CQI CEO Speaks Candidly About Coffee, Community, and 2026 Goals
Dubai – Ali Alzakary
2025 was a year of transformation and challenge for the Coffee Quality Institute (CQI). From transitioning its flagship program, the Q, to SCA, to navigating the sudden loss of USAID funding—the largest donor in CQI’s history—CEO Michael Sheridan reflects on how these shifts shaped the organization’s mission and approach. Amid historic market volatility, Sheridan discusses the importance of recommitting to CQI’s goal of supporting coffee producers, promoting measurable impact for farmers—especially women—and evolving coffee education to meet the demands of a rapidly changing industry. He also shares insights from global conversations on the biggest concerns in the coffee community, including risk reduction, community engagement, and strategies to create meaningful impact.
Join us in this valuable interview to hear directly from Michael Sheridan about CQI’s vision for 2026 and beyond.
- What did 2025 teach you, and how is that changing your approach for 2026?
Last year was a really consequential one for CQI. We transitioned our biggest program, the Q, to SCA against the backdrop of the shuttering of USAID, which was the biggest source of public funding for development work in coffee communities and the largest donor in CQI’s history. At the same time, the coffee market was experiencing the largest and most sustained rally anyone has ever seen, which caused lots of disruption in the market and undid years of work on trading relationships based on mutual commitment to quality.
We understood in 2025 that we were entering a new phase in CQI’s work, and that effectively advancing our mission in this new context would require thinking carefully about CQI’s role in the coffee ecosystem and listening carefully to members of the community. We are still in this process of reflection and consultation, but two things are clear.
First, we are recommitting to our mission: we are focused on market-based support for coffee producers. Second, we know we can’t get there alone. We know that the changes we introduced last year were disruptive in our community, and we know we need to build that community to be successful. We are working to create new approaches for collaboration with individuals and coffee companies, and expect to be in a position to talk more about those in the coming weeks.
- How do you know you’re truly making a difference for farmers, especially women?
One of the things I love about this work is how measurable it can be. I got my start in coffee working for an international development agency where many of my peers were working on programs that measured change over very long time horizons. Their work in peacebuilding, gender equity, and social change was as hard to measure as it was important. In contrast, I was always grateful that my work to support coffee producers had annual metrics tied to the coffee cycle: production, average price, gross coffee income, etc.
While some of the structural changes we want to be part of at CQI related to equitable value distribution may require long-term commitment, every year brings an opportunity to check in on how well we are advancing our mission to improve the quality of coffee and the lives of the people who produce it. The mechanism that links those two elements of our mission (one, the improvement of quality, and the other, improvement of lives) is the market. Buyers can convert improvements in quality into improvements in seller livelihoods every coffee cycle by increasing rewards (e.g., premium prices, increased purchase volume, etc.), reducing risks (e.g., longer-term commitments, multi-grade purchases, etc.), or both. This is part of the reason we will be more intentional about engagment with industry parters in 2026 and beyond — to try to ensure quality improvements translate into improvements in the lived realities of the people who grow our coffee.
Women play a prominent role in our thinking about impact. As you may know, CQI has a long history of promoting women’s participation in the benefits generated by coffee. Long before my time, visionary leaders at CQI created the Partnership for Gender Equity, which evolved into an independent organization called Equal Origins that is doing groundbreaking work in this space. We have consistently supported women’s participation over the years, and investment in educational activities by and for women has been a throughline in our project investments over the past two years. I expect more of the same in 2026, which has been designated the International Year of the Woman Farmer by the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization.
- How must coffee education evolve to stay relevant right now?
I think coffee education has never been more necessary. There has been so much disruption in recent years — accelerated climate change, historic market volatility, rapidly changing market preferences, sharp changes in policy, and public disinvestment in coffee communities have all created the need for recalibrating traditional approaches, and in many cases that means education to meet new challenges and seize new opportunities.
At CQI, we are thinking hard about the what, how, and who of our educational work. I think the “what” is the relevance question you ask: what are the specific topics that will position producers and other supply stream actors to respond effectively to changes in the operating environment? In a global marketplace in which processing is as important as it has been in our lifetimes, we see lots of opportunities to deliver new and improved content through our Post-Harvest Processing Program that is timely and relevant. We are also eyeing new tools and content relevant to coffee quality beyond post-harvest processing that aim to address pain points that have surfaced in our conversations over the past few months.
Additionally, we are exploring the “how,” seeking ways to deliver educational content that are efficient and accessible. In some cases, that will likely mean creating new content for digital delivery or digitalizing existing analog content. In other cases, it will mean delivering in-person education in shorter-form classes that are not designed to lead to certification but directly to field-level impact through the adoption of good practices.
Finally, we are acutely aware that we need to evolve the “who” and certify more instructors who live and work in the places where coffee is grown. Localising coffee education will be a key to unlocking access.
- From your global talks, what’s the no. 1 concern you’re hearing from the community?
We have spent the last few months conferring with leaders from the coffee sector to inform the next phase of CQI’s work — producers, processors, traders, roasters, educators, and others. The one thing that seemed to be on everyone’s mind was risk — market risk, price risk, production risk, risk related to quality, etc. As we think about how we can best support coffee producers and the entire coffee community in 2026 and beyond, we find ourselves thinking a lot about how we can partner with actors all along the supply stream to help reduce risk, most especially the smallholder producers who are generally least equipped to bear it. In a market where there is a lot of attention paid to way quality improvement can increase the rewards and premiums growers earn, there may be less appreciation for a focus on risk reduction, but it can help us deliver on our mission to improve the lives of producers every bit as much as increased rewards.
- At the end of 2026 — what does a “win” look like for CQI?
Well, I think part of the answer is related to your question above about measuring our impact — the outcomes of the work will speak for themselves. But I think an important part of the answer is also related to the process — how effective we are at building community engagement in our work will go a long way to defining how successful we can be. I know that if we can manage to enlist the best of the CQI community in this effort with us, we are going to create real opportunity for producers while addressing pain points in the industry. That sounds like success to me!
