Micha Josephy Carolyn Edsell-Vetter & Johan Matthews discuss CFNE Programs

Everything Co-op with Vernon Oakes

April 11, 2024 Micha Josephy, Executive Director, Carolyn Edsell-Vetter, Program Director, and Johan Matthews, Ecosystem Strategy Manager of the Cooperative Fund of the Northeast (CFNE) discuss CFNE's initiatives and programs. As Executive Director, Micha Josephy is responsible for executive leadership, program development, capitalization, and operations. He first joined CFNE in 2010 as a Program Manager, helping raise grant and loan capital, managing compliance reporting, and new program development. Micha first joined the co-op movement as an Oberlin Student Cooperative Association member and later coordinated the development of Boston Community Cooperative’s first housing co-op. He has a background in nonprofit financial management and community organizing. He has also participated in the Opportunity Finance Network’s leadership training program. Carolyn Edsell-Vetter is the Program Director at CFNE. She joined CFNE in March 2019. As the Cooperative Business Support Officer, she works with Spanish- and English-speaking applicants and borrowers to assess project feasibility and connect with culturally appropriate technical assistance resources. Carolyn came to CFNE after 19 years with A Yard & A Half Landscaping near Boston, MA, where she led their conversion to a worker-owned co-op and served as co-CEO from 2014-2019. Carolyn serves on the board of the Cooperative Development Institute and has been involved in co-ops since living in a cooperative house in college. The daughter of a Cuban immigrant, Carolyn is particularly interested in using cooperatives to create social and economic justice for immigrants, BIPOC, and others who have faced structural barriers to bringing businesses to scale. Johan Matthews is the Ecosystem Strategy Manager at CFNE. In this role, Johan facilitates the development of equitable co-op ecosystems in emerging communities across the northeast. He also provides culturally informed technical assistance to ensure that communities traditionally excluded from economic investment can engage in cooperative enterprise. Johan joins CFNE after over a decade of collaborating with local leaders and institutions to design and implement community-based economic engagement strategies. CFNE’s Mission is to work for economic, social, and racial justice by advancing community based, cooperative, and democratically owned or managed enterprises with a preference to assisting cooperatives in low-income communities.