LaDawn Lewis worked as an intern at CESJ during the summer of 1997.
Through the auspices of Brigham Young University’s Washington Seminar, CESJ was fortunate to work with an outstanding young intern, LaDawn Lewis, who had recently received her undergraduate degree and who was preparing to enter an M.B.A. program.
LaDawn’s primary focus during her two-month internship (June 24-August 14, 1997) was on a research assignment—to examine current policies and proposals for establishing empowerment zones in low-income communities, define their underlying assumptions and objectives, assess their effectiveness from the standpoint of empowering citizens and workers within the zones, and compare these with CESJ’s expanded capital ownership principles and proposals calling for "super empowerment zones."
Her tasks as part of this challenging assignment were to survey current literature on empowerment zones (including news coverage, federal legislation and CESJ proposals), interview Congressional and state program officials and representatives of organizations proposing and/or implementing empowerment programs, and draft a research paper outlining her findings. Given the enormous scope and complexity of her topic (as well as the current paucity of solid empirical data), CESJ determined that the draft paper she submitted would serve as the basis of continuing research.
In addition, LaDawn assisted with professional work involving "Justice-Based Management" processes within two ESOP (employee stock ownership plan) companies. Her work included surveying literature and contacting people in the employee ownership field, to assess the impact of unions within ESOP companies. She also participated in a meeting of management and employee representatives to improve one ESOP company’s compensation/risk-and-reward system. At this event, LaDawn assisted with meeting logistics, spoke with employee-owners, observed break-out sessions with facilitators and employee-owners, and transcribed meeting results.
Among her other assignments, LaDawn gathered research materials at the Library of Congress, documented and tested procedures for accessing resources through the Internet, configured CESJ’s computers to access its e-mail service, worked with a CESJ volunteer to develop a strategy and marketing package for getting CESJ spokespersons onto radio and television interviews, corresponded with and sent CESJ literature to journalists and other contacts, and observed a workshop on the expanded ownership approach to privatization conducted for policy makers from other countries.
