Partnering With Your Green Coffee Suppliers | Shauna Alexander

This session was presented at Roast Summit on February 22, 2024 in Portland, Oregon.
Strong partnerships with your green coffee suppliers-importers, exporters and/or producers-are key to running a roasting business. This session will draw from Stumptown's 20+ years of Direct Trade sourcing and roasting, and provide perspective on communicating with suppliers about your coffee needs and preferences, managing inventory and projecting needs, and evaluating and monitoring quality from green through roasted.
Presenter Bio
Presenter: Shauna Alexander is the vice president of coffee at Stumptown Coffee Roasters, where she oversees all sourcing, logistics, and green and roasted quality. She also leads sustainability strategy for Stumptown, a certified B Corporation, both within coffee supply chains and the company’s overall operations.
Prior to Stumptown, Shauna led global sustainability initiatives for Volcafe, one of the world’s largest coffee trading firms. She worked collaboratively with the company’s in-country agricultural extension teams across Africa, Asia and Latin America to create a consistent approach to farmer support services called the “Volcafe Way."
Shauna got started in coffee researching her master’s thesis on the economics of shade-grown coffee in Costa Rica. She holds degrees from the University of Virginia and Yale University.