On Saturday, April 11th, Equator Coffees Co-Founder and Executive Chair, Helen Russell, delivered the keynote address at the International Women’s Coffee Alliance annual breakfast at World of Coffee in San Diego. The room, filled with 300+ IWCA chapter members, supporters, colleagues, and friends, represented people from every corner of the industry coming together over a shared passion for impact. Helen shared her story and vision of leadership, stewardship, and long-term responsibility in coffee. We’re honored to share her words below:
It is truly an honor to accept this invitation from the International Women’s Coffee Alliance - an incredible global coffee community of women strengthening the global coffee ecosystem through your leadership, and a shared purpose.
When IWCA invited me to speak, they asked me to reflect on values-driven sourcing, long-term relationships at origin, and what responsible leadership means in specialty coffee.
And as I thought about that, I realized I’ve been coming back to the same three ideas throughout my entire career — leadership, stewardship, and long-term responsibility.
One of the most inspiring changes I’ve seen over the past three decades is the rise of women in leadership across the entire global coffee value chain, which I refer to as the global coffee ecosystem.
One of the greatest lessons I’ve learned in coffee is that the people who understand coffee best are the people closest to the land.
Leadership in coffee is not defined when things are easy, It can only be defined when your values cost you something.
Stewardship is the understanding that we are not owners of our industry–we are its caretakers.
Our responsibility is to ensure that everyone who is a part of this global coffee ecosystem can build lives with dignity and opportunity.
Whether you are growing coffee, exporting it, roasting it or serving it - and everything in between-each of us is part of what makes this industry possible.
This is why “we are here” This is why the IWCA exists - every chapter exists to address a fundamental imbalance:
- We know - Women perform the majority of agricultural labor across the globe
- We know - Women are underrepresented in ownership, leadership, and investment
- We know - Women's contributions much too often are invisible — in pricing, in land rights, and in recognition
If we want to change outcomes, we must change who owns, who decides and who benefits. When you own something, you protect it differently, you grow it differently and you negotiate for it differently.
I’ve watched over the years the IWCA grow into a powerful global network — one that is extending its reach and deepening its impact across the global coffee ecosystem. And that is something that must be celebrated. You represent what leadership in action looks like.
In the early days, we didn’t think of ourselves as pioneers. We were entrepreneurs. We simply wanted to build something of our own — in an industry that was global and full of possibility. What we didn’t realize at the time was just how much we were about to challenge.
To keep us afloat I sold everything — espresso machines, brewers, water filtration, refrigeration, roasters…whatever it took to keep us going.
Brooke focused on the product. She built her blends one coffee at a time and became a self-taught roaster and taster — exceptional at both.
And Maureen — Brooke’s best friend, and for a long time our first and only employee — came in and built the processes that allowed us to operate and grow.
Looking back, we had all the essential ingredients — people, product, and process — even if we didn’t yet have the language for it.
- I focused on people, with a background in sales - I was determined to grow this business.
- Maureen was operationally and financially smart, she developed the processes — ensuring the coffee moved, the systems worked, and the business held together.
- Brooke was the product. The heart of Equator. Our North Star. She grounded us in what mattered most — sourcing with integrity, roasting exceptional coffee, and holding the highest standards.
Looking back, we weren’t trying to change the industry – we wanted jobs. We were just trying to build something that sustained us. And in doing that — we helped open doors.
Brooke and I started with espresso carts in the early 90’s, buying coffee from a local roaster. Anyone who works for me, knows this story.
Nobody would tell Brooke anything about the coffee. This was the era of “Master Roasters” and “Proprietary blends.” If you asked a roaster what was in their espresso blend they would say “What’s it to you? Why are you asking? It’s a blend. Central, South America, East Africa, Indonesia.”
Brooke wanted to know more. She wanted to know where the coffee came from, the elevation, who grew it. Were the children on the farm in school? What was the potassium in the soil? To do this, it was clear she had to source and roast her own coffee. Equator was born.
Brooke named the company Equator because that’s where coffee is grown, around the Equator. The Bengal Tigress became our symbol of a women owned business for her grace, rarity, and power.
Thinking back to 1995 – there were what? 5 women roasting coffee in the entire country? That is not exactly a crowded field. Now there are thousands of women roasting coffee globally.
In the early days women were still finding our way into leadership roles in an industry that had long been dominated by men. So we forged our own path.
Then something I noticed in my 50’s. Younger women were coming to work for us, because of who we are, what we had built. We didn’t know we were radical and leading edge.
Women came to me with stories about not being able to sell equipment because “only men sold coffee equipment”, women who were told they were too short to roast coffee. Women working at roasteries who were tasked with mail delivery and clean up.
Here is what I know for sure.
When values are embedded into structure they do not fade.
We made the decision in 2011 to become a Certified B Corporation. Not because it was easy — but because we wanted to be held accountable. For how we treat people, for how we care for the environment, and for the impact we have across the global coffee ecosystem.
Because values only matter if you are willing to measure them — and stand behind them. And over time, we’ve come to see B Corp as something more than a certification.
It’s a blueprint. A blueprint for how a company governs itself, how it makes decisions, and what it protects over time. Because as founders, we all care deeply about our intentions; the values we build a company on. Expansion of and protection of the original DNA that the three of us imbued into Equator.
Prior to becoming a B Corp what kept me up at night was “what happens to those values as Equator scales?” Being a B Corp creates a structure that will protect our legacy. It ensures that the company continues to consider people, community, and the environment — not just profit —long after I personally step back.
In that way, being a B Corp doesn’t just guide how we operate. It is a financial discipline and a moral decision. Because the reality is — as Equator grows, founders are no longer in every decision. So you need a system, a structure, a way to ensure that your intentions endure.
It’s the testing of your values that show how truly embedded they are. If this was easy, everyone would do this. It’s a commitment.
If you are in business long enough there will always be bumps in the road.
In 2013 our largest wholesale client was purchased by a large coffee roaster. Which meant, with one phone call we lost a large portion of our business. This shook us up, to say the least, but it kickstarted us to finally open our own cafe. A business channel that wouldn’t disappear with one phone call.
Through the transition and because of our relationship with that customer. We found a place to sell that coffee, we honored all of our green coffee contracts and kept all our team employed. Today we have 12 cafes. We took that speed bump and turned it into what’s now a substantial part of our business.
We kept working, slow and steady growth. We added more wholesale, and we opened a new cafe each year. We moved into a new headquarters with space for an actual marketing team. We put a deposit down on a larger roaster, and started construction on a flagship cafe in LA. This was the winter of 2020.
Covid hits. Cafes are closed. Offices are closed. We scrambled, as always, to protect our people. How could we run our cafes safely? How could we keep everyone working but safe? We made hard decisions, but again, brought it back to our values. We asked many key team members to go part time and take the pay cut. Our leadership team took a substantial pay reduction so we could keep everyone’s health insurance fully active and intact.
Again we found ways to grow from this crisis. We had to sell our coffee! We knew our farm partners were struggling just as much as we were, so we really focused on getting coffee in the hands of people now working from home. We pushed out coffee into more grocery stores. Again, a hard pivot, that turned into a valuable part of our business.
Economic downturns, market shifts, pandemic, tariffs. There are times when it might have been easier to buy cheaper coffee, pay people less, cut our certifications. We didn’t compromise on our values. We didn’t lose our heart.
Business isn’t “just business” when it’s coffee. “Leadership is defined when your values cost you something.' We were tested.
As if building a sustainable coffee roasting company wasn’t challenging enough, in 2008 we decided to buy a coffee farm. At the time, we had no idea what it would ask of us—financially or emotionally.
We purchased an unplanted, high-elevation farm at 2,130 meters in Nueva Suiza, Panama, alongside coffee expert Willem Boot and his wife, Catherine.
From the very beginning, Brooke and I approached owning a coffee farm as an experiment: could we grow the best coffee in the world. We planted Geisha which had not been planted at this altitude. We also planted thousands of shade trees, we mapped out the farm’s microclimates, and committed ourselves to learning season by season.
But the real education wasn’t just agricultural or micro-climates, it was human.
Sophia is incredibly remote and hard to reach given the elevation and the condition of the roads at that time. It became clear that if we wanted to succeed we needed to build housing to attract employees.
We visited coffee farms across Panama, studied their worker housing, and came back with what we believed were thoughtful, well-informed architectural plans. We gathered everyone outside, sitting in the grass, to walk through the new campamento plans together.
The men spoke first: questions about room size, and the size of the locks for the doors. The women were quiet. So I asked them to come sit closer and directly asked them what they wanted.
They wanted a larger kitchen, a community space —a place where they could cook, care for their children, and work side by side. Can you guess who’s input we took? We had the women choose everything, even the paint colors.
In that moment, something shifted—The women felt seen, their voices mattered. This Dueña had their backs!
Over 18 years has passed, Sophia has succeeded beyond anything we could have dreamed. Our coffees have earned recognition at Best of Panama, Finca Sophia is now world renowned. Still we continue to reinvest—sharing the success, improving infrastructure, and deepening our commitment to the land and the people who care for it.
And now, at the very top of the farm, another dream has been realized Brooke and I built a casita—we can now welcome people from around the world to experience Sophia up close.
The best things in coffee don’t happen quickly.
Masterpieces take time – they only happen through stewardship and action.
We all remember when we first fell in love with coffee—the beauty, the ritual, the taste. It’s tangible. You can hold it, smell it, share it.And then something shifts. You meet the people behind it—extraordinary women and men—and suddenly you care deeply about who is picking and processing that coffee. Then you go a step further… and you find yourself caring about the soil.
When we first stepped onto the farm, it had been used for cattle and industrial vegetable farming. The soil was compacted, depleted—lifeless. Farms —and businesses—are living systems. They require care, attention, and love. They evolve over time, and they reflect the intention you put into them.
It happens through long-term relationships — with the land, and with the people who care for it alongside you. Leave it better than how you found it — that will be my epitaph, and our legacy.
The future of coffee will be shaped by three defining forces: Climate. Gender Equity. And Regenerative Agriculture.
Those who are closest to the soil know that the soil is changing. Climate is reshaping where and how coffee can grow. And producers at origin are living that reality every single day.
Regenerative practices matter. Innovations like biochar, which help restore soil health, will help build resilience for the future. We are experimenting with biochar right now on Sophia. Who knew this urban kid would care so much about dirt! I literally grew up with a concrete back yard.
This is where women play a defining role. Agriculture, like business, can't simply be extractive. We must return to the land more than we extract. We must dig into our caretaker tendencies to create better systems. Women are not just the future of coffee—we have always been its heart. We have shaped it, carried it, and we continue to shape it today.
What’s at stake is not just equity. It’s not just fairness, or representation, or doing the right thing. It is the resilience—and the future—of coffee itself. Because when women are excluded, coffee loses.
It loses knowledge. It loses leadership. It loses care at the most critical points. We do the work. But too often, we are left out of land ownership, pricing decisions, access to capital, and opportunities to lead. When women are included—fully, equitably—everything changes. Families are stronger. Communities are more stable. Land is better cared for.
When women thrive, everyone thrives.
When women do well we all do well. Empowerment isn't about giving women strength; it’s about acknowledging the strength that has been holding the world together all along. Women care for families, children, parents, and entire generations. We do this work quietly, powerfully, and persistently. But none of us holds this alone—we hold it together.
We have each other’s backs. We are connected across languages, cultures, and continents. Women tend to the details that matter—showing up, listening, stepping in when it counts.
And today—because of the work of the IWCA, because of each of you—we will continue to lead with purpose, build with intention, and invest not only our resources, but our belief in what is possible. And together, we will not just carry this work forward. We will redefine what coffee can become—so it truly serves, uplifts, and belongs to everyone.
I stand here today, not because this industry made space for me—but because women like me, the women who came before me and the women in this room refused to shrink. We stood in our power—so we could create space for others. So we could lift each other. So none of us would have to do this alone.
Keep refusing, keep going, and walk the road less traveled—together. So that the legacy you leave reflects not just your own courage, but the strength of all of us, combined.
One woman can change anything. Many women can change everything.
Thank you for having my back. I will forever have yours.
