Barry Cooper: it's always tea time for East African native.

• Author: Bronikowski, Lynn
• Position: EXECUTIVE EDGE

Barry Cooper, founder and CEO of Cooper Tea Co., traces his 40-year passion for the tea industry to his childhood in Kenya, East Africa--a place that tugs so deep at his heart that today he refers to himself as "a white African American."

That may sound politically incorrect, he admits, but "Africa gets in your blood; it's home," he says of the tea-producing highlands where he grew up.

"Tea always struck me as a very elegant and gentlemanly profession," Cooper said while pouring hot tea from a porcelain teapot in his office at Cooper Tea's Boulder-based headquarters. "There were these massive rolling hills, the rhythm of the workers, the tea-producing and management of the tea estates all coming together to be sure the process worked. Tea producers had a good life--plus, they always had the best views of Africa from their high-growth areas."

After a stint as a hard-driven newspaper reporter in Nairobi, Kenya, and England, Cooper would go to work for Lipton in London, where at the first sight of a tasting room, his lifelong romance with tea began.

At age 23, he would move to Uganda to set up a tea trade network--unflinching over the prospect of danger amid political unrest.

"I even worked the fields in Uganda so I could understand the daily routine of the tea growers so they knew I wasn't some fly-by-night," Cooper said. "They knew that I understood the difficulties they were facing from a firsthand basis."

It was there that Cooper's entrepreneurship would surface--a drive that would lead to his four patents for tea preparation and manufacturing and put his flagship B.W. Cooper's Iced Brew Tea in more than 10,000 locations, from 7-Eleven stores to fine dining restaurants.

"I believe entrepreneurs are simply born; the instinct is there," said Cooper, 65, who founded SNA Tea Co., a private-label tea company with ownership in tea packaging facilities and more than 40 tea plantations. 'There's this desire to be independent. It's an engine within you, and it drives you."

He couldn't believe he actually got paid to do what he loved and ultimately received a phone call from Celestial...