Evelyn Echeverria

Founder & CEO

MishkiYaku Coffee, Ecuador / Germany

Evelyn Echeverría is originally from Quito – Ecuador. She holds two academic degrees in Environmental Sciences and Biology and two additional master’s degrees in “Sustainable Business Analysis” and “Environmental Education”.

Evelyn has more than 20 years of experience in project and event management and has extensive knowledge in clustering and networking. Since 2011, she has been working as scientific officer for the unit “EU Sustainability Strategy and Environmental Research” for the Jülich Project Management Agency and the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research. There she has collaborated early on with several German ministries and has organized, moderated, and led meetings with key international representatives from environment, politics and society.  In 2015 she was appointed National Contact Point for the Commission’s new Framework Program on Sustainable Cities and Circular Economy. Since 2016 she represents the JPI-EU network on behalf of the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research and is the German coordinator of the European project “DUT – Driving Urban Transitions”.

In May 2021 she founded her own company “MishkiYaku Cafe”, which distributes sustainably produced Ecuadorian specialty gourmet coffee. MishkiYaku focuses on micro-lots from small farms located in all regions of Ecuador. The company concentrates on supporting Ecuadorian hummingbird conservation projects coordinated primarily by women from local communities.

In October 2022 the company entered into partnership with Tanja Andrade who is both Ecuadorian and German. She brings a long-term experience in the area of customer acquisition and marketing strategies into the company.

MishkiYaku’s goal is to make Ecuador known as a megadiverse country and producer of high-quality coffee and to foster cooperation between Europe to establish sustainability and environmental education projects.

Additionally, we want to encourage the taste for the preparation of specialty coffee through filter techniques and establish specialty coffee as a luxury beverage.

Ecuador is a biodiversity and pluricultural hot spot. We want to promote the beautiful regions of Ecuador and contribute to the protection of the Ecuadorian biodiversity by supporting sustainability projects and strengthening the social position of women through our specialty coffee. These regions are also home to the smallest birds on earth! The hummingbirds, which pollinate the plants that grow next to the coffee in the plantations. These beautiful birds, known as the smallest in the world, inhabit almost every region of Ecuador and are as diverse as the country itself. Due to various factors, many species are threatened with extinction.

Our first cooperation to protect these fragile birds is the project “Bright as a Hummingbirds”, which has been launched together with the “Aves & Conservación” foundation in Quito. From each coffee sold, 5% goes to the protection of the Ecuadorian hummingbirds and their habitats. These projects also support women who are involved in the renaturation of endemic plants suitable for hummingbird feeding.