Also nicknamed the queen of specialty coffee, she was the first to coin this term.

Knutsen used this name to refer to high-quality coffee beans produced in small batches and microclimates . It could be said that Erna was in fact the one who discovered this specialty within the world of coffee, although it was not a discovery per se. Those special coffees were already there, but no one had paid attention to them. But she did it, and with her tenacity and dedication she found them the place they deserved.

Erna was born in Norway in 1921, into a humble family. Despite belonging to a working class, practically poor family, his mother was always a coffee lover. She bought high-quality beans, and ground them every morning at 5 am to serve fresh coffee to her husband before going to work. His first memories associated with coffee date back to there.

At a very young age he moved to the United States with his family, fleeing the economic recession. Erna was always restless and ambitious , and the only way for a young girl to leave the family home in those times was to get married. That is why he married for the first time at the age of 18, without having finished his studies.

She had, however, knowledge of typing and shorthand, which soon allowed her to obtain a job as a secretary. Over the years she worked as an assistant in different companies, until she moved to San Francisco to work as secretary to the vice president of the American Molasses Company. It was there where he began to have a closer working relationship with the coffee sector.

Although her work interested her, it never stopped being a bridge for her. She began to express her interest in the coffee roasting and tasting process at the company, but at that time women were not allowed access to the tasting rooms. They were not even allowed to observe the roasting of the coffee samples.
After a while he began working for Bert Fulmer at BC Ireland, a coffee import trading company (among other products). Due to her merits, she went from being a mere secretary to being an executive assistant , a title that was not common for women at that time. One of the responsibilities associated with this new position was to maintain control of the entry and exit of the cafes.

Erna noticed that there were some lots of coffee that were too small to fill a container, and were sold by the bag. Large merchants were not interested in working with these quantities, but for the small roasters that were beginning to appear it was a viable (and appealing) option.
Erna was extremely persistent. Luckily, Fulmer (his boss) did not share prejudices with other men in the company, and in 1973 he was allowed access to the tasting room . She became an outstanding taster, quickly gaining reputation and gaining favor with small roasters.

In 1974, she was interviewed by the Tea & Coffee Trade Journal . In this interview, Erna spoke for the first time about “specialty coffees” to refer to the coffees she imported and sold. The name caught on in the industry and had a lot of impact, but Erna's true value was knowing how to see the value of this “small business” loaded with value and quality, in which small roasters were willing to pay more money for an outstanding product. . It changed the industry.

In 1985 he bought BC Ireland and renamed it Knutsen Coffee LTD and fulfilled his promise to fire part of the male staff that had closed so many doors for him.