What is your position in the coffee industry?

barista, manager, coffee shop owner, coffee roaster, home barista, coffee enthusiast

Where are you located? ( City and Country )

Ottawa, Canada

How many years have you been in the industry?

1

If you are a barista or shop, are you interested in a barista exchange with another coffee shop/barista?

yes

Tell us more about your coffee shop or barista skills.

I have been a speciality barista for approximately a year now (although I have worked at other, marginally coffee-serving establishments).

I'm alright at latte art, but I am particularly focused on pouring the perfect shot.

What cities or countries are you interested in traveling to?

Anywhere

About Me:

As a part of the Sonanda Sofia Workers Co-op, I manage the promotion, sales, orders and product development for Umi Café' coffee & tea.

I am working to co-operatively develop and promote our coffee & tea program to meet the equitable, ecological and artisan standards and practices shared throughout speciality coffee and tea communities ("third- wave coffee culture").

As well I am actively engaged in the development of a much lacking "coffee culture" community, through engaging in a dialogue amongst Ottawa's speciality barista's, roasters and retailers in order to generate dialogue surrounding how the coffee trade can be changed to meet its full potential as a culinary art as well as a vehicle for social and ecological justice/empowerment (if one can truly accept such a schism).

Effectively I am trying to progress coffee as a art as well as a vehicle for liberation.

I am obsessed with origin coffees, but I also blend our cafe's espresso blend. I home roast and travel frequently to discover new cafes.

I am also in my 5th (honours thesis) year at Carleton University majoring in radical social geography. I do work on urban ecology/social ecology and the ways in which urban space is socially constructed in tandem with conventional master-narratives on the human-"nature" dialectics. My research is specifically how community/urban/guerilla gardening re-conceptualizes urban space deconstructing "nature"-human dichotomies.

About My Company:

Umi (aka Sonanda Sofia Workers Co-Operative) is a cooperatively run cafe in the heart of Ottawa's china town. We specialize in Fair Trade organic coffee grown by indigenous peasant cooperatives in the South.

Umi Café works with La Tierra Cooperative, local wholesale roasters and distributors of coffee and artisan fair trade goods. Together they provide direct market access to producer co-ops in Bolivia, Columbia, Chiapas (Mexico), Guatemala, Rwanda, Ethiopia and Sumatra, advancing these communities development goals as equal partners in joint projects to develop autonomous, democratic models of organizing.

What is your favorite thing about the coffee industry?

...really?... the coffee, duh!... (and by the way, its community, not "industry"... screw industry, I'm an artizan!)

Website:

http://www.umicafe.org/