MJ Kaplan

MJ Kaplan guides US Growth for Loomio, a worker cooperative based in New Zealand that produces a platform for democratic decision-making. Based in Providence, RI, she is Adjunct Professor at Brown University and teaches an award-winning action learning class in social enterprise (Cordes Innovation Fellowship, Asoka U) as well as a class in strategy. MJ founded Kaplan Consulting in 2000, a national firm focused on strategic alignment and partnerships. She  was a consultant for the Institute for Conservation Leadership for over 20 years, supporting environmental agencies in board and leadership development, strategy and collaboration. In 2012, MJ traveled to Guatemala with Leading Women to contribute support for Amigos de Santa Cruz, a rural center working on micro-enterprise. Before launching Kaplan Consulting, MJ had leadership organization development roles in the private, public and nonprofit sectors. MJ serves on the Board for Commerce RI, the state’s economic development agency and she is a trustee of Social Enterprise Greenhouse. She previously served as a board leader at The Miriam Hospital and Moses Brown School. MJ earned her M.Ed. from Harvard University and her B.A. from Brown University.

Loomio
Loomio is a digital tool that makes it easy for anyone, anywhere to contribute to decisions that affect them. By enabling online collaborative decision making, Loomio empowers communities, social movements and organizations to co-create thriving and equitable futures. Our users span nearly 100 countries and include movement activists, coops, large nonprofits, government and nearly any type of group you can imagine in search of inclusive agreement and action. When we launched Loomio, we wanted the organization to be as disruptive as the tool, reflecting our core values as a community driven cooperative—user-driven design, open source code, transparent, and independent. Loomio is supported by those who pay according to their means to keep the platform free of advertising and accessible to groups with no money. We’re a worker owned cooperative and, as we grow, we envision multiple stakeholders having active, multi-faceted roles. We’re exploring investment models that tap our global users to support and help create what they value. We’re keen to experiment with a growth models based on shared value—after all, collaboration is at the heart of what we do an who we are.