LUCI Member , Niki Okuk, gives a TED talk at TEDx Crenshaw October 2016. Today it was released to the public.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3h9I4vcX00
Niki Okuk
Title/Occupation: Worker – Owner, LA Union Cooperative Initiative
Bio: Niki grew up in Los Angeles attending Audobon Middle School, High School in Oakland, CA, community college in San Francisco, later majoring in Economics at Columbia University in New York. After working in development with the office of Joseph Stiglitz, and working in finance in Korea and Singapore. Niki completed her MBA with Nanyang University in Singapore, including a sustainability certificate at Sloan School of Business at MIT. She has has since returned to Los Angeles to build democratic and sustainable businesses, co-founding Rco Tires, a tire recycling and manufacturing company in Compton.
Title of Talk: Business/Entrepreneurship
How does this fit in with our theme: This years TedxCrenshaw is about taking stock and getting a clear view of our community’s strengths and weaknesses. Our economy is owned by people that do not live in our communities, such as stock market investors and CEO’s of major corporations. Corporate employment pushes down wages and externalizes cost to achieve ever increasing profits. Those profits go out of our community to share holders and CEO’s that live all around the world, robbing our local tax pool as well as impoverishing our workers. Corporate employment is pumping wealth out of our communities. To affect real change to the social problems in our communities, we need a fundamental shift in the business paradigm.
Quoted from TEDxCrenshaw: http://www.tedxcrenshaw.com/speaks/niki-okuk/