In a matter of months, Annie Leverich’s mornings have shifted from stressed and filled with uncertainty to something more like controlled chaos.

The mother of two little ones was among the thousands of USAID employees who lost or left their jobs under a Trump administration-ordered dismantling of the international aid agency. Now she has plunged fully into a new life as a small business owner, developing a coffee company in Anne Arundel County.

On a recent morning, Lily, 4, and Hunter, 2, parade and dance around out of sync to tunes coming from a Fisher Price toy next to the gray sofa.

Leverich, 37, wraps backpack and lunchbox straps across her chest as she leads Lily, who opted for pink sunglasses to complete her outfit, and Hunter to their Subaru Outback in the driveway.

When she returns from drop-offs, Bagel the family’s beagle mix eagerly awaits. So does her newfound job as her own boss.

First Light Coffee is Leverich’s online venture, through which she sells a Colombian dark roast and Ethiopian medium roast along with mugs, an e-book guide for reclaiming mornings and other trinkets. Leverich wants her coffee to be part of the morning ritual many weave a cup into and to create community.

Before a termination notification in March, Leverich had been dedicated to her job of eight years in communications for the federal government — something she had envisioned as a lifelong career. But she had always harbored an interest in coffee, and knowing her unemployment was guaranteed, she decided to take the leap.

“It’s a pivot that I have always wanted to try and it’s not an opportunity that I would have pursued on my own,” Leverich said.

As residents of Deale in Anne Arundel County, a beachy, close-knit neighborhood by the water, Leverich and her husband thought a nautical name for the business made sense. They tossed around ideas while out at dinner one night, and a woman at the table next to them mentioned that she owned a coffee shop, Leverich said.

It was either an incredible coincidence — or a sip of fate.

Leverich knows she’s “very fortunate” to be able to take the risk and build a small business, especially since her husband has a stable income as a partner at a consulting firm. She knows all too well how colleagues are struggling to continue work similar to USAID and remain in the D.C. area.

Even with her family’s safety net, her new career has its challenges. She must learn the ins and outs of running a small business — navigating the finances, packaging and postage, managing her website and ordering and making products — while raising young kids, wearing all the hats to make it work.

She uses a local roaster and has her coffee displayed in a nearby grocer, Christopher’s Fine Foods. Her shelf is at the end of aisle three near the pudding cups, so if you reach the assortment of deli meats, you’ve gone too far.

“It’s very different not having a team around me,” she said as she put bags of coffee in teal envelopes cushioned with bubble wrap. “I miss that a lot.”

Leverich had long been a communications professional. She studied corporate communications at the College of Charleston and graduated from the University of Maryland’s journalism school. Leverich worked at NBC News, the Chesapeake Bay Foundation and the United Nations World Food Programme before landing a “dream job” as a press and communications adviser in USAID’s Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance.

She said she was motivated by the mission and work of USAID, whether it meant being deployed to Mozambique for Cyclone Idai response in 2019, or simply telling USAID’s story through external communications.

Leverich said she didn’t intend on leaving, but starting shortly after President Donald Trump took office for a second time in January, there were signs that USAID, an agency established during the Kennedy administration, was in the crosshairs.

Positions they were planning to hire for never got filled. Within 30 minutes of receiving an email about not renewing contracts, Leverich watched as multiple workers placed their belongings in boxes and left. The changes were “so sudden so no one had time to process,” Leverich said.

Then there were furloughs. And for the first time, she saw the organization she admired caught in the throes of political warfare.

“It became a political punching bag that was foreign to the work,” she said.

In April, Leverich asked to be put on administrative leave until July 1, which officially marked the end of the agency. By spring, she decided to take the reins of her situation and build her coffee business.

“She’s been mentioning it for years, and so I was just really proud of her for actually making that dream a reality, even though it came around unfortunate circumstances,” said Leverich’s longtime friend Lauren Sheram.

Leverich can’t quite let go of her passion for international aid.

Five percent of the proceeds from First Light Coffee go to World Central Kitchen.

And she thinks someday an iteration of USAID will return — and she said she’d enjoy going back to that kind of work.

Leverich keeps in touch with her USAID crew through group chats and occasional meet-ups.

Talking with her former colleagues, she can see how bleak the job market is, and how it is flooded with former federal workers. Several of them were applying for the same gigs, Leverich said.

In Maryland, about 1 in 10 workers as of 2023 was a federal employee. In June, the state’s federal workforce saw its largest single-month job loss since 1996, according to estimates released by the Federal Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Leverich said the group chat is a great source of moral support as they reiterate to each other that their federal work mattered, and reassure each other that they’re willing to be professional references throughout the job hunting.

At Leverich’s coffee company, it is federal workers who have also been her most consistent customers, she said.

She is poised to grow First Light Coffee. She and her husband have purchased a small trailer, which they’ve gutted and plan on turning into a mobile coffee unit.

It’s “the most fun you never want to have again,” Leverich joked. She said it will be ideal for pop-ups and other outings she’d like to attend by fall.

With her personal and professional life headquartered at home, Leverich is adamant about getting out of the house, networking and seeking advice from those who understand the ups and downs of being a small-business owner.

Rachel McCleery, another longtime friend of Leverich’s and a former federal worker, started a small public affairs business a couple months before Leverich.

They also have sons who are close in age. The two try to get together a couple of times a month to vent, share things they’ve learned and eventually plan to volunteer somewhere together.

“One of the things that we talked about is helping each other work through our own vulnerabilities and areas of business development that we feel less certain on because there really isn’t anybody that you can bounce those things off of,” McCleery said.

Leverich is prioritizing getting the mobile unit ready and pitching herself to other grocery stores to get her coffee on the shelves. She was so used to telling the story of other people in her communications role, she’s entering new territory centering herself.

And she’s learning to pace herself, which might mean putting the laptop away when it’s time even if an old habit wants to reel her back in.

“It’s not a crisis any more,” Leverich said.