Get in touch with Dean Cycon here: dean@deansbeans.com

Transcript of conversation, August 24, 2014

P:  There we go, so hello Dean, yes, Dean.

D:  Hi Polly

P:  We're here in advance of our 50th reunion which is remarkable, and trying to talk to different classmates to see what's been going on. Your life has been fairly incredible; you have done some amazing things, and so we're reaching out wondering what you'd like to say and what stories you might like to tell.

D:  Wow; that’s a pretty blank slate but I’ll write on it.

You know, All my life from high school on I wanted to be involved in social change, because you know the Vietnam War was ended by lawyers who helped bring people to the streets and fight the administration. I thought, wow, how can I be involved in social change… I'll be a lawyer! So  I went to Williams, and as much fun as I had in the theater department, I was a political science major which had the two benefits. One, it it kept me on that track, and two, it had the least requirements so I could do all sorts of other things. It wasn't like those hard sciences.

So I did that and then I went to law school. I went to Japan, which is another thing; I love travel so I spent a year in Japan and another year traveling around the world. Working in India, working in Iran before the revolution; just an amazing journey. Came back, went to law school and immediately got involved in Indigenous rights.

I started working with Native Americans fighting uranium mining in the Black Hills and things like that. I thought, oh, law is going be a great tool for this, But I found quickly that, pardon my pun, I didn't have the constitution for it. You know law requires you to behave in certain ways and there are certain norms in legal practice that just made me insane. I couldn't stand being in a room of other lawyers. I did that for 10 years, but most of the time I was doing work with Indigenous peoples in different countries, and basically holding myself together with straight law.

Some treasure hunting work around the world gave my my travel bug a bite, but then I started Dean's Beans over thirty years ago, because I wanted to stop telling businesses how they should behave, but try to model what it would be like to incorporate social change and justice and fairness into a business. Because my belief is, until businesses change the fundamental operating principles, nothing's gonna change, because every act we do touches on businesses, right? You go to a store, you're getting a car, what you are wearing on your wrist; everything is a purchase and is a business, so until those fundamental changes happen in the business world we're just going to be spinning the loop.

That's what I spent the last 30 years focusing on, which allowed me to travel to 15 different countries and work directly with farmers in the field, and experience amazing cultural events, get weird tattoos all over my body. Instead of sending postcards I would get a tattoo from everywhere I went.

You know, my youngest daughter once said to me, “Daddy, are you famous?” and I said, “No, I'm not, I'm kind of well known. But you know what's funny: I'm more well known in Ethiopia than I am in Amherst.” That's fine with me you know because I have a world outlook.

So now I'm now retired. So what am I doing with all that? Right, so I've been doing voter rights work in Georgia (which I love) for the last three elections; getting heavily involved in some of the scandals. I've been doing a lot of work with Ukraine both in the coffee industry, helping cafes get back on their feet because they are hubs for community, and also helping service workers—the people that go out and fix the plumbing and fix the electric and fix the gas after the bombings. Nobody is paying attention to them. I am. So it's been it's been exciting.

What can I tell you; a million stories like, published 2 books; one, "Java Trekker," about about the coffee world and globalization, and the latest, my new career as a novelist; “Finding Home Hungry 1945” which is doing really well.

So that's it in a nutshell. I'm also a grandfather now, eight months! My first granddaughter.

It's been a full life.      

P:  That’s great! So nice to talk to you