The Coffee Equity Lab was launched in 2020 at The Wond’ry at Vanderbilt University with the specific goal to “harness the power of collaboration and systems change frameworks to catalyze innovation and transformation for a more equitable and sustainable coffee sector for all.” The Center quickly became a sponsoring entity for this program as well as provide mentorship to those participating in the program.

One element of the program is the Coffee Equity Design Challenge (CEDC). “The goal of the challenge was to create a visual representation of key equity and sustainability issues in the coffee sector. Inspired by the reach of the specialty coffee flavor wheel, the CEDC challenged students to prototype a coffee sustainability educational tool that could help standardize understandings of pressing social, economic, and environmental sustainability challenges across the coffee value chain.” In 2021, as part of this challenge, The Center had the amazing opportunity to give a key lecture on economic sustainability in the coffee sector and mentor one of the winning teams (Team Gesha) as they developed a solution for communicating about sustainability issues facing our industry. All the teams did an amazing work tackling the issue of communicating the sustainability challenges in the coffee to consumers. Check out the video links below to hear from the two winning teams.