Announcing the 2025 Cooperative Hall of Fame Inductees

December 6, 2024

Next year the world will be celebrating the International Year of Cooperatives. As part of that celebration, the co-op community in the U.S. will be honoring four outstanding cooperative leaders. Join us in welcoming these cooperative heroes into the Cooperative Hall of Fame on October 9 at the National Press Club in Washington, DC.

The inductees are Lori Capouch, Rural Development Director, retired, NDAREC; Randy Lee, Chief Financial Officer, retired, PCC Community Markets; J. Tom Webb, Founder, Master of Management, Co-operatives and Credit Unions (MMCCU) Program, International Centre for Co-operative Management (ICCM), Saint Mary’s University; and Estelle Witherspoon, Unsung Hero, Founding Member and Board President, Freedom Quilting Bee.  

“This year’s inductees represent the breadth of the cooperative sector in addressing the needs of communities,” said John Holdsclaw IV, Chair of the Cooperative Development Foundation Board of Directors. "From championing rural and frontier co-op development, to transforming the natural food and co-op groceries sector, to innovating the field of co-op education, to transforming economic reality for Black women artisans and their families in Alabama, these inductees have dedicated their lives to helping people and communities through cooperatives. And they all represent how cooperation among cooperatives - Principle Six – can nurture and grow communities through their generous sharing of knowledge across sectors and cooperatives."

Now in its 51st year, the Cooperative Hall of Fame provides CDF with funds to support cooperative development and education. We invite you to honor these heroes in the International Year of Cooperatives by supporting CDF and the cooperative community through event sponsorship.  

Lori Capouch

Rural Development Director, retired, NDAREC

Lori Capouch has championed rural and frontier co-op development in North Dakota for over three decades. In the 1990s, Capouch was part of efforts which led to the formation of large-scale agricultural cooperatives in North Dakota – one in durum wheat processing and the other in bison slaughter and processing. In 1998, she took her first official co-op job at the North Dakota Association of Rural Electric Cooperatives (NDAREC), where she worked for 26 years. NDAREC is the only statewide electric cooperative association in the nation to operate a cooperative development center. There, Capouch directed the Rural Electric and Telecommunications (RE&T) Cooperative Development Center and the Rural Development Finance Corporation (RDFC), which are supported by NDAREC, the Broadband Association of North Dakota, 17 electric distribution cooperatives and 12 telecommunications cooperatives.

Capouch was instrumental in establishing RDFC’s $9 million revolving loan fund, as well as the North Dakota Rural Electric Cooperative Foundation, which continues to fund co-op development across the state. As of 2024, RDFC has awarded 148 community development loans totaling approximately $13.7 million, created nearly 300 jobs and leveraged more than $145 million in North Dakotan towns.

She played a significant role in supporting North Dakota ranchers and livestock producers to expand local meat processing capacity. In 2023, she wrote and won a $10 million grant through the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Meat and Poultry Intermediary Lending Program (MPILP) to create a revolving loan fund to support meat processing capacity in North Dakota.

Dedicated to rural community wellbeing and development, Capouch has extended her expertise and energies to child care co-ops. She helped establish the first employer-assisted child care cooperative in the state and authored handbooks, templates and toolkits on the application of the co-op model for child care.

Thanks to her research on issues of rural food access, in 2023, the state Legislature appropriated $1 million for a rural food access pilot grant program. The establishment of the Rural Access Distribution (RAD) Cooperative – which is the first-known rural food access and distribution co-op in the United States – is her proudest achievement. The model she created is now being studied and replicated elsewhere – including in the urban community of the Bronx, N.Y.

Capouch’s work has proven that in frontier and rural places, where the free market has trouble serving, the cooperative model can be a viable solution. Her own measure of success is saying goodbye to the cooperatives she helped. For all her work supporting cooperatives and families in rural America, we welcome Capouch as a national co-op hero.

Randy Lee

Chief Financial Officer, retired, PCC Community Markets

Randy Lee spent nearly 50 years transforming natural food and co-op groceries in America starting with the Puget Consumer Cooperative (PCC) in 1970 in Seattle, WA. Within a year, he became store manager and began to transform the store into one that prioritizes the healthfulness and nutrition of its products. Buoyed by his leadership, PCC has grown into the nation’s largest consumer-owned grocer with 16 stores, more than 100,000 members, a staff of 2,000, and $450 million in annual revenue. It has provided 1.5 million meals to communities in need and served more than 7,000 students through its Cooking Class program — both initiatives spearheaded under Lee’s leadership.

Lee extended his support of healthy and natural foods through the co-op grocery model to help preserve land – in particular farmland – in Washington state. He helped create 250 gardening plots across Seattle – the first he helped found, Picardo Farms, now yields some of the city’s best soil. He was instrumental in founding the PCC Farmland Trust (now Washington Farmland Trust) – and served as a Board Director for 19 years. The Trust has conserved 29 farms in Washington state, totaling 3,063 acres.

In the late 1990’s along with five other leaders, Lee helped establish what is now National Co+op Grocers (NCG). He served on its board for nearly two decades and led a considerable reorganization in 2004. He established its National Purchasing Program, which in turn played a significant role in allowing NCG to secure its first purchasing contract with United Natural Foods.

In 2017, Consumer Cooperative Management Association recognized Lee with the Cooperative Service Award in recognition of dedicated leadership and exemplary service. He was celebrated “for his personification of cooperation and teaching it through his work.”

In 2018, Lee was celebrated by Seattle Business Magazine with its Executive Excellence Award. The award “celebrated leaders for exemplary performance in the day-to-day operation of complex corporate ecosystems as well as in the larger context of providing a moral compass to the people whose lives they influence directly and indirectly.”

J. Tom Webb

Founder, Master of Management, Co-operatives and Credit Unions (MMCCU) Program, International Centre for Co-operative Management (ICCM), Saint Mary’s University

Tom Webb’s career has spanned cooperative industries and sectors in Canada and the United States of America ranging from grocery to IT, multistakeholder co-ops to credit unions, and beyond. Arguably, his most impactful contributions are to education, one of the key pillars of the Co-operative Identity. As Director for the Extension Department at St. Francis Xavier University in Antigonish, Nova Scotia, Webb led a team of people providing education about co-ops and community development. This experience led him to identify the need for a formal management degree program specifically for cooperatives, and he began to seek out a university that would provide accreditation.  After much persistence, creativity, and collaboration, he established the Master of Management: Co-operatives, and Credit Unions (MMCCU) Program at Saint Mary’s University in Nova Scotia, Canada, now the most internationally renowned, English-language master's level university programs in the field of cooperative business, offered fully online to cooperators around the world.

The early success of the program would have been impossible without Webb’s tireless networking and the support and leaders from the U.S., Canadian, and UK cooperative movements. From this foundation, the International Centre for Co-operative Management (ICCM) has grown to offer a variety of programs from degrees to certificates, executive education to learning tours, all centered on the cooperative model of business. The ICCM is also a major player in applied academic research, partnering with and convening research associations, organizing conferences and symposia, and issuing publications at the international level. An expression of the 6th Principle of Cooperation among Co-ops, the ICCM has from its beginnings been overseen by an international multistakeholder co-op, the Co-operative Management Education Co-operative (CMEC), which now includes 80 member co-ops, credit unions, associations, educational institutions and individuals in 10 countries. Recognizing the need for both financial and non-financial performance analysis specific to the co-operative business model, Webb also founded the Centre of Excellence in Accounting and Reporting for Co-operatives (CEARC) at Saint Mary’s University, which develops Statements of Recommended Practice (SORPs) for co-ops, Sustainable Development Goals reporting for cooperatives, and other projects.

Webb continues to be involved in the work of ICCM, and for 15 years has led annual study tours for the Centre, introducing co-operators, researchers, educators from around the world to the successful co-operative complexes in the Basque region of Spain, and Emilia-Romagna in Italy. His mentorship has left its mark on hundreds of students and participants in the Centre’s programs, which boasts ~500 co-op and credit union leaders as alumni, many now in leadership roles in the cooperative movements not just in the U.S. and Canada, but around the world.

Though technically retired, Webb continues to contribute to the movement through his service on co-op and credit union Boards, the work of his consultancy, Global Cooperation, and countless articles. His book, From Corporate Globalization to Global Cooperation: We Owe It to Our Grandchildren, brings together the insights of a lifetime of researching, organizing, teaching, and practicing co-operation.

Webb’s servant leadership and commitment to the Co-operative Identity - and particularly the Principle of Education, Training and Information - has left an indelible mark on our movement.

Estelle Witherspoon

Unsung Hero, Founding Member and Board President, Freedom Quilting Bee

Estelle Witherspoon – a spirited organizer and civil rights activist who marched alongside Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Senator John Lewis, and others from Selma to Montgomery in 1965 – helped transform economic reality for Black, women artisans and their families in Wilcox County, Alabama.

As founding member and Board President of Freedom Quilting Bee (a Black women-owned quilting co-op), she oversaw its marketing and sales for over 20 years until her retirement. Mrs. Witherspoon shared her knowledge and skills – and became trusted in her community for doing so. She harnessed her communication, accounting, mathematics, and writing skills to manage and advance FQB.

Under her leadership, FQB was one of the 22 initial signatories and founding members of the Federation of Southern Cooperatives. Of those charter members, FQB was the smallest and the only one run entirely by women. She enacted Principle 6: Cooperation Among Cooperatives by establishing partnerships with the Gee’s Bend quilters; Quilting Bee and Artisans Cooperative in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania; the Alabama Cooperative Association; among others.

In 1966, Mrs. Witherspoon secured the first-ever auction of Gee’s Bend quilts in New York City. She professionalized the artisan members’ work so that FQB could secure contracts with the likes of Sears and Bloomingdale’s. She secured loans that allowed FQB to purchase industrial machines. The co-op bought 23 acres of land, which was quite an accomplishment for Blacks in general at that time, but especially for sharecroppers and women! Under her management, FQB came to employ more than 150 people, providing secure income to Black and women-led households. By its financial peak in the 1980’s, FQB was the largest employer in its area. In some cases, FQB wages helped double families’ incomes.

Mrs. Witherspoon shared the benefits of FQB’s success with the broader community. The co-op established a day care center and afterschool programs that were accessible to all members of the community. FQB also shared their assets by making their buildings accessible to the community, and by selling 8 lots of their land to families who had been evicted from sharecropping because they registered to vote and/or attended a civil rights meeting.

Estelle Witherspoon’s legacy goes beyond rectifying the economic injustice and deprivation of the communities she served. FQB’s success helped achieve recognition and respect for the quilters’ artistry. Today, quilts hang in prestigious museums in the US and abroad. Mrs. Witherspoon’s induction into the Co-op Hall of Fame provides a chance to honor her light - not only her foresight, leadership and marketing skills, but also her dedication, and cooperative spirit.

Photo credit: John Reese, Birmingham, AL Public Library Archives, 1980