SCA USA Business Chats: Effective Networking

Watch the SCA USA Business Chat: Effective Networking, recorded on Zoom, Thursday, March 3, 12pm EST / 9am PST.

Event Description: Jeanine Niyonzima-Aroian will hosts discussion with industry experts, Aaryn Pratt, Chief People Officer at Peet’s Coffee, Brooke Gray, Director of People at Equator Coffees and Eli Salomon, CEO Ground Control Coffee featuring insider insights, tips, and tricks for effective networking in today’s coffee culture. Participants will learn new approaches for networking both inside their company and the broader coffee community and why mastering this skill is more important than ever for their long-term career growth.

Panel Bios & Additional Resources:

Jeanine Niyonzima-Aroian

Host

Founder of JNP Coffee and Burundi Friends International, Jeanine Niyonzima-Aroian is a dedicated supporter and advocate for the empowerment of women coffee farmers in her native Burundi, East Africa. Farmers produce high-scoring specialty coffee beans, earn premiums from JNP Coffee’s global sales and gain financial literacy. With an MBA from Northwestern University’s Kellogg School and a 20-plus-year international career, she entered the coffee industry in 2012. Now a licensed Q. grader and Q. processor, Level 1, Jeanine is an elected SCA board member and community coordinator for the U.S. Chapter.

JNP Coffee | @jnpcoffee

Eli Salomon

Panelist

Eli is co-founder and CEO of Voga Coffee, makers of the Ground Control batch brewer. He founded his first coffee business out of his law school dorm room in 2006. Eli is a Licensed Q Grader (Arabica) and launched two products that were awarded Best New Product (Commercial) from the SCA.

Ground Control Coffee | groundcontrol.coffee

Aaryn Pratt

Panelist

Aaryn Pratt is SVP and Chief People Officer for Peet’s Coffee, The Original Craft Coffee and Specialty Roaster, based in the San Francisco Bay Area. Aaryn is responsible for leading Peet’s people strategy and employee experience including recruiting, DEIB, employee engagement, talent management, total rewards, HR operations and employee communications.

Aaryn brings more than 20 years experience in human resources, talent and change management to her role. Prior to joining Peet’s in May, Aaryn spent 11 years in Specialty Retail at Gap Inc., across the family of brands and functions, most recently as Head of People & Culture for Banana Republic Global and Janie and Jack brands. Prior to Gap Inc., Aaryn was a strategy and change consultant holding various leadership and consulting roles with Fortune 500 companies across digital, retail, oil & gas, and technology industries and led HR for Healthline, a digital health and media company.

Aaryn is a native of Sonoma County where she was raised in foster care, is a first-generation college graduate and has an M.S. in Organization Development from Pepperdine University. In addition, to spending time with her husband and their three daughters (8th, 7th and 2nd grades), Aaryn actively gives back to her community and the village that raised her. She’s been a Board Member for Marin Advocates for Children, Board President of the Bay Area Development Network, a Girl Scout Troop leader, and at Gap was executive sponsor for the LatinX networking group, a founding member of the Color Proud Council, and winner of the prestigious Gap Inc. Founders award for her work with foster children.
Aaryn brings a passion for integrating business strategies and people engagement to drive results, whether it’s coaching leaders as a trusted thought partner, building talent practices that scale businesses, or developing agile leaders. During her career, Aaryn has earned the reputation as a trusted architect, risk taker and a builder of high-performing teams.
About Peet’s Coffee

Founded in Berkeley, California in 1966 by Alfred Peet, the “Big Bang of coffee,” Peet's Coffee introduced an artisan movement by sourcing the world’s best beans, hand-roasting in small batches, and crafting beverages by hand. With rich, complex, superior quality roasts unlike anything Americans ever tasted before, Peet’s influenced generations of coffee entrepreneurs and connoisseurs. Today, Peet’s is uncompromisingly dedicated to its founding tenets and asserts strict standards of quality, freshness, and service in every location. All this delivered by a diverse team of individuals who are masters of their craft. Peet's operates from the world’s first LEED® Gold certified roastery and runs the only nationwide direct store sales and distribution system for coffee, growing its business through grocery, e-commerce, retail and away-from-home channels throughout the US. Peet’s US: 215 Retail Locations, 135 Licensed locations, Sold in over 14,000 Stores in the United States, 4000+ employees. Portfolio Brands: Stumptown Coffee, Intelligentsia, Mighty Leaf Tea and expanding our retail footprint in China.

Peet's Coffee | peets.com

Brooke Gray

Panelist

Brooke received her Bachelor of Arts in Latin American Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, with emphasis in agrarian reform and land economics. While working towards her bachelor she lived, worked and studied throughout the Americas and Europe – primarily with non-profit NGOs and small, grass roots cooperatives focused on organic farming, agriculture and women’s artisan cooperatives.

After graduation Brooke and her then boyfriend now husband Kyle moved from the Berkeley Hills to the Alamo Square neighborhood in San Francisco. Brooke divided her time between non-profits and restaurants. As the manager of a small Spanish language school in Pacific Heights she worked second and third jobs in restaurants across the city. In her spare time she worked as the Event Coordinator for the Bay Area International Latino Film Festival for a number of years. Brooke thrived in the restaurant industry. Her appreciation for the kitchen ran deep. Her love of the restaurant culture felt natural. It was only a matter of time for her to devote the majority of her professional life to hospitality.

As a native Marin County, California, Brooke brings an intimate knowledge of the San Francisco Bay Area to her work. Besides her extensive knowledge of food and beverage indigenous to the region, Brooke has traveled to over 52 countries, and these experiences influence everything she does from her recruitment strategies; diversity, equity and inclusion programming and initiatives; people management and employee engagement; onboarding and training; and in past positions: from property design to culinary innovation to carefully curated events and customer/employee experiences. Gray spent a year studying at La Universidad de Chile in Santiago, Chile, and a year living and working in Salvador da Bahia, Brazil, and is fluent in both Spanish and Portuguese.

As the Director of People for Equator Coffees, Brooke is responsible for talent and acquisitions, recruitment and retention strategies, the onboarding and training experience as well as working in teams on DEI initiatives and programming, company culture and employee engagement and development.

Active on several non-profit Boards in the Bay Area, Gray held the Vice Chair position on the Board for the Agricultural Institute of Marin (managing seven Bay Area Farmers’ Markets) for over six years. Her commitment to community means you will often find her talking with local farmers, ranchers, fishermen and other land inspired artisanal makers. Sharing her ideas and integrating theirs into her own business acumen is a reciprocal collaborative relationship she treasures and nourishes continually.

Brooke has managed and directed operations for a number of successful, entrepreneurial Hospitality projects in the Bay Area over the past 20 years including but not limited to: Chief Creative and Operations Officer of Dillon Beach Resort and Brewsters Beer Garden; Managing Partner of Blue Barn Gourmet; Director of Sales, Marketing & Hotel Operations of Nick’s Cove & Cottages in West Marin County; Sales Manager at The Meritage Resort in Napa; and Restaurant Manager at the popular San Francisco restaurants Betelnut Pejiu Wu, Farallon and Fog City Diner. Prior to Gray’s hotel and restaurant management positions, Brooke formerly worked with several educational tour companies organizing, creating and leading group travel in Europe and Latin America.

Equator Coffees | equatorcoffees.com