NextBillion - An Initiative of the William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan

Isabel van Bemmelen is the Managing Director of the Progreso Foundation and the person who started the Beyco (Beyond Coffee) platform. Before joining Progreso in November 2017, she worked with the Rabobank Foundation in the Netherlands and Latin America specialising in financing smallholder producer organisations with a high focus on coffee and cocoa organisations. During her time at Rabobank Foundation, her extensive experience with financing producer organisations made her realise that facilitating connections between sellers and buyers would help producer organisations to sell, access credit lines and grow. This is what brought her to develop Beyco.