Women coffee growers in Nicaragua have been overlooked. She’s putting them in the spotlight.

Growing up, Emily Zeledon loved spending time among the coffee tasters at her family’s business. Her family ran a swift agricultural export business, selling coffee, beans, rice, cocoa, and other goods from their native Nicaragua.

But the lab, as Zeledon calls it, is where the magic happened. The rich smell of roasting coffee beans wafted in the air while professional tasters slurped from teaspoons in a process called cupping. The signature slurp—a quick inhalation of coffee and air—sprays the coffee across the taster’s entire tongue, giving them a comprehensive flavor profile on which to judge each varietal.

“It was so fascinating for me, because it smelled so good, and everyone was tasting the coffee and making all kinds of sounds and everything,” says Zeledon, who will graduate from Northeastern University’s D’Amore-McKim School of Business in 2026.

As she grew up, she got more and more involved in her family business. In her senior year of high school, Zeledon’s mother explained the many challenges women coffee-growers faced in the country: they often lack access to financial credit and land, on top of being shoved to the margins by bigger coffee-growing enterprises. Zeledon’s mother explained that she wanted to do something for these farmers, to boost them up in some way.

It hit home for Zeledon, who was raised by her parents and grandparents to look out for her family—and the plights of her countrywomen.

“I grew up in a family where I saw the examples of my grandmother and my mother, who always told me to not to not give up—to go for my dreams. I grew up in this family where women always supported other women. And this instilled in me a passion to do the same thing,” she says.

At the time, Zeledon was taking an online course on entrepreneurship (another of her passions, and another inheritance from her parents, both of whom are also entrepreneurs). An article she read for class, about a woman helping out other women become business owners in Africa, gave her the spark of an idea. A continent away, women were raising each other up through entrepreneurship. Why couldn’t she do that, too?

And so Zeledon took a year off between high school and college to really dig in and learn about the coffee production chain in Nicaragua. What she found was troubling. Although the vast majority of coffee producers (around 70 percent, she says) are small and medium-sized farmers, there are only a few major retailers. Those large retailers could easily rip off the smaller producers by offering less than market value for their beans—and they often did, Zeledon says.

She recalls talking to a small farmer who told her he didn’t think his coffee was all that good, because a big retailer had told him as much. The big company sold his beans as commercial coffee, rather than specialty coffee. Zeledon, who grew up around the stuff, knew better.

“If it’s considered specialty coffee, they have to pay more for it,” she says. And it was.

“I felt like I needed to do something right away,” Zeledon says. So, she created Las Mujercitas, a socially conscious coffee venture that empowers women growers and other small farmers in Nicaragua.

Las Mujercitas is a social enterprise, Zeledon says, dedicated to training women growers, certifying their product so it gets the recognition in quality it deserves, and buying and selling the coffee at fair, liveable prices.

It’s in the early stages yet, with just Zeledon, 19, at the wheel. She’s taking her time now to build up a community—getting out and getting to know the women growers who she ultimately hopes will be part of Las Mujercitas (which translates to “the little women”). And, while she’s in Boston, Zeledon is learning how to establish a supply chain that will help these small coffee producers reach beyond Nicaragua.

“My idea is to help them access global markets,” Zeledon says. “With Las Mujercitas, I’ll be supporting their coffee and also telling their stories; trying to make the customer conscious about the quality and the history of the coffee that they are drinking.”

Zeledon was recognized among this year’s Women Who Empower Innovator Award winners. The annual awards honor entrepreneurs for their innovative, boundary-pushing work. This year’s recipients—students and alumni from the Northeastern community—were selected by a panel of judges and will receive a total of $500,000 in funding. Zeledon was honored among undergraduate award winners.

“Las Mujercitas represents an unserved market, women entrepreneurs from developing economies who have the potential to become the backbone of their communities,” says Loredana Padurean, associate teaching professor of entrepreneurship and innovation at Northeastern, and among Zeledon’s mentors.

“Emily is very connected to both the product, but also to the specifics of these communities, along with her drive and passion for social entrepreneurship. Gen Z is extremely socially sensitive and Emily’s venture speaks to this,” she adds.

And for Zeledon, it is personal. She grew up hearing stories about her great-grandmother, who worked hard from a young age to support her siblings. She saw the example her mother set, working tirelessly for their family and their business.

“So for me, it’s really important because of the values that I grew up with, and the woman who supported me,” Zeledon says. “I really think that businesses can be a force of good for many people. And this is really important for me, because the coffee industry is the main source of income for many families, including mine. So, it’s not only about drinking a cup of coffee, it’s about how—and under what circumstances—that cup of coffee is made.”