Issue link: http://read.dmtmag.com/i/658240
42 STiR tea & coffee industry international / Issue 2, 2016 (April/May) Tracy Allen, c.e.o of Brewed Behavior and president of the board of directors of the Specialty Coffee Association of America Board members and committee leaders from SCAA and SCAE who met at a recent Strategic Leadership Summit in Atlanta, Georgia. By Jenny Neill T he Specialty Coffee Association of America and the Specialty Coffee Associa- tion of Europe will soon present a member referendum to approve a merger, which if passed, will begin a years-long process of deeper alignment and opera- tional integration. No formal agreement to unify Specialty Coffee Association of America (SCAA) with Specialty Coffee Association of Europe (SCAE) has been reached. However, by the time you read this, the respective boards will have drafted a memorandum of un- derstanding and begun preparing for due diligence and developing the necessary mate- rial for a member referendum. This merger comes after years of cooperation and collaboration. You need look only to the respective mission and vision statements of both associations to see why unification makes sense. Words such as "quality," "excellence," "education," and "community" feature prominently in both. One other word emerged as a key impetus behind this effort from interviews with association members, board members, and staffers: sustainability. Paul Stack, now president of the SCAE board of directors, was the vice president of SCAE's board of directors when he gave a presentation titled "Collaboration: A Global View" at the first Re:Co Symposium in Gothenburg, Sweden. In it, he in- troduced the unification process: "Both boards have come together and agreed to a shared vision. That vision is to create an effective, dynamic, and authentic institution to give voice and substance to the possibilities of specialty coffee worldwide." Describing his view of the shared vision, Ric Rhinehart, executive director of SCAA, said, "By and large the only change in terms of visioning is to expand to [hav- ing] a more global stance than the regionally or nationally focused stance that each organization has today." How did the organizations get here? Why does this matter now? Unification of Specialty Coffee Associations