WHO WE ARE |
Follow the Water
Watershed was born from a simple and radical belief — that the people who are doing the work should have access to owning the work they do. You made it. It's yours.
We are an ever-evolving experiment in what we believe healthcare could look like if the systems healthcare was imbedded within were built on dignity, shared ownership, camaraderie, and genuine community.
We believe that access to ownership over one's own life, time and financial dignity is paramount to human health. We believe that agency over one's life, and professional practice is a marker for freedom. And that shared structures and community spaces — cooperatively held ones, human ones — are part of how we build the future we actually want to live in.
Follow the Water. Join the Cooperative Movement.
Our Story |
The deep LORE of how the Watershed Wellness COOP came to be.
It all began with a DREAM — a vision of a multi-modality cooperative where wellness practitioners could work & thrive together.
Spring 2024
Summer 2024
January 2025
It all began with a DREAM — several of them, actually.
In 2024, our co-founder Collins visited her family's homeland in Poland and stumbled into something ordinary there that felt radical here — a community bathhouse. Clean but not overdone. Families of every age together in the water. Healing that belonged to everyone.
She came home with a vision.
Meanwhile Melisse and Kalaway and Olivia all were dreaming too — of a space where practitioners could work with dignity, own what they built, and care for their community without giving the majority of their earnings away.
Many dreams have come together in one space. We are still dreaming. The vision is still forming.
412 Gallatin Pike South, Madison TN.
With faith and urgency they secure the lease, rally their community, and build the vision from the ground up. Kalaway joins as a co-founder. Olivia believes and invests.
Watershed opens its doors. The dream flows into being.
In our first year we facilitated $294,386 in practitioner income — returning 83% of gross revenue to the people delivering care.
On time. In full.
We won't pretend it has been easy.
Building something cooperative inside a capitalist system is genuinely hard — not because the model for cooperation is too complicate, but because we are all trying to build something new while still surviving inside the old. The strain of that is real. We have felt it. We are still feeling it.
What keeps us going is the belief that the world we are trying to build is worth the difficulty of building it. And the people — practitioners, clients, community members — who keep showing up and saying yes to something different is not soemthign we can ignore.
We're not finished. Or perfectly formed yet. But we are real. And sometimes that's exactly what people need — something that's still becoming, and has room for them inside the becoming.
As a solidarity ecosystem united in cooperative ownership, Watershed provides inclusive integrative healthcare that empowers individuals on their unique wellness journeys.
We understand that true wellness emerges when body, mind, and spirit are addressed as an interconnected whole. This means shared decision-making, fair compensation, and reinvesting resources back into our community — creating spaces where all bodies, identities, and experiences are welcomed and honored.
THE COOPERATIVE DIFFERENCE
Why We Chose This Model
We ditched the split. In traditional practice settings, clinicians surrender 40–60% of their earnings to a practice owner. Our members keep their full clinical rates and contribute equitably through a shared operation fee — every dollar flowing back into our cooperative infrastructure.
This isn't just about economics. It's about dignity, equity, and professional autonomy. When we ditch the split, we build wealth together, make decisions democratically, and create a practice environment where mutual aid replaces extraction.
Our Founding Members
Olivia Blake
Lending Member
Melisse Prusinski
Managing Council +
Worker Owner
Kalaway Voss
Managing Council +
Worker Owner
Collins Hohne
Managing Council +
Worker Owner
Watershed Serves TWO AUDIENCES
You Belong Here
A Chosen Community of Care
We understand that healthcare is more than medicine.
It lives in the places where people gather, share, and take care of each other: In the food that gets passed between neighbors at the Nashville Community Fridge behind our building, or in the knowledge shared in a room with your therapist, or in a conversation in a support group that makes someone feel less alone.
The worker owners of Watershed are all here choosing to bend toward this need in our community. We are actively learning what it means to be a true community of care, and we are open to being shaped by what our Madison community actually wants and needs.
We don't have all the answers. But we do share space, a cooperative structure, and a deep commitment to care and the liminal spaces of becoming.
If you are building something that takes care of people — in any form — we want to be in relationship with you. Food pantries. Diaper services. Clothing swaps. CPR classes. Community conversations. Healing circles. Book clubs. All of it!
This is an open invitation. Please reach out if you would like to plan a gathering. We attempt to keep things affordable for all. Please reach out to our coop to see how you can get involved.