Ildi Revi

Expertise: Q-grader, eduction, green coffee buying, health benefits of coffee

Coffee insight: Decaf coffee still contains a plethora of minerals and antioxidants, and drinking decaf has been linked to lower risks of developing type-2 diabetes, liver disease, and colorectal cancer.

Fun fact: Ildi’s career in coffee started when she met her husband, a coffee farmer, in Zimbabwe.

After college, Ildi took a teaching job in Zimbabwe, where she was introduced to Nobel Prizing winning author Doris Lessing. Lessing’s son, John, owned a coffee farm, and Ildi and he became close friends but eventually lost touch. When Ildi was back in Africa years later, working in Mozambique, she drove out to check on John, who she learned had passed away.

During her visit, she met John’s neighbor, another coffee farmer, who Ildi describes as a “cute young guy who was skeet shooting.” She says, “And that was the beginning of falling in love with this coffee farmer. We ended up getting married and having two kids and living in Zimbabwe on a coffee farm for the next decade.”

As Chief Coffee Officer at Purity Coffee, a roasting company focused on creating specialty-grade coffees that offer maximum health benefits by prioritizing health in every choice they make, Ildi is not only a green coffee buyer, she researches designs education initiatives about the health benefits of coffee.

Ildi jokes that when she first met Purity’s founder and CEO, Andrew Salisbury, who was developing coffee specifically design for health purpose, she thought he “was a little kooky,” but she soon realized that he was taking a truly innovative, research-based approach to coffee. “People don’t drink it for health purposes,” Ildi says, but “it turns out coffee is very good for you.”

Ildi says that she finds purpose in knowing that Purity’s product has a ripple effect that can change the world for the better.

“If I have done my core work making the best, healthiest cup of coffee,” she explains, “and you start your day [with it] and [do] all the good work you’re going to do and then you touch all those people, and then all of those people touch other people, suddenly the energy that’s in that one cup of coffee gets transferred to you [and the things you do.]”

“I love decaf coffee drinkers,” she says. “Because they are drinking coffee because they love it, not for the buzz. Because they love the flavor. Because they love coffee.” She says decaf is a great way for coffee lovers who are sensitive to caffeine to still get the health benefits of their favorite drink, and she’s proud that Purity has created “the most amazing decaf to honor those decaf drinkers.”

Decaffeinated coffee still contains a plethora of minerals and antioxidants, and drinking decaf has been linked to a lower risk of developing type-2 diabetes, liver disease, and colorectal cancer.

Ildi believes there’s a real opportunity to pool research, knowledge, and resources from across disciplines, industries, and countries to develop healthful growing and production practices and create coffee that can truly transform the world’s health.

“We’ve studied every aspect we can,” she explains. “I work with a scientist in Brazil. We’re working with amazing coffee producers in Colombia, Nicaragua, and Honduras who have been all about coffee and health and organic production and regenerative farming years longer than it’s been a thing. … We can really laboratory test…to keep the unhealthy out and promote the better health compounds.”

She says Purity is lead by a guiding question with huge implications for coffee drinkers everywhere: “If we make every choice based on health, what is the healthiest coffee we can put out?”

Purity Coffee: puritycoffee.com