Staff

Bill Harris, founding president Cooperative Coffees as well as Café Campesino, a Fair Trade roaster based in Americus, Georgia.  Both businesses share the mission of helping disadvantaged farmers receive a fair price for their product through mutually beneficial, long-term trade partnerships.  Before “fair-trade enlightenment,” Bill was the president of a food distribution company, a trust portfolio manager, and a business consultant.  He currently serves on the Board and as treasurer of the Fair Trade Federation and on  the Board of Directors of Glover Foodservice.

Monika Firl, Cooperative Coffee’s producer relations manager,
has worked with a variety of locally based development projects, while living in Central America and Mexico from 1991 to 2000. Her experiences range from founding and directing a center in San Salvador for the exchange of information on alternative technology, to direct participation in technical training and marketing development with coffee producers’ cooperatives in Chiapas— including Mut Vitz and Maya Vinic from whom Cooperative Coffees maintains a relationship.  From 1996 to 2000 she coordinated a regional program within the Campesino a Campesino network for information exchange on production practices for organic coffee and viable market alternatives among farmers from Chiapas and the rest of Central America.

Abby Welch, Cooperative Coffees's Office Manager, is a honor graduate from Georgia Southwestern State University. She acquired her Bachelor of Business Administration in Accounting in 2006. She manages the daily office tasks for Cooperative Coffees here in Americus, GA.  She is responsible for the outbound green bean ordering, invoicing, accounting, and other various areas.

Chelsea Carter recently joined Cooperative Coffees in Americus. She is a 2006 honor graduate from Georgia Southwestern State University, where she received a Bachelor of Arts in English and Professional Writing. She has traveled to many places around the world, including Egypt, Norway, England, France, Switzerland, and Costa Rica. She is responsible for the inbound green coffee processing and certification and compliance.

Geneviève Paquette recently joined the Cooperative Coffees office in Montreal, Canada. She will soon complete her Bachelor of Arts in Economics and International Development at McGill University. After a 6-month internship with Cooperative Coffees she says, "I quickly became enchanted with objectives and social engagement that Cooperative Coffees represents as a dynamic member of the Fair Trade family... and accepted with great enthusiasm the offer to stay on a part-time staff, assisting Monika with the work around producer relations."

Genevieve now fulfills a myriad of tasks ranging from keeping internal coffee tracking up to date, communicating with producer organizations in English, Spanish and/or French to confirm the reception and signature of contracts, coffee shipping dates, and seemingly inevitable paper chase for a growing list of necessary documents associated with each lot of coffee, before passing the baton over to the Americus office for the actual landing of the coffee. She is also a frequent multi-lingual researcher and contributor to our public website.

Sylvie Trottier has been working at the Montreal office of Cooperative Coffees since  2006.  She has a Bachelor's in Environmental Studies with a minor in International Development from McGill University.  Since then, she has been working at Cooperative Coffees part time, completed an internship with Équiterre, a local NGO that raises awareness about fair trade and environmental living, and worked on her Spanish during a 10week international solidarity internship in the Dominican Republic.  She is responsible for hunting after both producers and roasters to receive all the documents needed to fulfill inbound coffee procedures and commitments.  She is also in charge of updating the website, and  happily helping out wherever else is needed.