Good Folks, Doing Good Work Cast
Oct 15, 2026 · 59 min · 13 segments
In this episode, I sat down with Jenna Gotthelf to hear where her competitive spirit came from and how her education background informs the work she does today to innovate in the coffee competition…
As you've explained each of these competitions, they're heavily focused on education, and it sounds like your background in education is sort of intersecting competition.
Why is that important to you?
Mm-hmm
... that makes learning fun and exciting and engaging, and it makes people want to learn.
The more exciting it is to know how you can do your job better as a barista, the better coffee you're gonna serve, the more that-
100%
But if we don't understand that work, and if we're not doing, you know, comparable work in, in the ways that it makes sense to where we're at, um, that feels kinda not ideal.
Creating opportunities to learn through untraditional ways has always been exciting to me.
I studied education in college in a, in a very progressive space that really pushed me to think about how you can learn, and learning has no borders.
I think gamifying learning is, is awesome, and there's so much energy around coffee as being unapproachable or inaccessible.
Mm
Yeah.
Um, but how can we demystify that and make it less, like only certain people have the ability to understand this or like, uh, it's this elitist way of, of-
Mm-hmm
It's, it's really just an objective unit of measurement to help us get to where we wanna go faster.
As you've explained each of these competitions, they're heavily focused on education, and it sounds like your background in education is sort of intersecting competition.
Why is that important to you?
Mm-hmm
... that makes learning fun and exciting and engaging, and it makes people want to learn.
The more exciting it is to know how you can do your job better as a barista, the better coffee you're gonna serve, the more that-
100%
But if we don't understand that work, and if we're not doing, you know, comparable work in, in the ways that it makes sense to where we're at, um, that feels kinda not ideal.
Creating opportunities to learn through untraditional ways has always been exciting to me.
I studied education in college in a, in a very progressive space that really pushed me to think about how you can learn, and learning has no borders.
I think gamifying learning is, is awesome, and there's so much energy around coffee as being unapproachable or inaccessible.
Mm
Yeah.
Um, but how can we demystify that and make it less, like only certain people have the ability to understand this or like, uh, it's this elitist way of, of-
Mm-hmm
It's, it's really just an objective unit of measurement to help us get to where we wanna go faster.
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