Matthew Hodges is the founder and CEO of GeoCertify LLC. He has worked in the coffee industry since 2006. His interest in coffee was initially sparked in Rwanda, while helping relaunch the Rwandan tourism industry after the war and genocide. At that time Mr. Hodges began working to help Rwandan coffee farmers manage risk and develop identity in the growing specialty coffee sector.

As system architect of the GeoCertify Traceability system, Mr. Hodges applied cloud-based technology to directly connect farmers with consumers. He began working in Ethiopia in 2012, in partnership with Starbucks, to scale to the magnitude and diversity of the global coffee market. For the past 2 years GeoCertify has provided traceability services for the Starbucks Reserve program, tracing all Reserve coffees from 20 origin countries. In addition, Mr. Hodges has developed consumer-facing solutions such as an “interactive table” that can recognize a cup of coffee placed on it.

His background is art (B.A., Penn State), education (Ed.M. Harvard), and software engineering (Digital Equipment Corp/MIT).