Cooperative Development Director
Ron Gaydos has extensive experience in economic development, organizational strategy, and special projects management as well as cooperatives. In 2015 Ron co-founded the Pittsburgh Chamber of Cooperatives, the Pittsburgh region’s hands-on resource for cooperative business.
Ron was introduced to cooperative economics through the EF Schumacher Society, now the national New Economy Coalition, in study sponsored by several Pittsburgh community leaders. He has recently trained in consent-based governance and with other Chamber members also conducts consent-based decision making and training sessions among cooperatives and workgroups interested in non-hierarchical collaboration.
Ron is a longtime advocate for equity, inclusion, and fairness in community economic development. His work on major community development projects is known for these emphases. He has started three businesses and has served as a consultant for many other business owners.
For three years he was a member of a cooperative household that harmoniously (mostly) managed everyday living, upkeep and renovations, and household social events. When it came time for his son to go to elementary school, Ron and his wife got together with 4 other families in an informal after-school co-op, having five more children at home one day a week for after school snacks, homework time, and activities among all five families. Ron also founded and operated a labor exchange and business referral network of community-based business owners known as The Rainbow Trust Collective.
After graduate study at the Heinz College at Carnegie Mellon University, Ron began to work on several high-profile projects involving former industrial sites and their conversion, workforce development, and technology-assisted community discourse. This project management experience organizing complex initiatives, coupled with his fervor for business practices and economic policies that create shared value, has led him to strive be one of the leading proponents of cooperatives in southwestern Pennsylvania.