52 ForOregonState.org/Stater ouR commuNity NIKI WEEGENS BEAVER LEADER Q+A Morgan Eckroth ’20 COFFEE INFLUENCER, @MORGANDRINKSCOFFEE Morgan Eckroth’s journey from marketing major to social media star began, arguably, in a Corvallis coffee shop.With more than 6.2 million followers on TikTok, 1.27 million subscribers on YouTube and 948,000 followers on Instagram, Eckroth (who uses both she and they pronouns) has crafted a brand based around coffee-themed tutorials, gear reviews and, most of all, sketches of everyday interactions between baristas and customers. These posts’ popularity hasn’t been hurt by her big wins in “the Olympics of barista life.” Eckroth won the 2022 U.S. Barista Championship, placed second in the 2022 World Barista Championship in Melbourne, Australia, and placed second again in the 2023 U.S. Barista Championships. Participants source and roast their own coffee beans and then give a coffee-themed talk while serving three coffee courses to judges. We asked her to talk a little about following this unique career path. AS TOLD TO > SIOBHAN MURRAY What drew you to work at Tried & True Coffee in Corvallis as a student? Growing up in Corvallis, Tried & True was the first specialty coffee shop I ever went to, and the experience made me in‑ trigued by both the idea of coffee as a career and the skill of creating excellent hospitality. The café be‑ came my home away from home during high school, and when I worked there a little over three years during college, I fell in love with the role of barista. Can you tell me about how you turned your growth as an online influencer into an OSU project? Due to my heavy workload and competition schedule, I didn’t have the space to do a traditional capstone project, but I had an idea for something a little less conventional. I pitched the idea of growing a YouTube channel to 100,000 sub‑ scribers over the course of a quarter. I defined KPIs (key performance indicators) for the project, reported my progress regularly and tied as much of my coursework into it as possible. At the end of the quarter, I did a final presentation on the strategies I’d used both creatively and tactically to meet my initial goal. To this day, I’m very grateful to my College of Business counselor for approving the capstone project, as it ended up being incredibly beneficial to my content creation job later. What was one of the biggest challenges you faced, finishing your last year of college in 2020 at the start of the pandemic? Oh, man, what an interest‑ ing time to graduate. It’s hard to encompass just how stressful that was, but the thing that I re‑ member the most was the realization that I wouldn’t be able to immediately get a job in my dream industry, namely hospitality. The hospitality industry, and specifically coffee, were both on proverbial fire in 2020. I ended up accepting a position in a completely different industry for a while out of necessity. Tell me a little about the Barista Championships. When you started this, did you ever imagine you’d be named the best barista in the United States and then travel to compete on the world stage? Definitely not! I certainly dreamed about it, but it never felt attainable. For me, competition was a
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