Entrepreneur Lacy Audry ’13 is brewing up social impact

Lacy Audry has a nose for coffee, community, and impact. And if she sees an opportunity to combine those, she doesn't ask for permission; she dives in. The visionary social entrepreneur and specialty coffee roaster has built a globe-spanning career with the conviction that every cup is not just a beverage or a business–it’s an opportunity to foster connections and initiate social change.

Audry grew up in the Midwest and spent significant time at her grandfather’s farm. Early on, she felt a connection to agriculture and to the social aspect of food. Her childhood memories are tied to central Missouri, she says: “homemade dishes, blackberries from the garden, and chicken and dumplings.” With several entrepreneurs in the family, she also inherited a sense of enterprise. “I always imagined myself as being an entrepreneur,” she says.

The more she studied, at Loyola University in Chicago, the more Audry’s interest in food grew. She majored in psychology, igniting a passion for research, but it was a tour of a local coffee roaster for a food sociology course that sparked her curiosity for the food world. After college, alongside her job at the Illinois Student Assistance Commission, she volunteered at local coffee shops to learn the barista trade. “I got hooked on the community aspect of it – being a bright spot in someone's day, because you remember their drink,” she says.

Audry’s international journey began at AUP, where she earned a master’s degree in global communications and quickly built a community. ”I loved AUP and the small family feel of it,” she says. Audry embarked on a series of global studies beginning with the India Practicum in South India’s Auroville. Initially volunteering with a coffee roaster, Audry’s program took an unexpected turn when a typhoon struck and turning the focus into disaster relief. “The rest of our practicum quickly became about how to fundraise and help them rebuild.”

Audry’s curiosity continued to lead her far beyond coffee. While working on her master’s thesis, she stumbled on a question: why wasn’t coffee from Vietnam–the world’s second-largest producer–widely available on cafe shelves? Audry went there to investigate, immersing herself in the country’s coffee industry, interviewing farmers, and unraveling the sector’s socioeconomic dynamics. She observed that Vietnamese coffee fell short of the standards upheld by international specialty roasters, resulting in missed opportunities for farmers. Upon returning to France, she contemplated how to ensure more equitable profits, and whether, “in a capitalist system, is it possible to make a business that is purely social at heart?”

These questions ultimately catalyzed her career as an entrepreneur. While collaborating with a group of enthusiastic expatriate Filipinos interested in their country’s rich, but relatively little known coffee heritage, Audry made the decision to quit her job and go to Manila. There, she traveled to collect samples, explore the market, and build relationships with farmers.

Audry and her team worked with producers to enhance the quality of their coffee, culminating in the creation of Kalsada, a premium Filipino coffee brand. Her first business enterprise, Kalsada, is a social purpose company that partners with local communities, ensures fair wages, and champions fine Filipino coffee globally. The venture is the subject of the documentary Ma’am Tere, which premiered earlier this year at the London Coffee Festival, and espouses Audry’s belief that “there are many different ways of getting to a more socially responsible product.”

With Kalsada firmly established, Audry returned to the U.S. to help find buyers for Filipino coffee before eventually resettling in Paris. Her next business endeavor was to open a coffee shop in Montmartre, which she quickly pivoted to a pizza-and-beer joint during the pandemic. Later, while serving as an administrator at an international school, Audry identified a need for more effective communications and took it upon herself to design a comprehensive brand identity.

Audry’s journey from coffee enthusiast to commerce to community impact comes full circle with her latest business venture, Solid Design Studio. Building on her passion for social enterprises, the firm creates brands, websites, and communications strategies for small French businesses, allowing Audry to empower fellow entrepreneurs. “I love working with business owners,” she says. “We speak the same language.”

Also active in the AUP community, Audry is sharing her insight with the next generation of leaders by teaching a seminar, Global Workplace Cultures. She has recently offered coffee tastings on campus, where despite being “over-caffeinated," “an occupational hazard,” everyone had a lot of fun. Audry lives in a small town outside Paris, where, if you can find her, she is often rock climbing or trail running with her family, and always seeking out ways to galvanize all her communities.