Our Management Team
Keith Lemnios – Founder, Partner & CEO
Keith began his journey within the coffee industry as part of a family owned coffee business. Over the course of his 17 years there, he helped grow the company tenfold to five million pounds. Keith’s deep experience covers all key functional roles in the coffee business. Keith graduated from the University of Connecticut with a degree in finance and recently completed the Harvard University Executive Management Program with honors. He is also a member of SCAA and NACUFS, and has successfully acquired RQA, DAS, Organic and Fair Trade certification.
Barry Kostin – Partner & CFO
Barry has 32 years in the financial field, most recently as a finance and operations consultant for several new start-up companies. From 1997-2003, he was the CFO for Subscriber Solutions, Inc., a company that manufactures telephone apparatus. Additionally, Barry held the role of CFO for CPF Inc., Pepsi’s Central Production facility. He also acted as the financial administrator for GCC Corp. (Pepsi Bottling Group) from 1982-1990. Barry graduated from Bentley College with degrees in finance and management.
Ken Lewis – Partner & CMO
Ken has over 30 years of marketing and sales experience with some of the top brands and companies throughout the world. From 1996-2005 he was the Senior Vice President, Americas with Timex Corporation. He was a corporate officer and Vice President, Corporate Marketing and Brand Development for The Stanley Works. He additionally served as the President of Stanley’s global licensing business, as well as their fledgling distribution business, which grew from $47 MM to $85 MM in sales under his leadership. Prior to Stanley, Ken spent 11 years with Walt Disney Attractions within their corporate marketing group. Ken has a B.A. from Washington University in St. Louis and an M.A. from the University of Connecticut.
Charles Ciaccio – Partner and Vice President, Sales
Charlie has more than 25 years of executive sales, financial market and banking management experience, including 15 years as a trader of soft agricultural products, such as coffee, on the New York Futures Exchange (NYMX), wherein he drove various accounts at three separate financial institutions to record-level profits across leading stock exchanges. Charlie previously worked as a senior residential loan officer at JP Morgan Chase & Company. He spent the preceding 16 years in New York, N.Y., in a variety of financial consulting and management positions overseeing stock brokerage and trading on behalf of such prestigious clients as Morgan Stanley, Paine Webber and Merrill Lynch. Charlie earned a B.A. in finance from the University of Connecticut, and an M.B.A. in business administration with a concentration in finance from the Leonard N. Stern School of Business at New York University.
Dolly Llama – Mascot
Organic coffee connoisseur, Dolly becomes the fifth member of our team. A native of South America, Dolly was inspired by her distant cousin, that donkey that palled around with Juan from Columbia. An avid coffee enthusiast, Dolly prefers a medium roast but will eat anything in a pinch. Dolly is a spirited entrepreneur who has authored a series of books about mountain climbing as she searched for the finest coffees in the world. As the official mascot for Sun Coffee Roasters she will make special appearances to promote the finest Organic Fair Trade coffee on college campuses around the country.