by Sophia Kim
Posted in: Canadianimmigrant.ca

Martha Bowen, founder of a direct and fair trade coffee company, wants to help change the business world, one bean at a time. "My mission is to really show the world that there are better ways to do business".

At the end of a cul-de-sac in Horseshoe Bay sits a lovely house with glass-panelled doors that bears witness to its inhabitants' tales of the past, present and the future. With its rich colours, soft carpets and tapestries, and heavy wooden furniture, the house is as inviting, friendly and sturdy as the family that resides there. Amid the hearty laughter of Martha Bowen, the señora of the house, combined with the giggles of her youngest daughter, Sara, and the calm breeze blowing through the open windows, it is hard to fathom that the inhabitants of this house have survived the horrifying tales from the past that Bowen is about to share. Setting me down on a southwest-inspired armchair with one of the steaming cups of coffee that Bowen is known for - she is CEO and founder of Latin Organics, a direct and fair trade coffee company in Vancouver - I look at the framed family pictures beside me, including her oldest daughter, Manuela, and her only son, Thomas, in a pumpkin outfit. And then the señora begins to tell her story in flawless English.

A Colombian-born immigrant, Bowen is many things at once. She is a wife and a mother of three. She is an entrepreneur. And, for the farmers she does business with on the coffee fields in Colombia, she is a hope for a better future. But her journey to get to this point was not easy. In Colombia, Bowen, her husband, Frank, and her family, smaller then with only Manuela and baby Thomas on the way, had many prospects. Bowen worked as the food and beverages director for a five-star hotel in Bogota, while her husband owned a corporate events management firm. But a road trip to see Bowen's parents changed the direction of their future forever.

"The kidnapping was April 1997," says Bowen matter-of-factly. "The holy week was coming … so I said to Frank, 'Why don't we take a road trip from Bogota to Valledupar?'"

Usually they just took a short flight from the city to Bowen's hometown on the coast, but that year Bowen wanted to explore the new sea-to-sky highway Colombia had just built. Bowen wasn't unprepared. Knowing the dangers of travelling on the road, especially at the time when guerrilla groups were making a business out of abducting for ransom, Bowen had dressed in a simple outfit - a T-shirt and shorts with nothing but her wedding band on her fingers. The country, too, had prepared, arming the roads with several roadblocks for military checks for the safety of travellers.

"It was all a part of the national security program the president had in place because the rates of kidnapping were too high and he had to control it somehow because people had come to the point where no one was leaving the cities to go anywhere," explains Bowen. "Everyone was frightened by this lucky fishing scheme that the guerrilla groups had put together."

But what neither Bowen nor the country could prepare for were the deceptive tactics of the guerrilla groups. And when Bowen and her family made a wrong turn down an isolated road with nothing but "bare bones and eagles circling overhead," their fate was sealed.

"I made a joke," says Bowen. "I said, 'And tomorrow in all the newspapers it will say this Colombian family was kidnapped on the way to Valledupar.' And I looked through the window and saw these little points."

The little points were people with the same military uniforms as those on the main road. But as the car approached the men, Bowen realized they were not the military. "As we got closer and closer, they started raising their machine guns and then it was too late," she says. "They surrounded the car with their machine guns."

The rest played out like a Hollywood film, from the sacks over their heads to the captors' sincere conviction in their guerrilla mission. But for the Bowens, it was no movie.

After being released with the task of bringing back a ransom for her husband, Bowen made the long drive to her parents. There, through family connections, she was able to help a special rescue unit orchestrate a successful rescue of her husband.

Bowen showed immense courage, to which even her captor testified later, calling her a "fierce tiger of a woman."

But Bowen and her husband realized that Colombia was no longer a safe place for their young family, and decided to immigrate to Canada.

"It was a lot of anxiety, uncertainty and fear of the unknown, but, in the end, it was like faith and hope that we knew that it was going to be okay," explains Bowen. "And we had done our due diligence in regards to Canada and especially Vancouver. Learning exactly how the city operated and the opportunity and benefits of being here."

The initial transition period was difficult, Bowen admits. "We've had our own struggles," explains Bowen, who found work at local whole foods store Capers. "And we believe that because we've had our own struggles we need to really focus on being Canadians."

And the ambitious entrepreneur has done just that - but without ignoring her roots. As the founder of Latin Organics, a name trademarked in Canada and the United States, she sells direct and fair trade coffee from Colombia as well as handwoven products from a group of indigenous women.

"Colombia is an underdeveloped country, but it is an agricultural country and agriculture is the future of the world because if we have no food, no one's going to be able to do anything," says Bowen. "There would be no high technology, no this or that or going to the moon, if there's no food. And Colombia has lots of potential, so I am focusing on that."

Pregnant with her third child, Bowen worked long hours each day to build her business. The company has grown rapidly, and its products are stocked at stores like IGA and Capers, the very place she humbly worked after landing in Vancouver. Bowen says it is the love the farmers put into growing the Arabica beans that makes her coffee so good.

Making good coffee is not her only goal, however. "My mission is to really show the world that there are better ways to do business," says Bowen. "There is enough wealth for all of us. There really is. If we change the way we do things, the wealth will go through many hands. It's very simple and the way you do that is by working with these underprivileged people who don't have all the money that people may have in places like Canada and you take them by the hand."

She finds comfort in the belief that persistence and honesty brewed together with hard work will result in success for her family and beyond. Above all, Bowen tells me from her inviting, glass-panelled home, she wants to make Canada proud to have let her and her family into the country. And not just because she can make a great cup of coffee.

But, perfect to the last drop, her rich, flavourful java certainly helps.

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