Niki Okuk
Niki Okuk is Deputy Director of Trucks & Off Road with CALSTART working to deploy zero-emission heavy duty equipment across California to protect the climate and health of communities most impacted by transportation emissions. Prior to this Niki was a small business owner for close to a decade, founding RCO Tires in 2012 Niki built Rco Tires with the mission to create “green collar jobs in the hood” recycling millions of pounds of rubber tire waste, while employing dozens of black and brown folks in South LA, many formerly incarcerated for facing other barriers to employment, and becoming a unit of the United Steel Workers Local 675.
Niki chronicled the success and ambitions of the project in her 2018 TEDxCrenshaw talk about the ways that local communities can own the businesses they work in and build a more resilient and just economy. In her Ted talk Niki asked “what if we could build Mondrogon in South Central?” She is a founding member of the WORCS: Worker Ownership Resources & Cooperative Services and Downtown Crenshaw, Niki brings a decade of experience in cooperative economics, framing the way forward for an economy and business ecosystem which is controlled by, and benefits, the members of our community.
Niki is a tribal member Awakane Kamanuku working on indigenous land rights movements in the US and for a Free West Papua. Raising three small children in South Central LA with her husband, they are among the founding members of Black Lives Matter. Niki studied economics at Columbia University in New York, where she worked in the office of Joseph Stiglitz. Niki completed her Masters in Business with Nanyang University in Singapore, and a program in Sustainability at MIT Sloan.