TechnoServe Honors Jerry Baldwin for Contributions to Coffee Industry
New York, NY – October 16, 2013 – Jerry Baldwin, a key player in the development of the specialty coffee industry, was honored tonight by TechnoServe at the organization’s 45th Anniversary Gala.
Baldwin, a longtime member of TechnoServe’s Board of Directors, has provided critical leadership around TechnoServe’s work to assist smallholder coffee farmers. In 2001, he traveled to Tanzania to see our nascent work with coffee farmers and cooperatives. He helped us confirm that although the challenges were daunting, the coffee sector in Tanzania – and East Africa more broadly – represented a tremendous opportunity for TechnoServe and the international coffee industry. Baldwin connected TechnoServe to resources and market players in the coffee industry. Just four years later, Peet’s Coffee & Tea bought its first coffee from TechnoServe-assisted smallholder farmers.
Baldwin also played a leading role in facilitating a study in 2003 of the global coffee crisis that TechnoServe conducted in partnership with McKinsey & Co. Jerry served on the steering committee and helped garner support for the study from leading coffee companies. The study helped determine TechnoServe’s strategic direction in creating business-focused solutions to benefit smallholder coffee farmers.
Today, TechnoServe is working to build a sustainable global coffee industry that can lift millions of farming families out of poverty. We have developed and refined on-the-ground, market-based solutions to meet this challenge in communities across Africa and Latin America. We have already supported more than 200,000 coffee farmers across the developing world, and our impact in the coffee sector has been widely recognized and held up as a leading example.
Baldwin has served as a director at Peet’s Coffee & Tea since he acquired the company in 1984, and he is the proprietor of J. Baldwin Wines in Sonoma Valley, California. Baldwin has also served as the President of Association Scientifique Internationale du Café, as well as Chairman and Trustee of Coffee Quality Institute. He is a co-founder of Starbucks.
Baldwin was one of three honorees at Wednesday night’s event, joining Tewodros Ashenafi, Chairman and CEO of SouthWest Energy, and Stephan B. Tanda, Managing Board Member of Royal DSM.
About TechnoServe
TechnoServe works with enterprising people in the developing world to build competitive farms, businesses and industries. We are a nonprofit organization that develops business solutions to poverty by linking people to information, capital and markets. Our work is rooted in the idea that given the opportunity, hardworking men and women in even the poorest places can generate income, jobs and wealth for their families and communities. With more than four decades of proven results, we believe in the power of private enterprise to transform lives.
For more information, please contact:
Andrew Eder, Senior Manager, Marketing and Communications, TechnoServe
Tel: +1 202 719 1327; Email: aeder@tns.org
