Bio
Erik Forman is a serial social entrepreneur. He pioneered the use of worker-owned high-growth tech-enabled startups as a tool for system change, launching The Drivers Cooperative, the first driver-owned rideshare platform cooperative in the United States, as well as People’s Choice Communications, an Internet Service Provider co-created with striking cable technicians to bridge the digital divide. Before turning toward cooperative development as a strategy for system change, Erik was active as a labor organizer for over 15 years. He was a leader in the first nationally-scaled unionization effort at Starbucks from 2006-2012, trained over 1,000 union organizers across the world, and as Chair of the Organizing Department Board of the Industrial Workers of the World, provided the organizational leadership to create the first labor-affiliated prisoners’ union support organization– the Incarcerated Workers’ Organizing Committee.
Erik was a fellow at the Institute for the Cooperative Digital Economy (ICDE) at The New School and is now a research affiliate.
Erik is completing a PhD in Cultural Anthropology at the CUNY Graduate Center. He teaches at the Harry Van Arsdale Jr. Center for Labor Studies in New York City, and a fellow at the Institute for the Study of Employee Ownership at Rutgers University. He has held fellowships at the Aspen Institute, Mobility Lab at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, and Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor at Georgetown University.