Coffee Project NY Takes Its Women Roasters Scholarship to Colombia

When Chi Sum Ngai and Kaleena Teoh quit their jobs in 2015 to open a coffee shop in Manhattan’s East Village, they didn’t know they were building one of New York’s most influential coffee education programs. Nine years later, Coffee Project NY operates four locations, New York State’s only SCA Premier Training Campus, and a roastery — and the two co-founders have their sights set on dismantling one of specialty coffee’s most persistent inequities.

The Women Coffee Roasters Scholarship, now entering its fifth year, is heading to Medellín, Colombia for September 2026. Six female-identifying coffee professionals will travel to one of the world’s great coffee-producing cities to complete their SCA Roasting Foundation certification — all expenses covered.

Why the Move Matters

The scholarship has historically taken place at Coffee Project NY’s Long Island City training facility. Moving it to Colombia isn’t just a change of scenery. It’s a calculated effort to expand who can apply.

Flying to New York for a week of roasting education is expensive. Visa applications, international flights, lodging, time away from work — the barriers add up fast. By holding the program in Colombia, Coffee Project NY removes some of those obstacles for applicants across Central and South America, where much of the world’s coffee is grown but where opportunities to learn roasting often remain scarce.

Applications open March 1 and close March 31. Recipients will be announced in April.

The Problem the Scholarship Addresses

The numbers are bleak. Currently, 24.2% of coffee roasters are female. No woman has ever won the World Coffee Roasting Championship. It took 19 years before a woman won the World Barista Championship.

The gap isn’t about capability. It’s about access. Women have historically faced institutional barriers to roasteries and cupping rooms — spaces guarded by machismo workplace culture and unspoken assumptions about who belongs there. The pioneering specialty coffee buyer Erna Knutsen, who coined the term “specialty coffee” itself, had to fight male colleagues just to participate in cuppings.

Coffee consultant Jodi Wieser puts it plainly: “Gender biases, lack of support for learning and training, and the demanding nature of roasting, which includes long hours and intense physical labour” continue to limit female participation. The fix isn’t just encouragement. It’s resources.

What the Scholarship Provides

Each of the six recipients receives:

• Full SCA Roasting Foundation course, taught by Chi Sum Ngai
• Travel and accommodations in Medellín
• Official SCA certification upon passing exams
• Entry into a network of past scholarship recipients

The Roasting Foundation course covers first crack, heat transfer, air flow, development time, and the chemistry that turns green coffee into something worth drinking. It’s the kind of knowledge that opens doors — or at least gives aspiring roasters the credentials to demand that doors open.

Coffee Project NY’s Approach

Ngai and Teoh built Coffee Project NY with diversity in mind. A majority of their managerial team consists of women. “We are probably one of the most diverse coffee teams in New York,” they’ve said.

When they pursued their own SCA trainer certifications, they had to fly to Florida — no training campus existed in New York. “It occurred to us that there is no SCA Premier Training Campus in New York,” Teoh recalled. “We basically wanted to fill in that gap and create a learning space for all.”

That mentality — seeing what’s missing and building it — now extends to roasting education across borders. The Colombia move signals that the scholarship isn’t a local initiative anymore. It’s a regional one, with potential to grow further.

Why This Matters

Women perform an estimated 70% of the physical labor on coffee farms globally. They pick the cherries, sort the defects, process the beans. Yet women own only 20% of coffee farms and earn 40% less revenue than male farmers.

Moving up the value chain — from farming to processing to roasting to retail — offers a path out of this disparity. Every woman trained as a roaster is one more person who understands not just how coffee grows, but how it gains value after harvest.

Six scholarships per year won’t close an industry-wide gap. But Coffee Project NY isn’t the only organization pushing in this direction. The Kore Directive, Strong Women of Coffee, and the International Women’s Coffee Alliance are all working similar angles. What Coffee Project NY brings is infrastructure: a Premier Training Campus, certified instructors, and now a commitment to take that training where it’s needed most.

Applications open March 1 at coffeeprojectny.com.