us and generations to come.

Stephanie supported the launch of a Brightly Cooperative, an immigrant run cleaning services worker cooperative based out of Washington Heights, and has provided coaching services to her family business @AntojitosDonaFela and other local businesses. Stephanie provides individual coaching sessions and group workshops that facilitate vulnerable conversations that lead to stronger teams and clarity. On the home care team, Stephanie plays a lead role in supporting start-up home care cooperatives, outreach and communications, and network management.

David Hammer

Executive Director

David Hammer is the Executive Director of the ICA Group and a leading practitioner in the employee ownership field. He has assisted in the conversion, launch and growth of dozens of employee-owned firms and social enterprises. Dave speaks frequently about the potential for employee ownership to address income inequality and improve job quality and is an experienced trainer on the nuts and bolts of employee ownership and business strategy. He is the author of numerous publications and resource guides, including Co-op Conversions at Scale: A Market Assessment for Expanding Worker Co-op Conversions in Key Regions & Sectors; Building Assets, Saving Jobs: Employee Ownership as a Job Stabilization Strategy in Massachusetts Gateway Cities; and The Framework for Democratic Control: An Introduction to Articles of Incorporation & by-Laws for Democratic Firms.

David joined the ICA Group in 2008 and served as a Senior Business Consultant until assuming the position of Executive Director in June 2013. He has spent his career supporting workers in their efforts to achieve meaningful economic control over their lives. Prior to joining ICA, he served as Assistant Director of Research of 1199SEIU, the largest health care union on the east coast. Previously, he was a Senior Research Analyst for UNITE in New York City and the United Steelworkers of America in Pittsburgh. David earned a Master’s of Science from the Labor Relations and Research Center at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and a Bachelor’s degree in History from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

Development of Elevate Cooperative is being led by the ICA Group, a national 501c3 non-profit organization headquartered in Northampton, MA, with financial support from private foundations, government grants and individual donors. Special recognition is due to the Cooperative Development Foundation, a key strategic partner and financial supporter of this work. Scheduled to launch in 2023, Elevate Cooperative will be an independent cooperative entity, owned and governed by member cooperatives.