ABOUT OMAR
Omar Freilla is the co-founder and coordinator of Collective Diaspora, a new global community of Black cooperatives and Black-led cooperative support organizations from across the African diaspora. He is also a cooperative development consultant, adjunct lecturer at the City University of New York, and 2022 Echoing Green Fellow. He has approximately 20 years of experience developing cooperative enterprises, having founded and co-founded several local and national cooperative development organizations and associations in the United States, as well as pioneered multiple approaches to cooperative development and contributed to the growth of worker cooperatives in New York City. His work is grounded in his experience as a Black Dominican from the South Bronx growing up amid fights for community self-determination; his later work in Black feminist and environmental justice movements; and raising a family with his two children and wife in the Bronx.