Meet Your Coffee Coach
Hi, I'm Nina
I was born in Scotland, live in Maryland, and have spent a lot of my working life in coffee and hospitality.
Coffee is something I’ve always found my way back to. I love the pace of a café, working behind the bar, figuring out why something isn’t working and helping someone finally get the hang of it.
I also think we make coffee way more complicated than it needs to be. I’m much more interested in teaching people to make really good coffee consistently than convincing them they need twelve new gadgets to do it.
When I’m not doing this, there’s a pretty good chance I’m on a motorcycle, making something, starting another project I probably didn’t need, or drinking more coffee.
The Coffee Coach is a combination of the things I’m good at and the parts of coffee I actually missed.
How I Got Here
I started as a barista at The Big Bean in Annapolis, where I got properly hooked on coffee and started learning the day-to-day rhythm of working in it.
From there, I moved to Chesapeake Coffee Roasters, where my role grew into Retail Operations Manager, Coffee Coach & Event Manager. I worked across retail operations, beverage quality, customer experience, team training, events and the systems that keep everything running behind the scenes.
Coffee education became a big part of what I did. I earned my SCA Intermediate Barista Certification through Trail Blaze Coffee Academy and went on to train baristas and coffee teams across Maryland, Pennsylvania and Virginia — covering everything from espresso and brewing to milk, workflow, product knowledge, customer service and consistency.
Eventually, my career took me outside of coffee and into other parts of hospitality, operations, sales and training. But coffee was always the part I missed.
The Coffee Coach is my way of getting back behind the bar — just in a slightly different way this time.