![Image](http://thenewmodality.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/Elaine_Wherry-large.jpg)
Contributor:
Elaine Wherry, chocolate maker and startup founder
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.
![Image](http://imaketheater.com/newmodality_x/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/mini_gradient_divider.png)
“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.”
![Image](http://imaketheater.com/newmodality_x/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/mini_gradient_divider.png)
What are some of your own favorite past projects? Why do you feel great about them?
What’s a specific project that you’re excited about right now?
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?
![Image](http://imaketheater.com/newmodality_x/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/mini_gradient_divider.png)
Transparency Notes
![Image](http://imaketheater.com/newmodality_x/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/mini_gradient_divider.png)
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
![Image](http://imaketheater.com/newmodality_x/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/mini_gradient_divider.png)