Minnesota has one more employee-owned company. On Thursday, Golden Valley-based Room & Board announced that it has adopted an employee stock ownership plan, or ESOP. The move will give the furniture retailer’s 1,100 employees a “financial stake in the company,” leaders said in a statement. In an interview with TCB, Room & Board president and chief operating officer Bruce Champeau said that the company officially became employee owned on April 1 and communicated the news to employees via video last week. Champeau said the change will give employees a sense of certainty going forward. He ..read more

Impact100 Twin Cities, founded just last year by two mid-career professionals looking to create more community connections, just announced its first round of grants to local nonprofits including $100,000 to the Phyllis Wheatley Community Center. The nonprofit, which has served North Minneapolis for 100 years, plans to use the grant to scale its Women’s Wealth and Equity Building Initiative, a program designed to transform families led by single Black mothers, helping them manage finances, pay off debt and increase income. “There is a fundamental belief [within Impact100] that a dollar in the h ..read more

Less than half of Minnesota family child care providers and roughly 60% of child care centers are optimistic about the future of their businesses. The kicker? It’s the best outlook the industry has reported in years. Child care enrollment has largely remained stable or increased among providers in the last year, according to a survey conducted by the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis in March. The survey gathered more than 1,200 responses from across the state, which showed despite increasing demand and continued efforts to support providers, 90% of respondents agreed the industry remains “i ..read more

I love learning. Throughout my almost 30 years of working in business settings, I have always valued the time when I got to be the person who was sitting in the training session or listening to a panel. I also have enjoyed developing and leading training sessions and sitting on panels. I am often asked how these opportunities came my way. I engage with business professionals from all sectors, and they are often interested in gaining visibility or sharing learnings. Sometimes they are hesitant to ask about these opportunities, as it feels very self-focused. I’m going to ask you t ..read more

In the wake of Covid-19 four years ago, community needs soared to new highs. Nonprofits, for-profits, and governments alike made quick pivots and big investments to address a wave of needs not seen in decades, all while facing a racial reckoning in the wake of George Floyd’s murder in Minneapolis. But ask around at any local nonprofit and charitable group: Many of those needs persist today. On the pages below, we’re shining a spotlight on 10 businesses and nonprofits tackling larger social issues head-on. The 2024 class of Community Impact Award winners are addressing everything from children ..read more

Two Minnesota leaders, Land O’Lakes CEO Beth Ford and U of M School of Public Health professor Rachel Hardeman, made the prestigious TIME100, the national magazine’s annual list of “Most Influential People of 2024.” Ford was recognized for helping Americans understand the global food chain. “The farm-to-table movement has been happening at restaurants since the 1970s. But thanks to Beth, the farm-to-boardroom-table movement is just beginning,” TIME wrote. “She’s showing corporations and the government the absolute necessity of investing in rural America. On the topic of health equity, TIME wro ..read more

A recent exchange in a House committee hearing between DFL and Republican lawmakers over the role of capitalism illustrated a significant political question that dominates the debate over taxes and regulation: Are corporations good or bad? Are they positive to the state, or a drag? By both policy and rhetoric, DFL lawmakers and Gov. Tim Walz, have taken aim at big business and the wealthy as a centerpiece of their agenda. Attempts to change the tax code to get corporations to pay their “fair share” have been proposed, as was last year’s change to the individual income tax that phased out deduc ..read more

Plans for the Incline Village housing development in Duluth currently call for 1,300 market-rate apartments and condos to be built on a prime site overlooking Lake Superior, on the former site of the city’s Central High School. Construction is expected to begin this summer. It will be the city’s biggest housing project ever—and it will have a great view. It won’t be a moment too soon. A 2019 study commissioned by the city estimated that Duluth needed to add 3,600 affordable housing units between 2019 and 2024 to keep pace with demand, and that’s just in the affordable category. There has been ..read more

Gender parity in corporate America is still a long way off. Recent research by St. Catherine University showed that in 2023, only 23.1% of executive officers at Minnesota’s largest publicly traded companies were women. That’s barely budged from 22.7% in 2019, reflecting “stagnant growth,” researchers said. What will it take to boost the number of women in high-ranking roles? A trio of panelists took on that question and many more at TCB’s 13th annual Women in Leadership event at the Saint Paul RiverCentre on April 16. More than 600 people attended the event. TCB editor-in-chief Allison Kaplan ..read more

In the past several years, Thomas Leonzal has become familiar with the power of home ownership associations (HOA), and what he considers their “overreach” when it comes to changing bylaws that affect residents. Leonzal and his wife used to run a daycare in their home, which was part of the Dancing Waters development in Woodbury. After around eight years of operating, in 2019, they received a letter from the HOA that put their daycare at risk of no longer being able to stay open. The letter said they needed to reduce the number of kids in their daycare from 11 to two within 30 days. For them, d ..read more