Nadav Mer

Education

Undergraduate Education

B.A. Communication Studies, University of Rhode Island

Graduate Education

M.B.A. University of Rhode Island

Areas of Expertise

• Employee Ownership
• Entrepreneurship
• Speciality Coffee

Biography

Nadav Mer is an accomplished and recognized educator and serial entrepreneur who has started, grown, and sold several businesses in the IT and specialty coffee industries. Formerly at Texas A&M University’s Department of Agricultural Economics, Nadav was an instructor teaching management and marketing courses in the Agribusiness program. Prior to that, Nadav was the founder and owner of Morning Bell Coffee Roasters in Ames, Iowa, a specialty coffee roasting business with an attached specialty coffee shop. In 2021, Morning Bell Coffee Roasters converted to employee ownership and is recognized as the first workers cooperative in the State of Iowa. Nadav was directly involved in that conversion project, and has since been regarded as an expert source, consultant, and conference presenter on employee ownership transitions. Nadav currently volunteers as an instructor with Inmates to Entrepreneurs, a national non-profit organization preparing currently and formerly incarcerated individuals to meet their business start-up goals.  Nadav was also a volunteer entrepreneurship instructor at REACH BCS, a non-profit focused on reducing income inequality in College Station, TX.

Retaining and Transitioning Businesses in Communities:  Strategies in a New Era (Walzer and Merrett) highlights the story of Nadav’s work to bring the first workers cooperative in Iowa to life along with the employees of Morning Bell Coffee Roasters.  This content was supported by the Iowa Center for Employee Ownership at the University of North Iowa, and the chapter was authored by Stacy Mullinex, Senior Project Manager at Advance Iowa.

Nadav has been awarded the Difference Maker Award from the Iowa Center for Employee Ownership at North Iowa University, and the 5 Year Volunteering Award from the Specialty Coffee Association.

Global education and facilitating study abroad opportunities for students are important to Nadav.  At Texas A&M, he served as Program Leader for the France Agribusiness program in the summer of 2023 and 2024, partnering with ESA (Ecole Supérieure d'Agriculture d'Angers) based in the Loire Valley. The focus of the program was French food ways, circular economy models and agroecology, with a focus on sustainable wine, calvados/cider, and cheese production.  Nadav also developed and led a January 2024 study abroad program to Costa Rica investigating specialty coffee production, with a focus on cooperatives, social issues around migrant labor, sustainability, and economic value chains.