Every year, the Specialty Coffee Association (SCA) hosts a conference called Sensory Summit, where coffee folks come together and explore wild ideas about taste. I went one year, back when I was the online editor for Barista Magazine, and tasted some of the most bizarre, unexpected, and wonderful things I’ve ever had.

For this year’s conference, the SCA announced that it would give out a certain number of scholarships so a handful of people could attend the virtual event for free. And instead of making folks apply for the program, they were entered into a lottery, and scholarships were doled out randomly.

I wanted to learn more—not just about this idea, but about the person behind it. And that’s Mansi Chokshi. She’s the regional community director for the SCA, and has been with the organization since it was known as the Speciality Coffee Association of America, or SCAA—back before the American chapter merged with its European counterpart.

In this episode, we talk about building community within what has become coffee’s biggest trade organization. When Mansi started at the SCA, she had no coffee experience, but was determined to learn what exactly coffee people needed.

And learn she did. One the very first things she did when she joined was to sit down with members and ask, “What do you need from us? What do you need from a trade organization?” She continues to ask these questions, heralding new scholarship programs and sitting on the board of the International Women’s Coffee Alliance (IWCA). Even this far into her tenure, she’s still always asking questions, and making sure she’s listening to the communities she’s working for.

I recorded this episode just a few days before my conversation with Chris McAuley of getchusomegear, and the two discussions address serendipitously similar topics. Both Chris and Mansi hit on themes of reciprocity—that’s one of the reasons Mansi pushed to eliminate the application process for Sensory Summit scholarships—and both are attuned to the needs of those around them. As Mansi points out, community development doesn’t mean much if the change isn’t driven by and for the communities themselves. What makes so many of the initiatives that Mansi has launched so impactful—like the Leadership Equity and Diversity (LEAD) Scholarship, which gives five coffee professionals two years’ worth of mentoring and paid professional development—is that she’s always ready to adapt.

Just a quick note: We had a few issues with recording this episode, and did so entirely on our phones, so there are some parts that sound a little shuffly. We cleaned up most of the weird sounds, but just a heads up if you hear some background noises. Here’s Mansi.