Do The Right Thing: Tate Williams plans to sell his startup (but he’s not looking for an exit)

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T ate Williams’ affordable housing startup CoBuild aims to smash barriers for minorities and young people — securing equal employment opportunities within predominantly white- and male-dominated trades.

Growing up in a low-income family in Chicago and working alongside his father in construction, Williams entered the industry and noticed a missing intersectionality. The cultures represented within his community didn’t match where he worked, he said.

“Kids who look like me have access; we can play the political game with our supervisor to get far enough through our training,” Williams continued. “But if you’re coming in with a barrier to employment or a cultural difference, there might be some hidden bias in your supervisor and it gets harder to maintain.”

To fight this trend, Williams doubles the impact when it comes to CoBuild’s mission: founded in 2018, the for-profit general contracting company for residential and commercial construction prioritizes affordability when it comes to their builds that are solely for low-income individuals.

CoBuild also partners with Emerging Builders , a non-profit led by President Christiana McCully and CoBuild’s advisory board, which provides not only on-the-job construction training for women and minorities, but also educational opportunities, support, and resources for at-risk youth.

Click here to learn more about the July 25 Do The Right Thing pitch competition.

Christiana McCully, Tate Williams, Rodney Woodard, and Heidi Brake, CoBuild; photo by Taylor Wilmore, Startland News

Emerging Builders

Emerging Builders partners with the KCMO and KCK school districts, as well as organizations for youth who aren’t currently enrolled in schools because they dropped out, are or were incarcerated, or simply need alternative pathways to education.

CoBuild provides Emerging Builders with temporary on-site job training with potential for permanent employment. Emerging Builders employees also receive financial literacy training, entrepreneurship education, and cognitive behavior therapy.

“Our shared goal is to help young people just bridge into this industry as a whole,” said Williams. “Because we really believe that the future of housing is actually dependent on young people who have experienced living in affordable housing, getting the power to change how housing is built in the future.”

Equal opportunities for employees

Williams aims to transition CoBuild into a workers’ cooperative, a business model growing traction in construction companies across the Midwest, where after three years of tenure, employees can apply for ownership of CoBuild.

He plans to sell the business to the first round of owners, with the goal being to have six owners by 2030, making CoBuild a democratic worker-owned company.

Under such a model, Williams explained, workers not only will own the business, but share in its financial success, and also have representation on the board, following the principle of one worker, one vote.

“This structure enforces that no one person gets to boss everybody else around; it’s a collective power,” he said. “It just keeps that profit and power level equal.”

Equal access for young builders

Williams believes prejudice and bias in construction reveal themselves in the hiring process, he said.

“We often find that if a young person or individual doesn’t come in fully skilled up, employers may do a big hiring initiative, but then they’ll also do a big layoff real quick, and it tends to often be those same people,” said Williams.

The Rev. Jesse Jackson’s 1969 rally in Williams’ hometown of Chicago demanded that if construction took place in their communities, residents should have the skills and rights to participate.

“We wanted to demand that if they were going to build where we live, we should have the trade skills to build. If there were public contracts, we should have the right to have a part of those contracts,” Jackson said.

His words, quoted in the New York Times, inspired William’s mission to ensure fair opportunities for builders in the communities that they reside in. Observing how he himself and how other people often climb the ladder in his career through nepotism and privilege, Williams drives to bridge the gap for underrepresented groups.

“I wanted to acknowledge that lack of equal access — especially when we’re building in the communities where these young people live,” he said. “For them not to be included in gaining access to the training and employment opportunities that exist, was just clear as day for me.”

Other than his lived experience, Williams feels called by his faith to make a difference and do what he can to change the world for the better, he said.

“My life is to be used for the benefit of others,” said Williams. “What I’m given is for me but also to be shared.”

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