Stone Raises Cup to Leiva

Geovanni Leiva, co-founder of Leiva's Coffee, roasts a batch of coffee beans.

When Geovanni Leiva was launching his coffee startup in central Arkansas more than a decade ago, he got some unexpected help from Larry Stone, CEO of the Little Rock ad agency Stone Ward, and that blossomed into a fast friendship.

Kyle Floyd, who spent two decades at the firm as a creative director, met Leiva and was impressed by his vision for a coffee business in central Arkansas that would import coffee from his parents’ Guatemalan farm (see Leiva’s Coffee A Family Business from Bean to Mug). He promptly introduced Leiva to Stone, and the three began working together on a crown-based logo for the company based on the name of Leiva’s grandmother, Reina. “It means queen in Spanish.”

“Geovanni is impressive, a good and authentic man who’s full of faith and enthusiasm,” Stone said. “I was in at hello.” He calls Leiva “a bastion of the American dream.”

“He came here with virtually nothing, applied faith and a willingness to work hard, and he succeeded. That’s just what he’s done.”