Jennifer Bryant is the Program Manager for Community Wealth Building Initiatives at the Washington Area Community Investment Fund. In this role, she leads the DC Employee Ownership Initiative, a strategic investment to preserve legacy businesses and create new pathways to entrepreneurship. Jennifer’s work is grounded in the belief that shared ownership and community wealth are central to building racial and economic equity.
The DC Employee Ownership Initiative provides training, technical assistance and access to capital for employee ownership conversions. We also support existing and emerging employee-owned businesses in the District.
Jennifer has worked in the labor movement on the local and national level. She helped establish DC’s first Black Worker Center before moving to the International Labor Communications Association, a constituent organization of the AFL-CIO.
Jennifer is committed to revitalizing and expanding employee ownership in the District. She is a community fellow with the Shared Equity in Economic Development (SEED) fellowship – a year-long program that convenes and equips city leaders with tools, resources, and expertise to create broad-based employee ownership. She is a member of the DC Cooperative Stakeholders Group which was initiated by the DC Department of Small and Local Business Development in 2016. Jennifer was a founding steering committee member of Cooperation DC, a grassroots group that organized trainings, learning journeys, and community popular education for low-income communities of color.
Jennifer holds a BA in English from Howard University and a Masters from St. John’s University.