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Archive for June, 2008
Wednesday, June 4th, 2008
Here's an interesting one from Investment News: a very successful financier who says "his best business lessons came from a commune".
Malon Wilkus now manages a $21 billion private-equity firm but he got his start at East Wind, an income sharing commune in southern Missouri.
Returning to the United States and college in 1974, he joined the East Wind commune in Missouri.
"I think my parents were distressed by that," Mr. Wilkus said ruefully. He spent the next nine years at the commune, where he made hammocks, sandals and nut butters that were sold to food co-ops and Pier 1 Inc. of Fort Worth, Texas.
"I learned most of what I know about business today from that experience," Mr. Wilkus said, explaining that he grew to understand the motivation of customers and investors.
In 1983, he left the commune for a job in marketing at the Calvert Group, an asset management firm in Bethesda, where he learned how to gather assets.
Three years later, Mr. Wilkus launched American Capital from the living room of his two-bedroom condo, which he shared with his wife, Susan, and their three children. He got a $75,000 loan from people he had known from his commune days and maxed out his credit cards for an additional $75,000.
Initially, American Capital focused on helping workers at small- and medium-sized companies acquire their employers by using employee stock ownership plans.
In 1997, he took American Capital public as a business development company, offering debt financing or taking equity stakes in buyout situations. Today the company boasts 700 employees with offices in 13 cities around the world.
"We built a private-equity firm that the average American can invest in," Mr. Wilkus said. "We've democratized private equity."
Its not often you hear stories of a former communard turned high-powered capitalist but he is surely not the only one (maybe just the only one willing to admit it).
Read the entire article
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Related Posts Tags: communes, East Wind
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Written by:
Tony Sirna
Tuesday, June 3rd, 2008
The NBC Today show did a feature on the top 5 friendliest cities in the country and Davis, California made the list in part due to being the home of cohousing and the first city with a city-wide network of bike paths. The article doesn't say much about cohousing but the video does.
Davis is where cohousing was founded, where the first young hippies wanted to live in a circle around a community center and love each other and that tone has permeated that whole city and housing market.
Ok so its not the most accurate description of the birth of cohousing in the US but at least its positive.
Read the article
See the video (Davis starts around 2:45 in)
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Related Posts Tags: California, cohousing, Davis
Posted in Video and TV | No Comments »
Written by:
Tony Sirna
Monday, June 2nd, 2008
Tina Nilsen-Hodges, a resident of Ecovillage at Ithaca who is also an Ithaca College lecturer, is leading an effort to create a charter school focused on sustainability. The alternative high school, New Roots School, would not be a project of the ecovillage but might hold some classes there and be involved with the organic farm and CSA located at the ecovillage.
At West Haven Farm at EcoVillage they are likely to work on the farm doing things like soil analysis. Produce from West Haven Farm will be part of the school's meal program, she said.
Nilsen-Hodges imagines that students could, for instance, restore wetlands, conduct climate-related agricultural research, bring solar panels to low-income neighborhoods and create small green business enterprises. She sees students becoming entrepreneurs and community leaders, she said.
Read the article in the Ithaca Journal about the sustainable charter school
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Related Posts Tags: Ecovillage at Ithaca, education, Ithaca, New York
Posted in News Articles | No Comments »
Written by:
Tony Sirna
Sunday, June 1st, 2008
The Seattle P-I Reader's Blog has a great interview with Cohousing Association Executive Director Craig Ragland on the topic of what cohousing has to offer baby boomers.
Craig gives the following benefits that cohousing offers:
- It brings more meaning to my life. I share leadership of this community with 25 other adults, and we learn from each other and our 12 children constantly.
- It's fun. I'm not a big party person, but I get to enjoy parties here all the time.
- It conserves resources and preserves natural spaces... here, I live in a modest-sized home on 11 acres of property. My home is about 1,100 square feet, but I share a common house (about 4,000 square feet), a barn (about 6,000 square feet), a few other outbuildings, a huge organic garden, an orchard, a forest, and a meadow. We share five meals per week in our common house, which means neither my wife nor I spend our time cooking or cleaning as much as we did before moving into cohousing. Our homes are all clustered on about two acres of those 11 acres... this means that there is lots of open, green space -- you know, the part of the earth that produces oxygen and allows non-human life...to thrive.
Ragland says that boomers are looking for some specific features in their cohousing communities: WiFi, efficient systems including good process, and an adult- and child- firendly environment.
The article does touch on senior cohousing as well.
Read the article about cohousing for boomers
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Related Posts Tags: baby boomers, cohousing, Seattle, senior cohousing
Posted in Blog posts, News Articles | No Comments »
Written by:
Tony Sirna
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