Sacred Grounds: From Soil to Soul
is a weeklong pop-up in Mexico City celebrating connection across cultures, ancestry, and the journey of coffee from origin to cup. The activation brings together creative, cultural, and culinary experiences that invite participants to explore ancestral rituals, diasporic storytelling, sensory engagement, and communal gathering—all anchored in our shared humanity and the rituals surrounding coffee. The experience honors the interconnectedness of people, land, and culture, tracing coffee’s path from the soils of Ethiopia and Mexico to the cups we share today.
Experiences
Explore the full lineup of experiences for the week below.
SATURDAY OCT 25
Into the Cupping
10 AM - 12 PM CST | Step into a sensory journey that traces coffee’s path from soil to soul. Guided by the Sip & Sonder and Tostador 1. team, you’ll take part in the ritual of coffee cupping—an intimate tasting practice rooted in curiosity and connection—featuring Native Mezcla, our new Ethiopia–Mexico blend. Together, we’ll explore the flavors, aromas, and textures that carry the stories of the land and the people behind each bean.
SUNDAY OCT 26
Nyam y Hablar
5 PM - 7 PM CST | Join us at Te Amo Jamaica for Nyam y Hablar, a late-afternoon gathering where we break bread over Jamaican cuisine, share stories, and celebrate the rich layers of culture and connection across the diaspora. “Nyam,” meaning to eat in Jamaican Patois, and “Hablar,” meaning to speak in Spanish, come together to honor food and conversation as bridges across communities.
TUESDAY OCT 28
Sacred Pathways Home
11 AM - 2 PM CST | In an ungrounding world, caring for an altar can be a necessary anchor back to our heart-selves. Gain insight and inspiration for your personal altar practice during a lecture & workshop led by Los Angeles-based designer/storyteller Schessa Garbutt (Firebrand). On Tuesday, October 28, we will take a walking meditation through the Jardín Botánico del Bosque de Chapultepe to ground into our intentions. On Thursday, October 30, we'll be at Mariane Ibrahim Gallery for a writing workshop centered around memory work and ancestry. Both sessions will offer frameworks for curating your altar, maintaining ritual cycles, and space for group knowledge sharing.
WEDNESDAY OCT 29
My Ancestors Are Black Futurists
2 PM - 4 PM CST | This conversation, led by Sip & Sonder co-founder Shanita Nicholas, explores Black futurism as both remembrance and reimagining — a space where ancestry and possibility converge. Through dialogue on time, lineage, and creativity, we’ll reflect on how the past, present, and future coexist in Black thought and expression. Participants are invited to consider how ancestral memory can shape visions of liberation, technology, and community yet to come.
THURSDAY OCT 30
The Gathering
The Gathering is the culminating celebration of Sacred Grounds: From Soil to Soul—a communal day of ritual, art, coffee, and connection at Mariane Ibrahim Gallery. Featuring different cultural guides, this closing event invites guests to honor the week’s shared experiences, reflect on ancestral ties, and celebrate the sacred act of coming together over coffee.
Explore the full lineup of the day’s sessions below:
Sacred Pathways Home
11 AM - 12 PM CST | In an ungrounding world, caring for an altar can be a necessary anchor back to our heart-selves. Gain insight and inspiration for your personal altar practice during a lecture & workshop led by Los Angeles-based designer/storyteller Schessa Garbutt (Firebrand). This writing workshop will be centered around memory work and ancestry, offering a framework for curating your altar, maintaining ritual cycles, and space for group knowledge sharing.
Roots of Being
12:30 PM - 1:30 PM CST | A guided journey into presence, belonging, and the quiet inheritance of life. Before we strive to find our purpose, we might pause to remember: our very being is a continuation of those who came before us. In this circle led by Sip & Sonder co-founder Amanda-Jane Thomas, we’ll explore the sacredness of simply existing—honoring the ancestors whose presence lives within us, and the quiet aliveness that needs no reason to be. Through gentle reflection and creative inquiry, we will reconnect with the deep lineage of Being itself.
1:30 PM - 3:00 PM CST | Join us for Midday Reverie, a midday gathering at Mariane Ibrahim Gallery’s restaurant Pánuco 36 where food, coffee, and sound meet in ritual and reverie. Enjoy Pánuco 36’s specially curated menu blending French and Mexican flavors, sip on coffee cocktails and tastings from Sip & Sonder, and vibe out to an immersive sound journey by Paris McCoy—a sound archivist weaving analog ritual and digital design. It’s an afternoon to savor, connect, and let the senses lead.
Midday Reverie
Clapback Ceremony
3:30 PM - 4:30 PM CST | A ritual of release and sonic restoration
Once every orbital cycle, a ceremonial emissary from the outer rings of Planet Esoterica arrives to transmute harm into harmony in the Clapback Ceremony for a ritual of release, divination, and sonic restoration, led by multidisciplinary artist, Autumn Breon.
Planet Esoterica is a care-powered, creativity-abundant world located 300 light-years from Planet Earth, where ancestors go to rest and reimagine. It is a place where refusal is a portal, adornment is armor, and joy is treated as sacred infrastructure. Harm is metabolized into power on Planet Esoterica and in this performance ritual, the artist serves as a care-charged envoy tasked with intercepting energetic trespasses and restoring vibrational clarity through spellwork, communion, and rhythm.
Audience members are invited to approach one by one, each carrying a microaggression or uninvited energy. Once spoken aloud to the artist, these harms are transformed. Breon responds with an incantation from Everyday Oracle, a deck designed for moments when refusal is the highest form of care. A ceremonial cup of coffeeis shared between them, sealing the pact of release. Together, they name the harm and transform it. The ceremony features a collective round of rhythmic clapping, live drumming, and call-and-response. The audience joins together in synchronized sound, a portal-opening gesture that reverberates with protection, clarity, and affirmation. The body becomes a site of joy, resistance, and connection.
Sunset Flow
5:00 PM - 6:00 PM CST | Join Dayanara Parra, a pilates practitioner bridging movement and intention, for Sunset Flow—an embodied session at sunset guiding participants through mindful movement, release, and reconnection. With attention to the root chakra, you’ll explore how breath, motion, and presence can unlock energy, restore balance, and cultivate awareness of your body and self. This is a moment to move, reflect, and reconnect with your own rhythms as the week comes to a close.
Up All Night
7:00 PM - 10:00 PM CST | Immerse yourself in an evening where sound, taste, and culture intertwine as we close out the week’s experiences. Up All Night brings together guided coffee tastings, specially curated coffee cocktails, and a vinyl listening experience curated by Paris McCoy—a sound archivist weaving analog ritual and digital design to create immersive soundscapes that bridge cultural memory and innovation. As the needle meets the record, each sip and sound becomes part of a shared ritual—honoring land, lineage, and lived experience.
Native Mezcla
Native Mezcla is Sip & Sonder’s limited-release Ethiopia–Mexico blend, featuring coffee from the Sidama region of Ethiopia and Veracruz coffee from Mexico, roasted in Mexico City by our local partner, Tostador 1. The blend embodies the spirit of connection that defines Sacred Grounds—a meeting of lands, lineages, and flavor profiles that reflect the dialogue between the two origins. With tasting notes of sweet juicy berry, lime, and stone fruit, Native Mezcla is a celebration of the shared stories, traditions, and care that shape each cup, inviting drinkers to experience the rich heritage and vibrant character of both coffees.
Partners
Learn more about each of our partners.
Autumn Breon
Autumn Breon is a multidisciplinary artist who investigates the visual vocabulary of liberation through a queer Black feminist lens. Using performance, sculpture, and public installation, Breon invites audiences to examine intersectional identities and Diasporic memory. Breon imagines her work as immersive invitations for the public to join in the reimagining and creation of systems that make current oppressive systems obsolete. Breon has created commissions for Art Production Fund, Frieze Art Fair, and the ACLU of Southern California. Breon’s performance history includes Hauser & Wirth, the Walt Disney Concert Hall, and the Water Mill Center. She is an alumna of Stanford University where she studied Aeronautics & Astronautics and researched aeronautical astrobiology applications. Breon is a recipient of the Crenshaw Dairy Mart Fellowship for Abolition & the Advancement of the Creative Economy and the Race Forward Fellowship for Housing, Land, and Justice.
Schessa Garbutt
Schessa Garbutt (they/them) is an award-winning Belizean-American designer, storyteller, near-futurist, and founder of Firebrand Creative House. Their studio practice focuses on brand identity and UI/UX for social impact initiatives and mission-driven organizations. Outside of their personal altar practice, Schessa has curated multiple temporary, interactive altars in celebration of Octavia Butler’s life and work. They have lectured on the intersections of aesthetics, spirit, and justice at numerous universities and design orgs, including at Where Are The Black Designers, IDEO, and Yale. In 2025, their large-scale collage works were permanently installed at Sip & Sonder's Downtown Disney location in Anaheim, CA. Recently, Firebrand published its first imprint, Time and Its Travelers (2025), a queer and BIPOC anthology exploring societal and personal relationships to time itself. Today, Garbutt lives and loves in the historically Black neighborhood of Leimert Park in Los Angeles, CA.
Paris McCoy
Paris McCoy is a transmedia artist and cultural futurist whose work examines the evolving relationship between technology, identity, and collective memory. Rooted in Los Angeles, her practice traverses storytelling, design, and speculative media to explore how culture is archived, remixed, and reimagined in the digital era.
Drawing from both analog traditions and emerging technologies, McCoy creates works that blur the boundaries between research and ritual, inviting audiences into participatory spaces of reflection, sound, and visual experimentation. Her projects often consider questions of authorship, belonging, and innovation, reframing how communities engage with the tools that shape their narratives.
Grounded in a philosophy of cultural continuity, McCoy’s work imagines the future as a living archive, where creative practice becomes a form of preservation, and preservation becomes a site of possibility.
Dayanara Parra
Dayanara Parra is a STOTT certified pilates practitioner bridging movement and the sacred, guiding participants through embodied release and reconnection. With a practice rooted in mindfulness and body awareness, she helps individuals return to balance through intentional movement. Dayanara specializes in rehabilitative, prenatal, postpartum, and athletic conditioning-focused pilates, bringing an intuitive, restorative approach to each session. Her work invites participants to explore the body as both vessel and storyteller—connecting physical alignment with emotional and ancestral grounding.
Amanda-Jane Thomas
Amanda-Jane Thomas is an entrepreneur, leader, and visionary with a passion for creating opportunities and empowering communities. A proud first-generation Brooklynite with roots in New York City’s rich cultural tapestry, Amanda-Jane has always seen herself as a global citizen whose life and work are guided by love, regard for humanity, and a belief in the boundless potential of connection. After graduating from Harvard College and earning her J.D. from Harvard Law School, Amanda-Jane built a dynamic career spanning Wall Street, entertainment, and law before pivoting to focus on impact at the intersection of culture, community, and business.
In 2017, she co-founded Sip & Sonder, a global Black women-owned coffee company and creative ecosystem where coffee, community, and culture truly connect. As Co-CEO, she leads its mission to redefine the global coffee experience and build pathways for storytelling, entrepreneurship, and collective growth for communities of color worldwide. She is also Co-Founder and President of Sonder Impact, a nonprofit dedicated to empowering Black communities through professional and personal development initiatives, and Managing Partner of her own law practice, representing clients in the entertainment and startup spaces.
Amanda-Jane’s multifaceted roles—as a daughter, sister, friend, and visionary—ground her work in authenticity and intention. She is deeply inspired by her community, drawing strength and motivation from the universe, people, and stories that have shaped her journey.
Shanita Nicholas
Shanita Nicholas is an accomplished attorney, entrepreneur, and co-founder of Sip & Sonder and Sonder Impact. With a background in chemical engineering, law, and business, she brings a unique blend of technical, legal, and creative expertise to her work.
Shanita began her career as a consultant at Booz Allen Hamilton, designing enterprise IT systems for government agencies, before becoming a corporate attorney at Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LLP and later Kirkland & Ellis LLP. Her legal practice has spanned derivatives, private equity, mergers & acquisitions, and venture capital, with a strong focus on supporting founders of color from startup to exit.
At Sip & Sonder, a global Black-women-owned coffee brand, Shanita builds community through coffeehouses, a roastery, and curated coffee goods. Sip & Sonder creates spaces for creativity, connection, and cultural representation while advancing sustainable, direct-trade sourcing. Its motto, “Come for the coffee, stay for the culture,” reflects its mission to celebrate diasporic stories from crop to cup.
Through Sonder Impact, Shanita advances entrepreneurship initiatives that expand access to resources, mentors, and capital for Black communities. She also serves on the Board of MEKKA and the Advisory Board of Women Founders Network. Shanita holds a B.S. in Chemical Engineering and a JD/MBA, all from Columbia University.
Malliha Ahmad
Malliha Ahmad is a brand strategist and growth consultant, who helps founders scale authentically. She turns bold ideas into breakthrough brands that founders can scale with confidence. As a nomadic consultant and strategist, she has spent the last decade helping corporations, startups, and thought leaders build authentic brands that connect deeply with their audiences. Her sweet spot? Working with founders who are ready to scale but need strategic clarity and execution support to get there.
Tostador 1.
Modern minimalism meets specialty coffee. Tostador 1. is a specialty coffee café and roastery located in La Juárez, Mexico City, offering expertly roasted beans in a refined space.
Mariane Ibrahim Gallery
Mariane Ibrahim Gallery is a contemporary art gallery founded by Mariane Ibrahim, focusing on artists from Africa and the African diaspora. The gallery has expanded its vision to represent a diverse, global roster of artists, with exhibition spaces in Chicago, Paris, and Mexico City. Its mission is to promote global artistic practices and expand the creative landscape.
Sacred Grounds: From Soil to Soul
Where every ground is sacred. Where every sip honors origin.