The four Cooperative Hall of Fame inductees for 2025 have been announced by the US Cooperative Development Foundation (CDF).
Named as the Hall of Fame enters its 51st year – and the global movement gears up for the International Year of Co-operatives – the new additions are: Lori Capouch, North Dakota Association of Rural Electric Cooperatives; Randy Lee, PCC Community Markets; Tom Webb, International Centre for Co-operative Management, and in the Unsung Hero category, Estelle Witherspoon, Freedom Quilting Bee.
Capouch worked at the North Dakota Association of Rural Electric Cooperatives (NDAREC) for 26 years, where she directed the Rural Electric and Telecommunications (RE&T) Cooperative Development Center and the Rural Development Finance Corporation (RDFC). Capouch was instrumental in establishing RDFC’s US$9m revolving loan fund, as well as the North Dakota Rural Electric Cooperative Foundation, which continues to fund co-op development across the state. Last year, Capouch wrote and won a $10m grant through the U.S. Department of Agriculture for a revolving loan fund to support meat processing capacity in North Dakota, as well as helping to establish The first-known rural food access and distribution co-op in the US, named the Rural Access Distribution Cooperative.
Lee began working at Puget Consumer Cooperative (PCC) in Seattle, WA, in 1970. Under his leadership, PCC Community Markets has grown into the nation’s largest consumer-owned grocer with 16 stores, more than 100,000 members, a staff of 2,000 and $450m in annual revenue. Lee was also instrumental in founding the PCC Farmland Trust (now Washington Farmland Trust), where he served as a board director for 19 years, in the late 1990s he helped establish what is now National Co+op Grocers (NCG). He served on its board for nearly two decades and led its reorganisation in 2004.
Tom Webb has worked across multiple co-operative industries and sectors in Canada and the US, including grocery, IT, multi-stakeholder co-ops and credit unions. Webb established the Master of Management: Co-operatives and Credit Unions Program at Saint Mary’s University in Nova Scotia, Canada. This is now an internationally renowned English-language master’s level university program in the field of co-operative business, and laid the foundations for the development of the International Centre for Co-operative Management (ICCM). ICCM has produced around 500 co-op and credit union leaders as alumni. Webb published a book based on his research and practice, From Corporate Globalization to Global Cooperation: We Owe It to Our Grandchildren, in 2016.
The Cooperative Hall of Fame’s Unsung Hero category is reserved for co-operators of the past whose critical role in co-operative history was originally overlooked or unrecognised.
The 2025 Unsung Hero is Estelle Witherspoon, founder and board president of Black women-owned quilting co-op Freedom Quilting Bee. Witherspoon spent more than 20 years at the co-op, which, under her leadership, was one of the 22 initial signatories and founding members of the Federation of Southern Cooperatives.
Freedom Quilting Bee came to provide secure income for more than 150 Black and women-led households, and used its success to establish a day care centre and after-school programmes for the local community. A civil rights activist, Witherspoon marched alongside Martin Luther King from Selma to Montgomery in 1965.
This year’s inductees “represent the breadth of the co-operative sector in addressing the needs of communities”, said CDF chair John Holdsclaw.
“From championing rural and frontier co-op development, to transforming the natural food and co-op groceries sector, to innovating the field of co-op education, to transforming economic reality for Black women artisans and their families in Alabama, these inductees have dedicated their lives to helping people and communities through co-operatives,” he added.
“And they all represent how co-operation among co-operatives – Principle Six – can nurture and grow communities through their generous sharing of knowledge across sectors and co-operatives.”
The new inductees will be honoured on 9 October at the National Press Club in Washington, DC.
