The Inaugural NKG PACE Partners Have Been Selected (and We Couldn’t be More Excited)
Eleven years in the industry, eight years after first joining InterAmerican Coffee, I still get raised eyebrows when I tell people I work in coffee.
“I work in green coffee.” “I work for a coffee importer.” “I taste and evaluate coffee.”
These are jobs most people don’t know exist. In fact, I worked in coffee for almost three years before it occurred to me that coffee career paths existed outside of customer service and retail. Unless you have access, a mentor or a strong community, coffee can feel a bit like a closed-door industry.
However, it is also a dynamic one, populated by individuals who came to it round-aboutly. In my café days alone, I served coffee alongside artists, educators, students, a bio-chemist, an electrician, a mechanical engineer, a personal trainer — they all fell in love with coffee and never turned back. These individuals give the industry vitality, and that’s just in one link on one end of the supply chain.
Part of the motivation for NKG PACE was the understanding that talented Black coffee professionals exist, they just need an open door into the industry. While we were intentionally open to people with no coffee experience, we also expected to see highly qualified individuals. So, what would be our process?
Home sensory kits (being assembled in the Atlas Coffee Importers lab), were a final assessment in the interview process.
I’ve had the pleasure of leading the Application and Selection committee for the NKG PACE program alongside tremendous industry professionals, including those from the NKG partnership with the Coffee Coalition for Racial Equity (CCRE), SCA content creators and CQI leadership. Together, we decided we wanted to get to know these applicants in a more intimate way than a traditional application. Letters of recommendation allowed us to get a clearer picture of the strengths of more modest candidates. Robust interviews fleshed out what might have appeared a non-linear career path on paper. And, for those on our finalist list, our sensory home kit (pictured above, and designed with the help of the education team at Atlas Coffee Importers) allowed us to objectively assess levels of innate sensory ability.
This rigorous process turned out to be essential. Each step required applicants to communicate thoughtfully and dedicate an exceptional amount of energy and time. The professionals we met see themselves in coffee over the long term; they have specific goals laid out and have achieved a great deal already – often without resources or coffee-specific mentorship. The level of self-education and commitment each person embodied really struck me. Also, they were just lovely and interesting individuals.
Narrowing the group down to a final three was an incredibly daunting task (this isn’t a “polite” thing to say, but rather something I can’t overemphasize enough to our final group of fantastic finalists) and we leaned heavily on the three-phase structure to deliberate. It’s worth noting that we were so impressed by the caliber of candidates that we have been working on ways to expand our potential for impact beyond NKG PACE, including keeping resumes on file within the international NKG network, as well as taking advantage of potential opportunities through the CCRE community.
We are thrilled about the three individuals who will constitute our inaugural class of NKG Partners, joining us in May for this year-long journey. They have as much to offer us as we do them, and we can’t wait to introduce you to them — we promise we’ll share names soon!
In a time of endless global and systemic issues, those of us involved with NKG PACE are lucky to have been infused with positivity and hope for lasting change in this exceptional industry. This program is just one small action, but the community sprouting in its wake is nothing but potential. •
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Amanda Armbrust-Asselin is Marketing & QC Education at Neumann Gruppe USA, and is head of the NKG PACE Education and Application & Selection committees. Previously a QC coordinator for InterAmerican Coffee, she is a Q Arabica Grader and World Brewer’s Cup Judge.