Event Date
Join Jerry Baldwin, Starbucks co-founder and former president of Peet's Coffee, and William Ristenpart, UC Davis Coffee Center director and chemical engineering professor, for a conversation on coffee.
Doors open at 11:45 a.m. Space is very limited, and refreshments will be served as supplies last.
We have reached the maximum number of RSVPs for this event. Please email engineeringevents@ucdavis.edu to be placed on the waiting list. All requests will be added to the wait list in the order which they were received.
For questions, please contact engineeringevents@ucdavis.edu.
Speaker Bio
Jerry Baldwin is a co-founder of Starbucks and served as president from its inception in 1971 until the sale of the company in 1987. He purchased Peet's Coffee in 1984 and served as principal owner/president until it became public in 2001.
Baldwin served as a member of the Peet's Coffee & Tea board of directors throughout his tenure with the company, as well as during its public phase and more recent private equity phase prior to its merger into JDEPeets. He also serves as an advisor to the CEO.
A contributor on theatlantic.com, Baldwin also serves as a member of the board of TechnoServe a non-profit NGO working to alleviate poverty in Africa and Latin America. He has also served as Chairman and Trustee of Coffee Quality Institute and President and Director of Association Scientific Internationale du Café (ASIC).
Baldwin is a recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award of the Specialty Coffee Association of America, where he served as a director of the SCAA, and the the founding chairman of its Technical Standards Committee. He was also honored as Coffeeman of the Year for North America by Tea & Coffee Trade Journal, and is an honorary member of the Kilimanjaro Specialty Coffee Growers Association.
Aside from coffee, Baldwin was a founding director of Red Hook Ale Brewery and a founding contributor of the American Institute of Wine and Food. From 2000-2021, Baldwin farmed grapes and produced Zinfandel wines under the label of J.Baldwin Wines in Glen Ellen, California.
About the Coffee Center
The Coffee Center is a center of excellence in the UC Davis College of Engineering and the first academic research and teaching facility in the U.S. entirely dedicated to the study of coffee.
William Ristenpart and Tonya Kuhl, chemical engineering professors and co-directors of the center, first offered the popular undergraduate elective course, "The Design of Coffee," in 2013. The Coffee Lab in Everson Hall was established in 2015. The Coffee Center opened in 2024 and includes over 50 UC Davis experts from a range of academic fields. Explore the Coffee Center.