Celina Lazarus is the co-founder, owner and director of First Crop Coffee Australia, a raw coffee importing company and Maillard Atelier, a coffee co-roasting and educational space in Melbourne. Her community involvement is at the heart of both businesses as she invests into people through business. Through First Crop Coffee she has been able to finance the building and running of schools and health centres in coffee growing regions. Celina has a hands on approach to change on an international and local level. She is a well known figure of the specialty coffee industry and is an advocate not only for women but woman in colour within the industry.

Joanna Alm is the managing director of Drop Coffee Roasters in Stockholm, Sweden, and a large part of her day-to-day job is being a head roaster and green coffee buyer for the company. Joanna was born in Dalarna, in Northern Sweden, but started working in specialty coffee in Oslo, Norway a decade ago. She has worked at Drop Coffee since 2010, where she started as a barista and later became a part owner. Joanna Alm’s has done phenomenally well in the World Coffee Roasting Championship: placing third in 2014, second in 2015 and fourth in 2016.

Kyle Ramage is the 2017 United States Barista Champion and was a finalist and finished sixth in the World Barista Championships held in Seoul, South Korea. Kyle worked in Durham at Mahlkönig USA, a subsidiary of a German maker of high-end commercial coffee grinders that is based in an office park next to Bennett Place State Historic Site. Last year’s winner was Lem Butler, a Durham-based coffee roaster at Counter Culture Coffee. Butler coached Ramage throughout the process. Ramage is the first winner to come from outside a coffeeshop or roastery, but he spent years behind the coffee bar.

Originally from Mississippi, the 29-year-old moved to the area to study theology at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary and began working at Jubala Coffee, a shop in Raleigh, while he was in school. Butler, the former U.S. champion, first met Ramage at Jubala, when he was the Counter Culture customer support representative for the cafe. Kyle and Lem recently purchased Back Alley Coffee Roasters in Wake Forest, North Carolina.

Lem Butler, the 2106 U.S. Barista Champion. Former head of wholesale customer support at Counter Culture Coffee. Lem along with Kyle Ramage, the 2017 US Barista Champion, are the owners of Black and White Roasters, Black & White Roasters in Wake Forest, North Carolina.