Ana Aguirre

I’m Ana Aguirre from TAZEBAEZ S.Coop, a cooperative specializing in innovation consultancy in communication, team development, and education, in collaboration with Mondragon University’s Traveling University entrepreneurship degree. I am involved in the Platform Cooperatives Now course, working with Trebor Scholz and Jose Mari Lazuraraga in operations, and I am also part of a Harvard research sprint on data co-ops. My expertise isn’t technical; rather, my focus is on bridging the gap between data and digital co-ops and the worker ownership aspect of cooperatives. Coming from a strong worker-owned background, my main concern is making the digital cooperative realm accessible to the average co-op member and ensuring digital platform co-ops enhance worker cooperativism. In my research at Harvard, I engage with academics, which is outside my usual scope. I am passionate about collaborating with academics, developers, and practitioners to advance platform cooperativism in tandem with the worker co-op movement, aiming to expand and diversify cooperatives. I believe the cooperative model resonates with the aspirations of the next generation of workers, and by promoting this model, we can attract more participants to the movement.