Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Ana Burcroff. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Ana, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Let’s start with education – we’d love to hear your thoughts about how we can better prepare students for a more fulfilling life and career

I think it’s sad that the general trend in education has been to phase out hands on topics like woodworking, gardening, cooking, sewing or even gym class to spend more time on academic subjects like math, literacy and STEM curriculum. A well rounded person has mastery over the academic subjects AND values creative pursuits and self sufficiency, like knowing how to mend or do basic repairs. I believe that the overarching message from our education system and the media is to “achieve,” and the definition of achievement doesn’t include making sure that our souls are nourished with creative or hands-on endeavors. This results in a population that feels unfulfilled even if we hit all the standard marks of achievement, like a car, a house or a certain job title. And a population that needs to outsource basic things like repairs and even cooking. When we don’t nourish our passions and creativity, we lose connection with the basic things in life that can bring us joy.

I would love to see education head in the direction of “let’s put down that screen and focus on reading or handwriting,” or “let’s do coding AND make sure we move our bodies in an action packed gym class afterwards.” I would love for there to be a more holistic approach to educating children.

Ana, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

My husband and I started our business together. Our bread business began simply from sharing homemade sourdough within our community during the pandemic on the Eastern tip of Long Island called the North Fork. We couldn’t socialize normally so sourdough became our work-around to meet families of our childrens’ classmates, who we only saw in passing at drop off and pick up. Friends and then friends of friends started asking whether they could buy the bread. The farmers at the farms that we volunteered on encouraged us to sell it. This quickly led to wholesale partnerships at local gourmet markets and organic farmstands. It was this perfect union of forces that resulted in starting our business. A silver lining to the pandemic for us. There isn’t much sourdough here and the response to our business has been extremely positive.

If we had to pinpoint a single eureka bread moment during this time, it’s when our son’s friend asked for seconds of our bread instead of dessert. After all, kids are the most honest critics, so that was a particularly encouraging sign that we were onto something special.

We have two young children and we originally structured everything around their schedule by doing a lot of our work very early or late at night. Since then we’ve made changes to our process to get on a more predictable schedule and do the bulk of our work when the kids are at school, like using refrigeration to slow down our bread’s fermentation process. We also invested in equipment that allows us to work in bigger batches, like mixers and a bread oven. We find that with more capacity we are inclined to say yes to more business and currently struggle with knowing when to stop. We have started pulling back to support a more harmonious home life.

Have you ever had to pivot?

My husband and I co-founded our company together. We met in New York City when we were both students in business school We married a few years after graduation and both worked at corporate roles in tech. When we had kids I really struggled with not seeing them enough and not having the right amount of flexibility in my schedule that parents need for all of the things that come up with little kids. Brett’s role was as inflexible as mine and I had to come to grips that I wasn’t “power couple” material. I wanted work that made my heart sing and I wanted to be with my kids much more than what my schedule allowed.

The pandemic gave us the opportunity to downsize and make big changes. We traded a home and double corporate life in New York City for a quieter life by the seaside at the very tip of Long Island in a small cottage that was originally intended to be our beach home. I resigned from Amazon and Brett shifted to a fully remote role.

Downsizing gave us the freedom of additional time, and the opportunity to be more creative. Launching this sourdough business together was essentially a happy accident that we never would have experienced without pivoting the way we did.

We’d love to hear about how you met your business partner.

My cofounder and business partner is my husband, Brett Koons. We met in graduate school. I’m pretty sure we are the only professional sourdough bakers to have ever graduated from Columbia Business School! We were on the same “learning team” which meant we were part of a small group of students that worked together on projects for the first year of school. Almost all of our school work was done within this group, so we spent a lot of time together.

We have a working relationship that was well established in business school where Brett prefers to dive into the analysis of whatever we are trying to solve, and I enjoy working on the analysis with him and presenting it outward. We have a definite introvert/extrovert couple dynamic. (Notice that I’m the one answering these interview questions!)

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.jamesportsourdoughandcoffee.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jamesport_sourdough/