Update for October 14: The SCA’s 2020 slate of board nominees has been announced, and includes no write-in candidates. Read Candice Madison’s public statement on the matter here.
A little breaking news here on a late September Friday in 2020 as Candice Madison has announced her candidacy for the Specialty Coffee Association Board. Madison joins a slate of candidates announced earlier this month, but first, she’s seeking signatures from SCA members to qualify for the position under a process called “Nominate by Petition.”
Here are more details from today’s announcement via Madison’s Instagram:
I have decided WITH ONLY 6 DAYS LEFT(!) to take the encouragement and run for a place on the SCA Board and need 100 signatures! I haven’t got much time, but I have you. And you, Dear Coffee Peeps, have me, always.
My areas of expertise and passion are equity and education. Oh, and being different – I’m Carib, Arawak, Trinidadian, English, and American, I guess now. I’m Glocal (globally local!)!
I am determined to use all of my resources, talents, and time to ensure that the SCA is truly global in its outlook and outreach, regardless of gender, gender identity, and expression, age, sexual orientation, disability, physical appearance, body size, race, ethnicity, religion (or lack thereof), or technology options.
I am a passionate advocate for education – all education. I believe in democratizing resources and knowledge. I believe in structured and proven educational systems that create a vehicle for delivering exceptional, multi-faceted education and training to our global coffee community – everyone, no exceptions.
Candice Madison is the Director of Roasting at Royal Coffee in Oakland, California, and an accomplished career educator, coffee competition judge, industry ambassador, panelist and volunteer. She is also the inaugural Vice President of the Coffee Coalition for Racial Equity. We asked her more about her decision to run, and why her candidacy was announced today. “I’ve only got the six days left because my father just passed away,” Madison tells Sprudge. “Honestly I didn’t think I was going to do this but then I got so many calls from people.” (The SCA Board signature-gathering process typically runs a full 30 days for ‘nominate by petition’ candidates. Learn more about the SCA election process here. )
Encouraged by friends in the industry, Madison now has until September 30th at 11:59 PDT to gather enough votes to qualify for the SCA Board ballot. When asked why she was running for the board seat, Madison tells Sprudge, “It all has to do with the fact that it’s very easy to live in imposter syndrome, which I’ve done and continue to do. But it’s a disservice to the people who have helped me get this far in my career…and the SCA is needed now more than ever.”
“Right now I think members of the SCA are losing faith,” Madison continued, “because the SCA isn’t speaking for them. I want to make sure that being in the room means I can be vocal, shake the table, break the table, and call things out that are clearly unacceptable, or things need to be put in place. Right now there is some emphasis on areas of the supply chain, but it doesn’t yet feel to me that these emphases are even, and they should be.”
Madison views her candidacy as an opportunity to give back to coffee as an industry, and a growing community. “I think of the ‘younger’ generation coming in coffee, and the confidence and poise with which they use their voices, building grassroots organizations to serve their communities, their unapologetic activism for the world, the industry and themselves, and the way in which they will calm our injustice and speak truth to power, well wow! [I’ve] never seen it before in the industry from so many voices. It’s amazing.”
The nominate by position process is now open for SCA members through September 30th. Learn more here.
