In 2026, People’s Economy Lab turns 10! We’re marking our anniversary by catching up with some of the original founders of and participants in People’s Economy Lab.
Our third interview is with Ryan Quigtar, South County Relations Manager for King County Executive Girmay Zahilay.
Read our first interview with Shevanthi Daniel here. And our second interview with Christine Hanna here.
Q: What were you doing 10 years ago in 2016?
A: I was working for an organization called Skyway Solutions. (They’re no longer around. They sunset in 2019.) I had graduated from college in 2012, so I was still finding my way, figuring out how to enter the economy, figuring out my vision for impacting the world. I remember being one of the youngest in the room, the least educated about the work People’s Economy Lab was trying to do. I felt intimidated, in a good way, surrounded by so many experts who were trying out different economic models. I knew that I would learn something new every time I showed up.
Q: What motivated you to get involved with People’s Economy Lab when it was first getting started?
A: To be honest, these meetings got assigned to me as part of my work load. Skyway Solutions’ Executive Director, Michael Majeed, had participated in conversations prior to PEL’s forming, and he asked me to join on behalf of our organization. We wanted to have a voice from unincorporated King County at the table. We wanted Skyway’s diversity represented at the table. And what kept me going was curiosity about how we could try these ideas in my neighborhood, in Skyway.
Q: What are you doing now? Did participating in PEL contribute to your trajectory?
A: Currently, I’m the South County Relations Manager for King County Executive Girmay Zahilay.
People’s Economy Lab was probably my first real dose of large-scale organizing. And really leaning into failing. The perspective for me, growing up in unincorporated King County, is that we don’t have many resources, we don’t have a lot of direct representation. We don’t have all those things that cities do. As an adult, running an organization, you have a chip on your shoulder. You have to get creative; you have to squeeze everything you can out of the resources you do have. For me, that’s what I latched onto, was trying things out differently. It needs to be done differently, and we need to try it at scale.
And that’s why I mentioned failing, because that’s part of it. Not being okay with failing, but understanding that’s part of a bigger process to get to what the real vision is. That was everything for me.
The cool part, being really young at that time, being around so many knowledgeable people, it’s kind of come full circle a few times. Michael Blumson, who is now with LISC [Local Initiatives Support Corporation], he helped Skyway Solutions with some capital for a development project. Sam Farrazaino [Founder of Equinox Studios] with the artist co-op model. I didn’t know what that meant before, everyone sharing ownership. It flips the script on major societal forms for the benefit of people, and that’s played a major role in how I think and who I prioritize.
I have a greater network now through knowing folks at PEL, knowing that I have a trusted partner in PEL. That’s been really formative for me in my professional life.
There was a presentation we did at the very end. I had to do some census research around wealth. That was June of 2017. There’s still a long way to go for Black and Brown people to have wealth. And since then, it’s been my mission statement, that’s my purpose: increasing generational wealth for Black and Brown people.
Q: From your perspective, how has the movement for an economy that serves people and the planet changed over the last ten years?
A: It’s prioritized. Globally, when you think about ten years ago, now it is talked about more. It is part of the conversation. You chip away, you chip away, and you don’t know when something might turn in terms of awareness and visibility. Now we can say it is part of the conversation.
Other people might say it isn’t part of the conversation anymore, given the current federal context. But from my perspective, a lot more has been done, and there are a lot more people who can organize around this issue than there were ten years ago. Whenever there’s more attention to something, it brings more people to work on the issue. And that’s part of the role PEL has played.
Q: What are your dreams for the next ten years?
A: I really like this quote from Sili Savusa, now Executive Director of the Pacific Islander Community Association: “My role is to prepare you for my role.”
I think part of PEL’s role could be to prepare the next generation, pass the torch, keep it going to make it bigger. In ten years, I hope there’s more acceptance and adoption of the strategies, there’s more scale of what’s actually working. I hope these strategies are adopted and adapted to different sectors.
Also, when we look at policies and how things are shaped, I think having folks like PEL at the table, or leaders within PEL’s Network informing policy. Which is exactly what Executive Zahilay wants. He doesn’t take the approach that he knows everything. He wants to listen to the community and bring in people with the knowledge and expertise. That’s part of my job, to do outreach and to listen.
I want PEL to be bigger. And if this isn’t happening already, I would like to see people reaching out from across the country to learn from PEL and ask, “how can we implement this in our area?”
