2025 in Review
2025 was our year of chosen community, putting what the past five years have taught us to work. We have grown relationships this year that have inspired us in ways we had never thought.
Committing to our path as leaders focused on growing the collective capability to collaborate has been freeing.
Doing bigger collaborations with like-minded creative professionals has been validating.
Helping everyone we have reached this year to breathe, collect, and stand taller, during a full day away or even for a moment at a gala, has been verifying.
This is the year we truly tried and tested the full scope of our operations, established teams, refined offerings, and came away with a renewed sense of purpose. Overall, a fantastic year!
From Jennifer:
I have two perspectives at A Matter of Taste, one as our curriculum and professional development expert and the other as our passionate student of tea and spice. One side is technical/tactical/strategic, drawing on my consulting work with Maypop Grove and one is emotion/intuition and sensation, drawing on what I have learned about my favorites in my collaborations with Joanna. This year I brought both of those sides in full measure, leading intimate teams through exclusive curriculum and teaching the nuances of tea blending to hundreds!
As a business leader and advisor, I have been disappointed in public behaviors this year, moving the Overton window of what is reasonable to expect in collaborative environments. I am enjoying helping to gently shift how we interact—one group tasting with a side of professional growth at a time— back toward shared purpose and intention.
Designing a singular and scaled experience that honors each participant, connects them to the whole, anchors in an intentional team meaning, and creates a memory that binds into a new shared behavior is a bit of a development experience designer’s ultimate goal. We are doing that. We did it over and over in 2025. And we seem to be meeting an urgent need, so we’re working on getting even better at it, bringing our partners together to flex and fit as we need to meet our own exacting briefs. And I’m proud of what we have achieved.
From Joanna:
As our resident food scientist, chocolatier, and bootleg graphic designer, I am most proud this year of how we operationalized our workshop offerings- streamlining taste & make activities for a more succinct and memorable experience, adjusting to increases in food costs, and adding additional value with elegantly integrated personal and professional development curriculum. Add to that a completed portfolio of visual aids, take-home activities, and thematic gifts- we’ve worked really hard to connect our entire range of offerings, from content to marketing efforts, to our core mission of changing mindsets through the experience and appreciation of flavor.
On the chocolate side- in October I was invited to travel to Switzerland for an immersion with a US/Swiss chocolate firm that is investing in bringing Regenerative Organic Certified chocolate to the wider market. I was so inspired by this team’s dual commitment to craft and to developing long term strategic sourcing partnerships in cacao growing regions. The experience and the new relationships formed are already informing how we approach chocolate tastings at A Matter of Taste. Much more on this topic to come in the new year!
What’s next for us?
Our clients and community partners know that the work we do isn’t just for holiday parties or spot events. Learning and connecting is persistent need, learning WHILE connecting is accelerating, and cadenced habits embed perpetually! We’re excited to co-create a 2026 calendar of team-building events, leveraging the venue and experience partnerships we solidified this year.
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