Over the next decade, millions of small and midsize US businesses representing trillions of dollars in enterprise value are expected to change hands as baby boomer owners retire. This “Great Ownership Transfer” presents a pivotal choice: whether these companies will transition to new owners or shut down. McKinsey Partner JP Julien recently sat down with Philip Reeves, the managing partner and cofounder of Apis & Heritage Capital Partners, an investment firm focused exclusively on employee ownership in the United States. In this McKinsey Institute for Economic Mobility interview, Reeves discusses the opportunities that can arise when converting founder- and family-owned businesses into employee-owned companies, and how employee ownership of businesses can be a mechanism to drive economic mobility. The following transcript has been edited for clarity and length. JP Julien: Tell us a little bit about your background. How did Apis & Heritage get started?…