TT NYC: "Beyond Quality" | Colleen Anunu (Fair Trade USA)

In “Beyond Quality”, Colleen Anunu asks us to rethink what matters to the future of specialty coffee and shares her personal answer: ensuring coffee is profitable in the long run, reducing the negative social and environmental impacts, and engaging with other actors in the coffee value chain. Whilst these may sound fairly straightforward, Colleen explains how our current mythologizing of the industry—amongst other things—is getting in the way of us having a real conversation about what it means for coffee producers to profit and sustain. Colleen’s talk ends with some positive steps we can take to not only facilitate these conversations, but build a better, stronger industry together—a perfect way to kick off 2017.

 

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Colleen Anunu specializes in market access strategies for coffee producers and roasters, emphasizing shared value, gender equity and farmer-first community development. As the Sr. Manager of Coffee Supply for Fair Trade USA Colleen focuses on strategic initiatives related to Fair Trade social premium investments and impact evaluation. Colleen has a masters degree in International Development from Cornell University, where her research focused on gender-inclusive smallholder participation in high-value coffee markets. Colleen has a professional background in coffee procurement, roasting and quality