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About Us: Principals

Ownership Associates operates with five principals and a network of associates.

CHRISTOPHER MACKIN is the founder and President of Ownership Associates. He has worked professionally in the field of employee ownership for thirty years. Chris is a frequent speaker in both the United States and Europe to groups interested in issues of corporate governance and organizational change and is also a regular contributor to newspapers and periodicals on the topic of employee ownership. After graduating from Georgetown University in 1974, Chris served as a Sidney Harman Fellow at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University from 1978 to 1980 researching leading models of American industrial relations. He later completed a Doctorate in Human Development from the Harvard Graduate School of Education. His Doctoral thesis was entitled The Social Psychology of Ownership. In addition to his work in the field of employee ownership, Chris is active in the field of ethical commerce and with efforts to promote alternatives to sweatshop working conditions (see www.ethixventures.com). He also serves as a member of the core faculty of the Harvard Trade Union Program, a mid-career training program for union officials.

FREDERICK FREUNDLICH is a senior principal of Ownership Associates. He coordinates Ownership Associates' activities in Europe from our European Office in Bilbao, Spain. After completing his Masters at Cornell University in 1986, Fred started his employee-ownership work in the training department of a large group of cooperative firms in Mondragon, Spain. In June, 1987, as the Sidney Harman Fellow at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government, he did research on organizational development practices of two Fortune 500 companies and unions and began his consulting practice with Ownership Associates, focusing on ownership education, training, and organizational change. Fred holds a Bachelor's Degree in Political Science from Williams College, in Williamstown, MA, and is a doctoral candidate at the Graduate School of Education, Harvard University, where his dissertation research is exploring a program called "Humanities-Enterprise," a new university initiative affiliated with the Mondragon Cooperative Corporation.

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