Page 5 - CEEM Shopping Mag June 2019

The CEEM Story

In 2012, CEEM founder and CEO Reggie Webb nearly died. He was rushed to the hospital just in
time to receive life-saving interventions to stabilize his condition. As he spent weeks in recovery,
one word kept echoing in his mind: legacy.

As a former executive with the McDonald’s Corporation, Webb helped people from under-
represented communities become franchisees with one of the world’s most iconic brands.
However, he wanted to do more to help African Americans achieve nancial independence.
Through his research, Webb learned about the Mondragon Cooperative, a worker-owner co-op
in the Basque region of Spain that grew from a handful of initial participants into a massive
federation of more than 260 businesses and cooperatives, 80,000 workers, and more than
€12 billion in revenue. After learning how the Mondragon Cooperative helped transform its
town, Webb wanted to replicate a similar model in Black communities in America.

A chance meeting with Ratibu Jacocks, a community organizer in Rialto, Calif., helped Webb
formalize his idea for an economic cooperative. After visiting a Westside Action Group meeting
to discuss entrepreneurship in the Black community, Webb attended a retreat where he outlined
the vision for CEEM.

In 2016, CEEM was o cially born. At rst, Webb brought in his children — who help run
Webb Family Enterprises — then he extended the o er to business and community leaders in
his local area. Today, CEEM is a legally formed cooperative in the state of California and brings
community members together to keep more of the business revenue generated by African
Americans consumers in the Inland Empire in the hands of the Black community.

"In the I.E., as in Greater Los Angeles Area, African Americans are 7% of the population but own
less than 1% of revenue from business ownership. Nowhere in America do we have a repre-
sentative share of business revenue. Changing this paradigm is essential to improving our
economic health and increasing the number of our families that are middle class. CEEM is here
to change that by uniting our community around our market potential and providing support
to Black owned business and individuals that allow them to operate successful enterprises while
committing to operate in line with shared core values that create a community ethic driving
greater prosperity." - Reggie Webb, Founder