Tebabu Assefa

Tebabu Assefa, a native of Ethiopia, came to the US in 1981. He studied photography, film production and communication at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis. In 1991, Mr. Assefa moved to the Washington, DC area where he worked in fine art photography, film/video production, and communication and marketing in the commercial and educational markets.

As a cultural promoter and communication consultant, Mr. Assefa supported enterprise in the local African-American, and Caribbean markets with emphasis on cultural and economic development including the Ethiopian Cultural Museum of Chicago. Tebabu is the founder and the principal producer of the Annual Ethiopian Festival in Downtown Silver Spring, Maryland. The third Annual Festival, on September 2013, was a massive success, which showcased a five-hour-long culture show and community market that attracted over 25,000 attendants.

Mr. Tebabu Assefa is a recipient of champions of change award from the Obama administration in 2012. He is a community Leader and Social Entrepreneur and founder of Blessed Coffee(BC) a social business that supports 200,000 coffee farmers in Ethiopia improving their social capital through a new model of business called Virtues Exchanges (VE) that connect small farmers and producers with the consumer directly. BC is the second company to register as a Benefit Corporation (a public corporation chartered and produces public benefit as well as profit), a hybrid of for-profit and nonprofit models that aims for community benefits as well as profits in the State of Maryland.

BC connects the farmers with the specialty coffee consumer in the US market and shares profit to support the Farmer’s Union social program opening schools, health clinics, safe water wells and other social programs in the coffee-growing region. Tebabu aspires to present the Blessed Coffee as an alternative business model to the African community in the US, to encourage them to follow suit and establish businesses that advance US-Africa cultural and economic ties for development in Africa, and here in our American communities

Tebabu makes his home in Takoma Park, MD with his wife and partner Sara, their son Yared, and daughter Helina.