Board of Directors

Samantha Keane

Chair of the Board

Balzac Brothers & Company

Samantha Keane is a coffee trader at Balzac Brothers & Company, Inc. She received her BA in Art History, Criticism and Conservation at College of Charleston, before beginning her career in coffee in 2011 as a fourth generation Balzac at her family business, Balzac Brothers & Company, Inc. Bringing a new level of organization to the business, Samantha pioneered, and is in charge of, the CQI certified cupping lab at Balzac. Staying true to her family’s heritage she is also a member of the Green Coffee sales and sourcing team, working alongside her two brothers to further the Balzac family Coffee legacy. Samantha completed her Q-grader certification in 2014. She currently resides in Charleston, South Carolina.

Celina Schocken

Vice Chair of the Board

Advance Global Health

Celina is the Principal of Advance Global Health. She advises non-profits, companies, and foundations, including the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and Roche Diagnostics on program strategy, operations, and new technology adoption, with a focus on women’s health, on reproductive and sexual health, cervical cancer, TB/HIV, medical device introduction, telehealth and technology. She is also a co-founder and advisor to TogetHER for Health (USA), and an advisor to Praava Health (Bangladesh).

Previously, Celina was the CEO of Pink Ribbon Red Ribbon, a public private partnership focused on cervical and breast cancer. She was Director of Policy and Advocacy at Merck for Mothers, and Director of International Organizations at Population Services International (PSI) as well as a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.

Adam Pesce

Secretary of the Board

Reunion Coffee Roasters

Adam is the President of Reunion Coffee Roasters, a B Corp-certified specialty roaster and wholesaler, based in Oakville, Ontario. He is a long-standing member of the Specialty Coffee Association of America’s Sustainability Council, and along with Grounds for Health, he is also on the boards of the Coffee Association of Canada, Klink Coffee and the Central Canadian Barista Competition.

Adam has traveled around the world as a speaker on sustainability in coffee and extensively as a buyer in coffee-producing countries – developing direct trade relationships in Tanzania, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Papua New Guinea, Honduras, Costa Rica, Columbia and Brazil, as well as growing Reunion Island’s use of certified coffees to over 60% of all purchases. He is also a contributor to Huffington Past’s blog on the topic of coffee and sustainable agriculture.

Pam Kahl

Treasurer of the Board

The Lemelson Foundation

Pam Kahl is currently the Communications Officer at The Lemelson Foundation, a leading funder of invention in service of social and economic change. Kahl is a veteran communications leader with expertise in the corporate, nonprofit, and academic sectors. She began her career with more than 14 years at WE—formerly known as Waggener Edstrom Worldwide—where she served as senior vice president and helped oversee agency marketing, business development, and the Microsoft Global Account planning team. Ms. Kahl later led her own strategic communications consultancy, Verbal800 Communications, for nearly a decade, before serving as the Vice President for Development and Communications at Grounds for Health.

She holds a bachelor of arts in English from the University of California, Berkeley, as well as a master’s degree in digital media communications from the University of Washington. Ms. Kahl also earned a certificate in international development management and policy from the University of Washington Evans School of Public Affairs.

Lem Butler

Black & White Coffee Roasters

Lem is the Co-Founder of Black & White Coffee Roasters located in Raleigh, NC. Lem’s prior work experience includes West Coast Regional developer for Counter Culture Coffee in California and General Manager for The Daily Grind Espresso Café in Chapel Hill.  Lem was the First Black United States Barista Champion in 2016, Atlanta and the First Black World Barista Champ Finalist in 2016, Dublin, Ireland.

Yvette Martas

Mansfield Ob-GYN Associates

Yvette Martas, M.D., OB/GYN, and Adjunct Professor at the University of Connecticut has been a dedicated volunteer since 2006, when she first travelled to Mexico to support the nonprofit’s innovative program to prevent cervical cancer. Along with offering her time and talent as a clinician, Dr. Martas served as a member of the Grounds for Health Advisory Board, providing valuable insights into the world of women’s health in low-income countries.

Daniel C. Cox

Grounds for Health Co-Founder
Board Member Emeritus

Coffee Enterprises
Dan Cox & Associates

Dan co-founded Grounds for Health in 1996. He began his career 30 years ago in a small coffee roasting start-up company. In 1992 he founded Coffee Enterprises and later created its sister company Dan Cox & Associates. He is the owner and President of these separate companies in Burlington, Vermont. Dan served as President of the Speciality Coffee Association of America, Chairman Coffee Development Group, Chairman of Coffee Quality Institute, Chairman, Board of Advisors of Coffee Kids. He was awarded “ Man of the Year” Distinguished Service Award from the SCAA in 1992, is a published author, and been a featured speaker at numerous industry conferences in the US, Europe, Africa and Japan.

Robert Fulmer

Board Member Emeritus

Royal Coffee Inc.

In 1978, Robert Fulmer cofounded Royal Coffee and throughout the 1980s and ’90s, Royal helped to usher in the specialty coffee revolution on the West Coast, which has now spread to all corners of the globe. Fulmer was a charter member of the SCAA (now SCA) and was the co-chairman of the SCAA Fair Trade Task Force. Today, he sits on the board of directors of Grounds for Health and with the help of over 50 key employees, Fulmer continues to finance and guide Royal Coffee, including The Crown: Royal Coffee Lab & Tasting Room, warehouses in Seattle, Houston, Madison, Shanghai and the Royal Oakland, CA warehouse, a 90,000 square foot “candy store full of the best coffees from around the world.”

Linda Smithers

Chair of the Board

Daterra Coffee (retired)

Until 2019, Linda was head of North American Marketing for Daterra Coffee, based in Petroccino, Brazil. She also served on the Board of the Specialty Coffee Association of America, and was the founder of Susan’s Coffee & Tea, in Akron Ohio.

Kerri Goodman

Treasurer

CoffeeTalk Media

Kerri has more than 25 years in the coffee industry, is deeply involved in the non-profit world of coffee, and specializes in helping make significant and profitable connections between professionals in all facets of the industry from farmers and roasters to retailers and suppliers and everything in between. She is or has been, on the boards of Grounds for Health, Cup for Education, The International Women’s Coffee Alliance, The Songbird Foundation and The CoffeeTalk Foundation since 1996. She was also an integral part of the planning and implementing the IWCA El Salvador International Conference in 2011, the IWCA Promoting Possibilities African Women’s Conference in 2009 and the IWCA First International Women’s Conference in Costa Rica in 2008. Kerri completed CQI’s Women’s Leadership Program in Costa Rica, Nicaragua and Japan in 2005 and 2006.

In 2009 Kerri was honored by the SCAA with the Distinguished Publisher/Author Award, and in 2012 with both the SCAA Best New Product Award and the Coffee Fest Best New Product Award (New York) and finally Infusionsoft’s Industry Innovator Award in March 2012 for innovative marketing practices (this was a joint project with Ashley Prentice). Kerri started in coffee in 1993 as a co-author of Java U Business Basics, a 280-page guide to opening a coffee house operation.

Howard Weiss

Texpak Inc.

Howard is currently the General Manager of Texpak Inc., which exclusively represents Scolari Engineering S.p.A. in North America. For more than 20 years now, Howard has been visiting coffee companies across the U.S. and Canada, successfully selling Scolari coffee roasters, grinders, and ancillary equipment to several of the premier coffee companies in the industry.  Before his involvement with Scolari, Howard sold materials to the coffee and tea industry and before that he provided packaging engineering to Scott Paper, General Foods, and Tetley Inc.  For several years, Howard has helped to enable Grounds For Health to participate in the many of the coffee trade shows in held in the U.S., to further “spread the word” to the coffee community. He is a holder of both a Master’s Degree in Business Administration and a Bachelor of Science Degree in Engineering.

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