Serving People Serving Coffee Since 2005
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Dr. Tim Schilling Saving Coffee with Science By Sarah Allen MASTER PREPPING TO INTERVIEW SOMEONE like Dr. Tim Schilling is a serious undertaking—the guy has bios written for his bios. To read one of them is an academic enterprise: agronomist, researcher, expert in agribusiness and cooperative development. Director of some of the most ground- breaking coffee research projects of the century, including USAID PEARL (Partnership to Enhance Agriculture in Rwanda through Linkages) and SPREAD (Sustaining Partnerships to enhance Rural Enterprise and Agribusiness Development), taking Rwanda's devastated post-genocide coffee market to one that routinely fetches some of the best prices for specialty in the world. Even before those years Tim spent in Rwanda with his wife, Dr. Michele Adesir-Schilling—herself a world-renowned geographer who served as direc- tor of the Center of GIS and Remote Sensing at the National University of Rwanda—he was using his master's and PhD for good in developing nations, his introduction of soybeans to Mato Grosso, Brazil, as a Peace Corps volunteer among the most famous. When he stepped down from his position as director of SPREAD so that the Rwandan program could continue under Rwandan leadership, he hap- pily moved to Michele's native France with their three daughters, Manon, Tess, and Nina, now 18, 15, and 11 years old, respectively. It doesn't stand to reason that the executive direc- tor of the most significant coffee research and devel- opment program globally, World Coffee Research (WCR), works from his home in the rural Southern Alps, two hours north of Marseille, but it's the truth, and likely sounds just about right to anyone who knows Tim well. After slowly, reluctantly coming around to academia, Tim fell onto a career path in agronomy due to a love of farming, and into a life in developing countries because of a tip from a guy who went to South America and loved it. Simple as that. Of course, Tim's casual and comical banter can't disguise the seriously significant benefits to the global coffee market that haven't just hap- pened on his watch, but have been orchestrated by Tim, himself. 113 www.baristamagazine.com