#15 Ryan Delany (USMC) – Coffee Trading Academy

You only have one reputation, what are you doing with it?

This from our guest for this episode – Ryan Delany – as he works through his relationship between his personal ethics and their fit within his professional career as a trader.

Ryan Delany is a US Marine Corps veteran and Founder of the Coffee Trading Academy, an information and training service focused on providing an independent voice in the coffee market.

Ryan spends some time in this episode unpacking the origins of his military service, from family ties to the Tuskegee Airman in WWII and slavery in the US to why he felt compelled to service in order to protect this heritage and the rights his relatives fought for. It was this military service and his subsequent education at Columbia and Harvard, as well as a career in stock and coffee trading, where he realized that his personal and professional ethics didn’t have to be separate; they could influence each other.

He makes a strong case for the value of a trader in the coffee supply chain and why he ultimately decided to start a training academy to help others understand this industry the way he does. His program intentionally points out the importance of mindset and ethics in this field, something he feels is lacking in other industry publications.

Have a listen as Ryan describes this unique heritage and his arguments for the profession of traders