When I was asked to fill a vacant seat on the Specialty Coffee Association Board of Directors, my first reaction was: are you sure you mean me? I was running a small social enterprise from Kigali. Most of my board colleagues were running companies with hundreds of employees and decades of industry history.
I said yes. I am very glad I did.
The SCA is the global governing body of the specialty coffee industry — setting standards, training professionals, organizing events like the World Barista Championship, and shaping the direction of the entire sector. Sitting at that table meant sitting at the intersection of every tension and opportunity in coffee.
"The most powerful thing I brought to that board wasn't expertise. It was a perspective that almost no one else in the room had: what it actually looks like to build at origin, from the inside, with community partners who don't have the luxury of getting it wrong."
What I Learned Fast: The Gap Is Real
The specialty coffee industry talks a great deal about its commitment to origin, to farmer welfare, to traceability and transparency. Much of that commitment is genuine. But there is a persistent gap between what the consuming side of the industry believes about origin — and what origin actually looks like.
I learned this sitting in board meetings where origin countries were discussed in terms of "supply risk" and "price pressure" and "quality consistency." These are real concerns. But they describe origin as a variable to be managed — not as a community of human beings making decisions under conditions the boardroom cannot imagine.
I tried to be a translator. Not combatively — the board members I served with were largely thoughtful, committed people. But a translator between what you see on a cupping table and what is happening at 5am on a hillside in Rwanda's Southern Province.
The Three Things That Actually Drive Quality at Origin
After twelve years at origin, here's what I know about what produces exceptional coffee:
Economic stability for farmers. You cannot ask smallholder farmers to invest in quality — sorting, selective picking, careful processing — if they don't know whether this year's price will cover this year's costs. Quality is a luxury that requires a baseline of security. Pre-finance, fair pricing, and long-term relationships aren't just ethical choices. They're agronomic ones.
Knowledge transfer, not just capital. It's not enough to give a washing station better equipment. You have to invest in the people operating it — in training, in mentorship, in creating cultures of excellence that persist season after season. The quality of Inzere's wet-process isn't in the machinery. It's in the team.
Patience. Almost everything the consuming side of the industry wants to happen faster than it can actually happen. Relationships at origin take years to build. Quality programs take seasons to show results. The industry's quarterly-thinking timeframe is poorly matched to the agricultural reality.
What I Refused to Accept
There was a recurring conversation on the board about "premiumization" — the idea that higher-scoring coffees should command meaningfully higher prices. I agreed with the principle but pushed back on the framing.
Premiumization that flows through the supply chain but doesn't reach farmers is not premiumization — it's margin extraction with better marketing. I said this, repeatedly, in various phrasings. I'd like to think it landed.
I also pushed back on the fetishization of novelty. The industry loves a new processing method, a new variety, a new micro-region. What it loves less is the unglamorous work of making existing programs excellent, consistent, and economically sustainable. The Bourbons of Rwanda's Southern Province aren't exotic. They're just exceptional. That should be enough.
What Serving Gave Me
Access. Relationships. A much clearer understanding of how the industry thinks about origin — which made me better at advocating for what origin actually needs.
And a conviction that the most important voices in the specialty coffee conversation are the ones that are still underrepresented: the producers, the farmers, the cooperative managers. The people who grow the coffee that makes this industry possible.
I served through the end of 2019. The SCA said, in their farewell note, that I'd provided "invaluable leadership" and "dedicated countless volunteer hours." I'll take it. But what they gave me was worth more.