Chris Treter

Chris Treter co-founded Higher Grounds Trading Co. in 2001, after living and working among coffee farmers at the Maya Vinic cooperative in Chiapas, Mexico. That period in Chiapas — where growers had organized their own cooperative in the aftermath of conflict and market collapse — set the terms for everything that followed: a roasting company built around long-term relationships with producer organizations rather than transactions on the commodity market.

Higher Grounds has since grown from a Traverse City start-up into a roaster sourcing fair trade coffee from more than a dozen countries, and Chris continues to serve as a co-founder and director of the company. Its purchasing model is built on direct, repeated relationships with cooperatives, and the company has consistently used its supply chain as the entry point for community investment rather than treating philanthropy as a separate activity.

In 2010, Chris co-founded On the Ground so that the communities Higher Grounds buys from could receive support that went beyond the price of coffee — funding for schools, clean water, women's cooperatives, and farmer-led agricultural projects, defined by the communities themselves. He has been closely involved in the organization's signature ultra-marathon fundraising projects, including the Run Across Ethiopia, and has continued to work at the intersection of specialty coffee, farmer livelihoods, and rural development.

He holds a master's degree in organizational management for social change from the School for International Training, and has spoken publicly in Michigan on water, food systems, and the economics of the coffee trade.