2009 Alumna
Cottage: Cedar
BIO: Kristy Leissle, PhD, researches and writes about cocoa and chocolate. Among other publications, she is author of Cocoa, on geopolitics, and the series, “I am a cocoa farmer” for ConfectioneryNews, which profiles women and men who farm cocoa in Africa. Having worked and travelled in Africa since the late 1990s, Kristy has conducted cocoa fieldwork in West Africa for sixteen years. In 2018, she moved to Ghana, where she developed the Radical Listening methodology. Kristy employs Radical Listening in her research to “de-expert” herself, so that she can listen well to farmers, be a conduit for their stories, and disrupt stereotypes of Africa in her writing. Kristy writes for Oxford Analytica and serves on the Editorial Board for ConfectioneryNews. She regularly conducts research and trainings on the cocoa industry, including recent work for Divine Chocolate and Oxfam Ghana, and holds Advisory Board positions with Zora Chocolate Makers, Three Mountains Cocoa, and Ghana Cocoa Awards. Previously full-time teaching faculty at University of Washington Bothell, she is now Affiliate Faculty in Interdisciplinary Arts & Sciences and African Studies. Kristy is Co-Founder of the Cocoapreneurship Institute of Ghana, an NGO supports entrepreneurs working in cocoa in West Africa. She lives in Accra.