Fred Freundlich is a professor of cooperative enterprise and cofounder of a masters program on the social economy at the Faculty of Business, Mondragon University in the Basque Country of Spain. He is American, but has been living in the Basque Country since 1995. Through the Faculty’s applied research center, MIK, he also does research and technical assistance projects to develop cooperative and worker ownership in Mondragon and other places in Europe and elsewhere. Fred worked at the American consulting firm Ownership Associates in the 1980s and 90s, helping to convert conventional companies to worker ownership.

Mondragon is a large, integrated network of over 100 worker cooperatives in many sectors; including advanced manufacturing, retail, finance, education and research.  Over 50 years of experience, and despite many paradoxes and challenges, Mondragon has developed a perspective on the The Commons and the enterprise that many people think is important to social change movements. This perspective is based on broad worker ownership in the core economy within a framework of solidarity and intercooperation among enterprises.