Erik Forman

Erik Forman is a labor organizer, serial social entrepreneur, and affordable housing policy and finance professional. During the pandemic, he pioneered the use of worker-owned high-growth tech-enabled startups as tools for system change, co-creating The Drivers Cooperative, a driver-owned rideshare platform to upgrade job quality in the gig economy; as well as People’s Choice Communications, an Internet Service Provider built with striking cable technicians to bridge the digital divide.

Before turning toward cooperative development as a strategy for system change, Erik was active as a labor organizer for over a decade. He was a rank-and-file leader in the first nationally-scaled unionization effort at Starbucks from 2006-2012, and trained over 1,000 union organizers across the world.

He is now focused on solutions to the housing crisis facing working people as Director of Housing Policy for the AFL-CIO Housing Investment Trust, a $7.4 billion social impact fund that invests union pension dollars in 100% union-built affordable housing.

Erik earned a PhD in Cultural Anthropology at The Graduate Center – City University of New York. He has held fellowships at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Aspen Institute, Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor at Georgetown University, Institute for the Cooperative Digital Economy at the New School, and Institute for the Study of Employee Ownership and Profit-Sharing at Rutgers University. He teaches at the Harry Van Arsdale Jr. Center for Labor Studies at SUNY Empire State University.