Todd Carmichael

During his quest, he was accompanied by a camera crew, who were filming him for a series that would later become Travel Channel's Dangerous Grounds. While hunting for his elusive Haitian bean, he came upon a farm that inspired him to want to help Haiti improve its coffee farming methods. He was later approached by the Clinton Foundation to collaborate on a coffee project to aid in the revitalization of Haiti's ailing economy. In August 2012, the Foundation committed $350,000 to the project, and with the assistance of Conor Murphy, a business development advisor in Haiti, La Colombe worked out an agreement to lease for 10 years the farm that Carmichael initially came upon during his first episode of Dangerous Grounds, which is where the Haiti Coffee Academy currently resides. In August 2013, the academy officially registered as a private company in Haiti, and new Arabica seeds arrived from Brazil to be planted. In February 2014, President Bill Clinton, Todd Carmichael and J.P. Iberti visited the Haiti Coffee Academy for its official launch.

During his journey across Antarctica, he maintained a video log of his progress, which was later formatted into a documentary, Race to the Bottom of the Earth (2010), which appeared on National Geographic. It was also picked as the winner of the "Best Documentary Feature" category at the Los Angeles Cinema Festival of Hollywood Winter 2011, and became an Official Selection at the Newport Beach Film Festival in 2011. He is currently the host of his own reality/adventure series on the Travel Channel entitled Dangerous Grounds, where he travels to the most remote and renowned coffee-producing regions of the world, sourcing for La Colombe. The television show premiered on November 5, 2012, and immediately received favorable ratings and reviews. Dangerous Grounds is on its third season of production, which premiered on February 26, 2015.

Carmichael was named Esquire Magazine's "American of the Year" and Philadelphia Magazine's "Person of the Year" in 2011 and later ranked #1 by Food Republic for the most influential figure in its Coffee Power Ranking. He is currently the host of Travel Channel's Dangerous Grounds and Uncommon Grounds.

Todd Carmichael has been awarded the honor of being named Esquire Magazine's "American of the Year" and Philadelphia Magazine's "Person of the Year" in 2011. He is currently the host of Travel Channel's Dangerous Grounds, where his globetrotting adventures in search of the finest coffees in the world are captured on video and brought into millions of living rooms around the world. In conjunction with The Clinton Foundation, Carmichael is one of the co-founders of the Haiti Coffee Academy, an institution created to help with the revitalization of the impoverished country's once prominent coffee industry. In 2014, he entered the Specialty Coffee Association of America and the Barista Guild of America's U.S. Brewers Cup competition for the first time, and surprised his many critics by winning the Northeast Regionals with a "full immersion - double suspended filtration" method. He also placed runner-up at the national competition in Seattle, WA, where he unveiled and used the prototype of his experimental brewing contraption, dubbed "The Dragon." It is a manual coffee-brewing device that he invented, integrating the pour-over concept with elements of the classic siphon. That same year, Food Republic ranked him #1 in its "Coffee Power Ranking."

Carmichael is the CEO and co-founder for Philadelphia-based La Colombe. He is the first American to complete a solo trek across Antarctica to the South Pole, on foot with no assistance, capturing the World Speed Record with a total travel time of 39 days, 7 hours and 49 minutes. Recorded footage of his trek later became an award-winning documentary entitled Race to the Bottom of the Earth (2010) that was aired on the National Geographic Channel. With his World Record accomplishment, he also raised thousands for one of his numerous philanthropic projects.

In late 2009, Todd Carmichael began to formulate his idea to create a Southern blend that would later become known as La Colombe's Louisiane, which he felt needed to be made with coffee from Haiti. Once the wealthiest colony in the Western Hemisphere, producing 40 percent of the world's coffee, the Caribbean country had become, at the time, the poorest as a result of political upheaval, riots, wars, natural disasters, and embargoes that were sanctioned upon the nation. By 2011, there was not a single Haitian coffee bean found in the U.S. so Carmichael set out to find the coffee and bring it back.

On December 21, 2008, Carmichael became the first American to cross from the shores of Antarctica to the South Pole on foot and unassisted. In doing so, he broke the World Speed Record with a total travel time of 39 days, 7 hours and 49 minutes. He has also traveled across large parts of the Sahara on foot as well as the Gobi, Namib and others, and explored the Congolese jungle and Zimbabwe's scrub plains. In September 2010, he attempted to make the first solo self-contained trek across Death Valley, but was forced to abort the mission after a malfunction with his equipment.

In 2000, Carmichael decided to take a three-month sabbatical from the coffee industry and his business, La Colombe Torrefaction. He arranged to be dropped off on Nagigia, a tiny island in the South Pacific with only about 150 inhabitants. "The idea was to go back in time… to learn from the indigenous people there how to survive," said Carmichael. He spent two and a half months surfing, spearing fish and building a hut. It became a turning point in his life. "During that time, I thought, 'You know what, it's very, very clear for you, my friend: Adventure and endurance is just part of your life. And it's time you take it more seriously.'"

Carmichael and Iberti opened La Colombe Torrefaction, their first European-style café in May 1994 on 19th Street near Philadelphia's Rittenhouse Square Park. In the beginning, they would roast their own unique blends in the back of their café, and after struggling at first like most startup businesses, the demand for their coffee among restaurants began to increase exponentially. In December 1994, they opened a roastery in a warehouse in the city's Port Richmond neighborhood. Now, La Colombe is served in some of the most elite restaurants throughout the U.S. with top-rated cafés located in Philadelphia, New York City, Chicago, Washington, D.C., and Seoul, South Korea and plans to open nearly 100 more establishments throughout the U.S. within the next five years.

In 1993, Todd Carmichael reconnected with Iberti, and returned to the U.S. in 1994, settling down in Philadelphia, PA in mid-January of that year. The two self-described coffee-geeks felt that the coffees they would get at restaurants to end their meals would often be disappointing, tarnishing their overall experience of what had been an enjoyable meal. So they set out to create what they would refer to as "culinary coffee," and felt that the city was on the cusp of a culinary renaissance.

While at college in Seattle, Carmichael started working in the warehouse of Starbucks. Carmichael also met his longtime friend and future business partner, La Colombe co-founder Jean Philippe Iberti, in 1985.

Todd Carmichael was born on August 30, 1963 outside Spokane, Washington. He has three sisters. Carmichael completed his first marathon at age 15. His mother eventually moved the family to Spokane's South Hill so that he could attend Joel E. Ferris High School, which was home, at the time, to the region's best cross-country team. From 1981 to 1982, he was part of Ferris' state championship squad. He graduated from the high school in 1982, and received a distance running scholarship to the University of Washington, where he studied business and went on to work in accounting for Ernst & Young. He also ran his first ultramarathon at age 20.