Talking Coffee and the Global Water Supply with Mariposa’s Amyie Kao

The Mariposa Coffee mobile bar

As consumers grow increasingly aware of coffee’s inherently global footprint, the local-ness of today’s micro roasters and indie cafes is a paradoxical concept — and it is often the smaller ones thinking the biggest.

Amyie Kao and her husband Daniel founded Mariposa Coffee, a micro roastery and coffee cart in Norman, Okla., 2009, and have since been growing the business to include 20-plus wholesale and grocery accounts throughout the state. Despite this decidedly local focus, they have never softened their approach to global issues. In partnership with OKC’s Water4

, the company last year funded the construction of a sustainable well in a Coffee of Excellence region in Rwanda, benefitting some 600 villagers.

Kao recently applied some of her combined knowledge of coffee and global water issues for a TEDx conference in Norman

. TEDx events are independently operated, but patterned after TED conference events (see our related coverage of the TED 2014 coffee service here). Here is Kao’s talk in full:

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