Contributor: Elaine Wherry

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Contributor:
Elaine Wherry, chocolate maker and startup founder

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Profile edited by Michael J. Coren

Photo courtesy of E. Wherry
Last update: Oct. 30, 2019

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Elaine Wherry is working to make culture more creative and humane. Her chocolate company donated a reward to our original Kickstarter when we launched The New Modality. Here's a bit more about her.

What’s your quick bio?

I grew up on a goat farm in Willard, Missouri. My father sold wood stoves and my mother was a nurse. It was violin that brought me to Stanford University, though instead of majoring in music, I took a detour to major in Symbolic Systems (HCI) instead. After graduating, I managed a Usability & Design team at Synaptics and started working on a startup, Meebo, as the head of our product and front-engineering teams, eventually serving as co-founder and CXO. We launched in 2005 and were acquired by Google in 2012.

After 2012, I took a sabbatical to work on an (unfinished) graphic novel, contributed to the Wall Street Journal's Accelerator series, and advised other startups. In 2015, I teamed up with my husband to bring a chocolate factory to San Francisco. You can find Dandelion Chocolate on Valencia Street, on 16th Street, in the Ferry Building, and in five locations in Japan.

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“I would love to see an adult 4-H Club in San Francisco where volunteers would offer multi-week courses with like-minded learning-oriented individuals.”

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What are some of your own favorite past projects?  Why do you feel great about them?

After my last startup, all I wanted to do was work on a long-term, independent creative project — something that didn't require team alignment or key metrics. I spent two years teaching myself how to draw. I started with stick figures, progressed to mitten hands, and finally created a 300-page full-color graphic novel that one day will be out in the world.

What’s a specific project that you’re excited about right now?

Creating more professional opportunities for blue-collar, non-tech workers in San Francisco.

What is a cultural phenomenon, experiment, or moment that has inspired you in the past?

This is probably a longer discussion, but a moment in US history that fundamentally changed me was when Supreme Court Justice Kennedy cast the landmark vote against the Defense of Marriage Act in 2013. Up until that moment, I assumed that culture changed incrementally, perhaps in decades or centuries. This was the biggest progressive shift I'd ever witnessed in our country, and what I thought would take at least another fifty years, happened almost overnight.

What's a relatively small, highly achievable dream of a better world that you sometimes think about but haven't done yet?

I grew up in a rural town with an active 4-H club. [Editor's Note: 4-H is an American nonprofit network that creates hands-on learning and education programs for youth.] 4-H parents would volunteer to teach a subject for 4-6 weeks (e.g. cooking, art, chickens) and children would meet at that family's house for regular lessons. My mother taught dog obedience each Saturday and the other 4-H'rs would bring their dogs to our front yard to practice sit, stay, and come. My father taught photography and I learned how to make a pinhole cameras and to develop prints in a darkroom.
 
Even with limited means in our community, I learned a lot by seeing the workrooms, kitchens, and hobbies of neighboring adults. Today, I wish I had never graduated from 4-H. I would love to see an adult 4-H in San Francisco where volunteers would offer multi-week courses with like-minded learning-oriented individuals.
 
Also, pop-up miniature golf courses where each course is designed by an artist in abandoned parking garages :)
 
What's your favorite thing about The New Modality? 
 
Intelligent, inquisitive people rethinking our culture.
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Transparency Notes

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This profile was edited by Michael J. Coren. Michael is a journalist focused on business, technology, and science — especially climate science — living in San Francisco. More about him at his NewMo profile

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