Our Team
Diana Johnston
Lead Educator and Co-founder
Diana has been in the coffee industry for 18 years, across two continents, having started her journey whilst in high school back in the Americas. She has worked within and across the value chain in roles including, but not limited to, roasting, training, quality control, and operations. From cafe through to green coffee importer.
She is the current 2x UK Roasting Champion, a SCA UK Sensory Judge, a certified AST for the Specialty Coffee Association, and a licensed Q Grader Arabica.
Leon Zadeh
Co-founder
Leon Zadeh has over twenty years of business experience, and over the past decade he has been specialising in coffee, cafes and hospitality. He founded the independent coffee group Saint Coffee in 2011. The group has organically grown to seven curated London neighbourhood Saint Espresso sites, with an eighth site due to open in Bank in March 2023.
To drive the quality of the coffee and the training programmes, Leon has overseen the building of the Saint Coffee Roastery and training centre at the Hackney location. The roastery not only supplies the Saint Espresso Cafes, but also supports several other leading hotels, restaurants and cafes across Europe with their coffee programmes, covering the supply of coffee, machines, education and training. Leon is committed to ensuring ethical practices across the business focusing on sourcing coffee from farms across the world, through short supply chains and using transparent sourcing programmes.
