Exploring the Intrinsic - Over the past 30 years, the concurrent internet-led waves of coffee and globalization have had a profound impact on our coffee consumption habits. The coffee market has increased by more than 60% over the past two decades, driven by an increase in domestic consumption and emerging markets, leading our preferences to not only shift, but fragment.

This year's Re:co Symposium program revisits our basic assumptions about specialty coffee and its consumers through the lens of increasing fragmentation and the accompanying opportunities it brings to redress market dynamics: What is specialty coffee? Who is consuming it, and how? What attributes are becoming increasingly valuable?

Kim Elena Ionescu

Kim Elena Ionescu is the Chief Sustainability and Knowledge Development Officer for the Specialty Coffee Association (SCA), where she develops strategy and leads action on behalf of coffee-centric businesses and organizations both large and small in the United States, Europe, and beyond to tackle the challenges coffee faces now and in the future.

Prior to joining the association, Kim spent a decade buying coffee and creating and directing sustainability at Counter Culture Coffee in North Carolina, where she resides with her husband and two daughters. And although these days she is more likely to be found behind desks and podiums than cupping tables and espresso machines, Kim believes that innovation and collaboration across the coffee value chain are critical for our community to thrive.