Todd Carmichael
Todd Carmichael, CEO & Co-Founder of La Colombe Torrefaction, has spent the past 18 years advancing the way the nation experiences its coffee. In pressing the limits of taste, service, and most notably coffee sourcing- venturing into the world’s developing countries to responsibly and sustainably gather the planet’s best coffee no matter the origins- Todd has converted the nation’s culinary elite into La Colombe drinkers. Along the way he has made his company the country’s leading coffee roaster while managing it philanthropically. Yet Todd can hardly be summed up as coffee magnate alone.
A passionate crusader for social and ecological causes, Carmichael has a decade-long history of undertaking self-supported treks into challenging environments. He’s visited nearly half the world’s countries, crossed large parts of the Sahara on foot, and was the first American to solo trek across Antarctica from coast to the South Pole. The Antarctic trek also earned Todd the world speed record for crossing the continent by foot – 39 days, 7 hours and 49 minutes.
He’s been an attaché to the Saudi Royal Family, is married to singer songwriter Lauren Hart, and has recently expanded his family exponentially by adopting four beautiful children from Ethiopia. He is also an author and contributor to the Huffington Post and Esquire Magazines, and is currently working on becoming the first man to traverse Death Valley, North to South, unsupported and unaided.
JP Iberti
Growing up in the restaurant industry, JP had an idea of what it would take to make La Colombe America’s premier culinary coffee. Working for his father Babet, France’s leading distributors of produce to the restaurant industry, he was sent as deliveryman to his father’s toughest clients. He quickly learned how to navigate in French kitchens with sixty-plus man brigades working tirelessly under chefs with tumultuous personalities. His ability to work in this high-pressure environment allowed him to speak the language of the culinary world and instilled in him an immense respect for the craft and beauty of what we eat and drink.
To observe Iberti’s reverence for great craftsmanship one need look no further than the great passions of his life. Despite La Colombe’s impressive growth over the past 18 years, JP still loves to roast on antique Officine Vittoria machines, creating small batch roasts and experimenting with alternative roasting styles including the lost art of wood-fire roasting. His appreciation of the mechanical aesthetic is imprinted in La Colombe’s physical presence, observed in the roasting facility’s large collection of antique roasters and espresso machines and Iberti’s personal collection of antique mechanics.
