Category: 434

Late last summer, four Crozet-based friends found themselves discussing the upcoming fall season—prepping for a new school year, planning autumnal activities, and cozying up their home décor. For Alexis Macias, Kristen Craig, Kathleen Ross, and Marilyn Speight, the latter always starts with the porch. 

“We had seen on Instagram a mom out of Texas who started offering a fall porch-decorating service for her neighborhood,” Speight says. And then they wondered: Why couldn’t they do the same thing in Charlottesville? A morning meeting at Mudhouse, and Porch Patch was launched shortly thereafter. 

Here’s how it works: The group has three packages (petite for $200, classic for $300, and grand for $450) that offer varying numbers and types of pumpkins, scaled to the size of your porch. Plus, you can add on other items like mums, kale, and hay bales, and the ladies will work with your own décor to mix in pieces you already have.

Since launching, Porch Patch has made connections with local farms and nurseries like Highbrighton and Middle River, and Speight says they sold out of their limited number of spots last season—more than 40 homes in the Crozet, Charlottesville, and Richmond areas. 

“People are incredibly busy and may not have the time to procure pumpkins for their porches personally, or perhaps they love the look but prefer to outsource to someone who has an eye for styling,” Speight says. “Our goal with this project was to offer any area resident the chance to bring the patch right to their front door.”

Preorders are underway (find them on Instagram @porchpatch), and installations will run through the month of October.

Think about the clothes you have in your closet. Or in your dresser. Or in the pile next to your bed. Think about a piece that has some special meaning to you. 

My mind goes to a watch that my partner (who, full disclosure, is the editor of this magazine) gave me on our wedding day, and to a loud floral shirt I would never have chosen on my own that she encouraged me to wear. Wearing the watch makes me feel closer to her; to me, it’s a more powerful symbol of our marriage even than my wedding ring, partly because nobody else knows what it means. Wearing the shirt—even just seeing it hang there in the closet—makes me feel more confident, because it reminds me that someone else has confidence in me. 

What are those pieces of clothing for you? What’s meaningful about them?

These are questions that Micah Kessel, executive director of the Playground of Empathy, often poses to groups going through the immersive, empathy-building experiences he and his team have designed. Some people resist, denying that they care that much about what they wear. But the emotions slowly come out. One person has a really comfortable sweater they always pull out at the start of fall. Another has a pair of slippers their grandfather wore.

After everyone has shared, Kessel asks members of the group to reflect on what they’ve appreciated from the stories they’ve heard. Without fail, no one mentions a single piece of clothing. What they remember are the emotions. 

“No one talks about the slippers, ever, ever, ever,” Kessel says. “It’s almost like a little magic trick that we get to watch every time.” 

The magic is empathy. The conversation about clothes provides a way of grasping the subjective validity of another person’s relationship with the world, and thus brings us closer together.

***

Kessel started Playground of Empathy with his friend Kelley Van Dilla in 2017. Van Dilla’s main work is in theater and film (they debuted their autobiographical film/play, Let Go of Me, last year at Live Arts); Kessel’s focus has been experience design (having worked on everything from escape rooms to restaurant design to art installations). Their first big project together was to build a giant shoe.

After 13 years in Europe, Kessel moved to Charlottesville “in the midst of a national tragedy,” he remembers—just a month after August 12. The city was “in a deep state of processing.” He had left his work as a behavioral design strategist in Amsterdam in order to think more deeply about the connection between emotions and education. Now that work seemed even more urgent. There are a thousand things to take away from that day, he says, “but for me personally, it was a reminder that the lack of emotional intelligence developed in our education system had become a harbinger for fascism.” He wanted to lay a foundation for the cultivation of real emotional nuance in this country. 

Kessel and Van Dilla believed that empathy was a skill that could be taught and practiced. But most of what we usually do to teach empathy is profoundly ineffective. That’s because we tend to leave things at the level of facts and concepts and moralisms, while empathy has to grow from experience.

They began collecting stories of marginalization and exclusion. The stories had to do with race, gender, sexuality, disability, body type—any number of ways people mark others off as alien. Then they scripted and produced first-person enactments of those experiences that pulled the viewer into the action. Then, joining forces with sculptor and designer Annie Temmink, they built the shoe.

A vibrant thing of orange, green, and yellow stripes, tied with bright pink laces, the shoe was big enough to walk through. You entered, by yourself, and watched the videos, maybe even donning a piece of clothing that put you in the mindspace of the subject. Alone, in someone else’s shoe(s), it became possible to imagine inhabiting a different body, a different relationship to other bodies, and to recognize how different that experience must be.

The shoe was a hit. They traveled across the country with it, visiting a host of colleges and companies, talking about empathy and inclusion. In 2020, they won an Innovation Fund Award from the Harvard Culture Lab. The project has now evolved into an ambitious effort to reimagine what diversity training should look like—not a seminar, not a presentation, but an experience of other experiences of the world.

***

Empathy is a tricky concept. Kessel tells me that people often nod to the German term Einfühlung—a word that literally means “feeling into” another—as the source of our definition. We usually talk about it as a matter of being able to feel what someone else is feeling. “But I think we’ve got it wrong,” he says. “I think we’ve really got it wrong.”

The problem is that, as we all know intuitively, truly feeling what someone else is feeling is impossible. “The neural network that is making up your state of being right now, that constellation of billions of neurons firing, will never be felt before or again exactly how it’s being felt by you or anyone else on earth—ever.” Every experience is utterly singular. 

Kessel is part of the Interdisciplinary Affective Science Lab at Northeastern University, run by the esteemed psychologist of emotion Lisa Feldman Barrett. That experience has given him a scientific understanding of emotion and empathy that deeply informs his way of approaching the issue.

If every experience is singular and it’s impossible to grasp any experience from the outside, what is empathy? It starts with what Kessel calls subjective realism: “a comfort with the realization that our reality is our own, and no one else’s.” I have to accept that my experience is not the measure of yours, nor yours of mine. 

But the distance between our realities does not doom us to separation. I can become curious about your experiences. I can share experiences of my own with you. When we do that, we grow closer to one another—even if neither of us has ever felt, or could ever feel, what the other is feeling. In encountering your experience, your reality, I learn to make space for you within mine. That’s the work of empathy.

In a paradoxical way, empathy is less about entering into another’s feelings than it is entering more deeply into your own. When I deepen my understanding of your experience of the world, I come to see my experiences in a new light. We grow closer to one another as we grow to know ourselves better, and we come to know ourselves better as we become closer to one another.

***

For the last year, Playground of Empathy has been contributing a regular feature to this magazine—“Charlottesville Street Style.” It spotlights local fashion, and crucially, asks the wearers why their clothing matters to them. The answers are illuminating. Some are protesting expectations. Some are declaring freedom. Some are connecting with their roots, or bringing cultures into fresh conversation with one another. Some are looking for ways to make old things new. “These clothes disclose my testimony,” said La’Tasha Strother in the summer 2021 edition.

In keeping with Playground’s mission, the point of these features is not to set an example; it is not to tell you how to dress. Kessel sometimes says that theirs is the only diversity and inclusion training in the country that does not tell you what to think. The point of what they do, rather, is to give you an opportunity to encounter another person’s experience, to open a window into the way that others relate to their clothing, and so maybe to bring you closer to them. The point is to prompt you to reconsider yourself anew.

We do not often think of empathy as having much to do with the way we get dressed in the morning. But for Kessel, our clothing can be “the great equalizer in a world of inequality: we’re all finding meaning in the items that we connect to our embodied self.” This, perhaps, is the style of empathy.

T

ori Cherry’s work with New City Arts started long before she was hired as its Welcome Gallery Manager. The 2021-2022 Aunspaugh Fellow at UVA worked at a co-instructor for Summer Studio @ The Fralin, which culminated in a week-long show at New City. In November of 2021, she exhibited her own work, a collection of still life and figurative paintings entitled “In Good Time.” 

“‘In Good Time’ refers not to any anticipated moment or ending but instead to an implied attitude of patience,” Cherry said in her artist statement. “Patience is what enables me to see value in unlikely subjects.”

As Welcome Gallery Manager, Cherry will lead programs, exhibitions, and events. We challenged her to a quickfire interview to get to know her better.

First art memory:

I grew up going to my grandparents’ church, which meant getting to church early and staying for almost the entire day. I’d say my earliest memory would be sitting in church pews drawing on the back of the service pamphlets. Being an only child, I had to find ways to keep myself entertained. My mom always encouraged me to carry around a little notebook and pen in the spirit of productivity (which I still do today), so drawing was what I did to keep myself busy. I’m sure she didn’t mean for my productivity to look like constant doodling, but she saw I was invested in it and encouraged me regardless.

Favorite artist:

Really tough question, and I have to pick two because they’re both tied for my top spot: Jennifer Packer and Nicolás Uribe.

What are you watching?

I’m currently rewatching a favorite show of mine called “Sense8.”

What are you currently reading?

Transit by Rachel Cusk.

What’s the top song on your Spotify playlist?

“Talk Down” by Dijon.

If past lives are real, what was yours?

I think in my past life I was an ornithologist.

First career you dreamed of having as a kid:

I had a really long phase where I was totally convinced I’d be an astronaut. I’m still super interested in space and weather, but I’m not nearly as invested as I was as a kid. I think once I heard about how physically taxing it is for your body to be in space, I was a bit turned off.

Favorite thing about Charlottesville’s art scene:

The community support! I’m so amazed by how much talent there is just within Charlottesville, and how supportive local artists and art-lovers are to each other. People go out of their way to attend each others’ art events, buy local art, and are just so encouraging. I always feel really motivated and supported whenever I get a chance to engage with the arts community here.

New Hill Development Corporation got its start from a series of conversations about the history and future of Black wealth in Charlottesville. In early 2017, Wes Bellamy and Kathy Galvin, then City Council members, gathered a group of Black entrepreneurs and community leaders to talk about Black representation in city development. But the scope of the discussion quickly grew. 

They wanted to develop sustainable economic power for Black communities, so they set out to understand the history of that power.

They uncovered a story that is only now becoming more widely known, a story about a Charlottesville that was majority-Black after the Civil War, about a Charlottesville whose largest landowners were Black, and about a Charlottesville with a flourishing Black entrepreneurial class, concentrated especially in Vinegar Hill. They also uncovered a story about white legislators who passed laws meant to keep Black people from acquiring new land, about white city officials who neglected the infrastructure in Black neighborhoods, and about white city planners who decided to raze Black property, using the infrastructure they had neglected as justification, in order to make space for new development. In short, they found a story of the suppression and destruction of Black wealth. 

“Just as there was intention around destroying something, there has to be intention around building something back,” says Yolunda Harrell, one of New Hill Development’s founders and now its CEO.

Over the last five years, New Hill has been building. Its first major initiative, the initiative that gave it its name, was a small area development plan that aimed to revitalize Black housing and business in Starr Hill. At the heart of the plan that was developed in 2019—itself a master class in holistic urban development­—is an ingenious reimagination of City Yard, a 10-acre piece of city-owned land, as a mixed-use residential and commercial area. It’s a perfect illustration of entrepreneurial spirit: transforming a municipal storage site into the heart of a revivified Vinegar Hill. 

The coming of the pandemic in 2020 forced Harrell and New Hill to turn their creativity and resourcefulness back on themselves. They completed their Starr Hill Vision Plan—and, as of last November, saw it officially incorporated into Charlottesville’s Comprehensive Plan­­­­—but knew that it would be impossible, with the inevitable redirection of resources and energy, to enact it immediately. What would they do in the meantime? “People should not have to wait for generations for things to change,” Harrell says. New Hill wanted to act. 

The pandemic was devastating for all business owners, but it was especially so for Black entrepreneurs. The U.S. House of Representatives’ Committee on Small Business reported that 41 percent of Black-owned businesses closed their doors between February and April of 2020. As New Hill worked with Black-owned businesses to stay afloat, it saw a need for a more robust network of support for Black entrepreneurs, leading to the creation of BEACON: the Black Entrepreneurial Advancement and Community Opportunity Network.

With a critical mass of Black entrepreneurs in the food industry, that’s where BEACON’s energies would be focused. And true to form, the incubator would not focus on only one area of need. In addition to training—not only general education for entrepreneurs, Harrell says, but specialized training about the food industry—BEACON will provide marketing and bookkeeping help that will enable its members to get loans and leases, access to a commercial kitchen so no one will be burdened with crippling startup costs, and even storefront space for testing new concepts and getting off the ground. The BEACON project has already begun building out training and support, and is looking for funding for kitchen and storefront spaces. “What we wanted to do,” Harrell says, “was to look at a way of helping people embrace their dream without risking their financial future: ‘I can dare to dream this dream if I want to.’”

Vinegar Hill flourished before; it is no pipe dream to think a new hill can flourish, too. If it does, it will be because of the patient, enterprising, and determined work of people like Harrell. “We want to make sure that something is happening,” she says. “We are in a position to help move lives forward in a way that the community wants to move their life forward.”

Gwen Cassady speaks like she works: In many directions, all at once. She’s built her a professional life around countless nonprofit and for-profit projects, and she’s overcome much to get there.

Abused and trafficked by her mother and others as a child, and later driven into homelessness multiple times, Cassady spoke with C-VILLE in early 2020 just weeks before she visited the United Nations to detail her experiences on the street. Two years later, she tells 434 she’s still pushing causes at a torrid pace.

434: What’s the latest for Gwen Cassady?

Gwen Cassady: When I went to the U.N. and presented, they were trying to determine two resolutions pertaining to the global homelessness pandemic. The first was for a measurement system to count the world’s homeless population. The second was to create a definition of homelessness. They were unable to come to terms with the definition, but they have started to count the homeless utilizing a new measurement system and metrics. It was the first intergovernmental dialogue that the U.N. has ever had on homelessness.

You’re also working on a housing project as you pursue a masters
in global development practice at Harvard.

Yes, the Cville Villas. It will be the first net zero small-home community in Virginia, and it will be located in Albemarle County. Currently, we are not able to do everything we want to because of zoning; it will not be totally off the grid. It will have four quads, one for homeless veterans, one for foster kids, a third for domestic violence survivors, and the fourth will be for vacation rentals to raise revenue. Residents will have unique skillsets so everyone can live and work together. I have started to make some headway in terms of meeting the right local officials. We have a strong team we are collaborating with.

Why is homelessness so important to you?

Everybody would say homelessness is important to me because I have been homeless four times, starting at the age of 14, but it is much deeper than that. It is so personal. I was forced to endure situations as a child that were beyond deplorable. That is the underlying reason.

You haven’t offered many details about the abuse you suffered in the past.

It’s coming out soon, so it is important to go ahead and lay the groundwork. I don’t want to scare people, though. I had to go through some heavy shit, and I didn’t have my memories surface until I was in my 40s. I had a specialist help me walk through the more detrimental and disturbing things, and I was able to uncover so much. It was a truly cathartic process.

Where exactly will your full story be coming out?

We are turning the short documentary If It Could Happen to Me, It Could Happen to You into a full-length feature. It premiered at the U.N. I am hoping that by the time this goes out, we will be close to finishing the full-length.

Tell me about some of your other projects. 

Through Managing Love, we are working with a delegate in northern Virginia on a new anti-trafficking law to fight it at the systemic level. The first time I spoke with Delegate Delaney, I bawled my eyes out. It was powerful and cathartic to be taking that baby step toward something good. There has to be goodness in the world that comes out of what I had to endure as a child.

What is Managing Love’s relationship with Earth Day?

We just had our second Love Mother Earth festival—this is really cool. We are a partner with the international Earth Day Network. They nominated me as one of seven out of 6,000 global volunteers to be recognized. Essentially, it’s promoting Earth Day and the Earth Day organization and all the work they are doing globally.

I know you also do some for-profit work to support Managing Love. How do you find time for it all?

What keeps me going is the love and appreciation that I receive from individuals we are helping. It is each individual, unique person that really drives me. It is being an advocate for causes and social injustices and for those that don’t have a voice. This is going to make me cry—it’s okay, I love it—but it’s all for that little inner child, that 4-year-old inside of me who couldn’t do anything about my situation even when I tried my hardest. There are some scars that will never truly heal, but that is what keeps me going.

Alex Bryant is not even 30 years old, and being named Ix Art Park Foundation executive director in January was only the latest milestone along his ascent to local leadership.

Bryant joined the Charlottesville community in 2011, enrolling at UVA as an engineering student. He switched to music when an advisor told him to do what he loved. That led to his first job out of school: coordinator for Monticello’s Heritage Harvest Festival. He then moved along the festival circuit to the Tom Tom Foundation, where he took only three years to leapfrog the ranks to managing director.

In 2021, Bryant went to work alongside Ix Art Park executive director Susan Krischel. Less than a year later, he assumed Krischel’s role as she stepped away from day-to-day operations.

“She was looking to pass the torch,” Bryant says. “We had talked, and we share a similar vision.”

And what is Bryant’s vision? He starts with the Ix building’s history—a former textiles factory sitting dormant for more a decade and a half as downtown Charlottesville grew increasingly vibrant around it. Reopened and reimagined, Krischel and her co-founders believed the area could be a hub for creativity and productivity. It could be a commercial center with restaurants and shops, but it could also be more.

Through his experience with Tom Tom and beyond, Bryant brings a wealth of nonprofit programming knowledge to Ix, and that stands to be his focus as the park moves forward. Art classes, dancing, festivals, outdoor film screenings, farmers’ markets, concerts—it’s all critical to keeping IX alive, and a lot of will continue to be “absolutely free,” Bryant says.

“People can come down to the park, they can paint with watercolors, and they can just exist in a free space,” he says. “The art and the public space portion of it is the magic jewel. You don’t have to be doing anything. You can just read a book or take a nap.”

Bryant hopes to build on Ix’s existing relationships with the local Boys & Girls Club, Cville Pride, and other community organizations. And he wants to continue drawing people to The Looking Glass, Ix’s 2-year-old immersive art exhibit.

When she stepped down from the Ix directorship, Krischel said, “Alex has the energy, vision, and talent to guide us through our future growth plans.” And the young leader has already had opportunities to prove her correct. Ix is in the process of building a new children’s nature area and a 20-foot x 70-foot pergola using beams from the original Ix factory to give park users shade during the summer—the latter being a $100,000 improvement.

Bryant knows fundraising will be a critical part of his efforts. Ix has long operated on an event funding model, fueling operations with gate fees. But the pandemic tested the approach. As they ramp up fundraising, Bryant and his team hope to draw funding from the grassroots, rather than one-time handouts from deep-pocketed organizations, attracting donations one person—and even $1—at a time.

Assuming the money is where it needs to be, Bryant sees the way forward clearly: To cultivate a pocket of creativity drawing folks not only from around the city but from all over Virginia and beyond to experience the humanity he sees as being inherent in art.

“A world in black and white…in boxes and completely orderly, the humanity of it is just gone,” Bryant says. “Art is what makes us people.”

Former librarian Flannery Buchanan had always dreamed of opening
her own bookstore, but financial limitations forced her to get inventive: She bought a 1966 Banner camper and turned it into Bluebird Bookstop, a bookstore on wheels. The curated collection includes a little something for everyone—by design.

“Right now times are hard and stressful and I’ve found that people just want human connection,” Buchanan says. “Books are the perfect way to connect with other humans.”

434: Tell me a little about your background and how it led you to the Bluebird Bookstop. 

Flannery Buchanan: I trained as a librarian and worked briefly before staying home to raise my four children. My oldest is now 16 and all four are avid readers and bookstore fans. Whenever we travel, we love to find the local bookstores and discuss what we like, what their collection was like. It’s always been a dream for a family bookstore but the financials of owning a bookstore can be tough especially in a high cost-of-living area like Charlottesville/Crozet. So in response, I figured out an asset-light model: no rent, low overhead, take the books to the people! We live in such a beautiful place with so many outdoor meeting places, that it was easy to dream about parking the trailer at vineyards, breweries, markets, anywhere that people are already gathering. 

Did you renovate the camper yourself? How long did it take and what was the process like?

Ha! I’m not very handy, but I’ve certainly learned a lot! I bought the camper gutted, however, I tore out the flooring and stripped the roof of old sealant. After that, I turned it over to my contractor John Garland and his team. 

What genres of books do you stock in the camper? 

I like to think I have a little bit of everything, something for everyone. I carry mostly new and notable because of the space constraints and so that whenever you walk in, there’s something fresh and new that maybe you haven’t seen before. We have a very healthy and diverse Young Adult and middle grade section. It is a family business, and my children love to help me curate those sections. They have great taste and they’re great salespeople. 

Where can we find you?

I am usually parked every weekend at vineyards, breweries, coffee shops, markets. I keep a calendar on my website and I post every week on Instagram where I will be. I also love to do special events like author events, Bookish meetups, and book clubs. 

Back in the spring of 2020, while a student at UVA, Alec Brewer noticed something outside of his apartment complex that didn’t sit quite right: mattresses stacked 20-high, ready to be sent to the landfill. Around the same time, he was learning about the concept of customer discovery in one of his classes. He put two and two together and, with four co-founders, came up with Refurnished.

The nonprofit matches those in need with donated items—sofas, dressers, rugs, and, of course, mattresses.

“We’re the only nonprofit in the area that will accept mattresses under 10 years old with tags,” says Morgan Chung, the organization’s head outreach specialist. 

Here’s how it works: After asking for furniture requests, Refurnished matches a donation with a recipient. From there, volunteers take care of the handoff. 

“We realized that many people do not have a vehicle large enough to transport furniture or can’t afford a U-Haul, so we do everything from pickup to drop off,” Chung says. The nonprofit even cleans each donated piece before it gets matched with a recipient, who is often found through Refurnished’s partners, Habitat for Humanity and Come As You Are Cville.

Chung says inventory is at its most plentiful toward the end of the school year when students are moving out of their apartments, but the nonprofit has a catalog of currently available items on its website, refurnishedcville.org.

Jacquelyn Lazo thinks a lot about communications. So, as the Charlottesville resident spoke to a friend whose child was having trouble with the COVID-19 pandemic, she was really listening.

A former Darden Report managing editor and current poetry magazine proofreader, nonprofit communications consultant, and engagement specialist for Save the Children U.S., Lazo sprung to action. She started talking to kids. What were they feeling as the pandemic evolved? 

Lazo’s initial discussions within her circle led to wider conversation and eventually to a new book, Comeback Kids: A Pocket Guide to Post-Pandemic Parenting, written with family friend and University of Pittsburgh Professor of Psychiatry Frank DePietro.

Lazo, who will host three fireside chats about Comeback Kids at Jefferson-Madison Regional Library on March 24, April 21, and May 19, recently spoke with 434 about the book and beyond.

434: How did you come to the idea for the book?

Jacquelyn Lazo: I was talking to a former colleague around the time the pandemic started. It was her daughter’s birthday, and the party had to be canceled. Then her daughter started to show some signs that were a little concerning—just asking a lot of questions her mom didn’t have answers for. She didn’t even know where to start, who to talk to. I have always been interested in mental health issues and working with children, and it got me thinking. I wanted to see if I could find a way to help other families.

So the process started well before you decided to write a book?

In April 2020, I made a short questionnaire to get some feedback, to start the dialogue with kids. It was five questions trying to get everyone to start talking about this. How do you start to talk to your kids about something you don’t know anything about? What we found from those who responded was that it did allow them to open up the conversation. And, it was not necessarily this big scary thing.

What was the next step?

I thought it was going to turn into a children’s book. But as we got responses from people all over the United States and even internationally, it became a whole journey. My background is in writing and communications; I am not an expert on mental health. Frank is a family friend who has watched all of my husband’s family grow up. After looking at the kids’ quotes, he said, “What kids need to hear is that their parents are okay.”

So how should people read Comeback Kids?

It really is meant to be a pocket guide. Dr. DePietro and I are both parents. He is a father of four. I have a little girl at home. We were coming at it as parents. Parents know their kids best, and this book is to be used at their discretion when it’s helpful.

Is there a specific type of parent or family that would benefit most from the book?

I would say it’s even for the broader audience of caregivers—the people that care and are paying attention. There is so much data pointing to the fact that having a good, loving relationship with adults is instrumental for kids. And while the book is specifically around the pandemic, it is really about helping communicate during times of stress and change. We put it at a relatively low price point because we want it to be accessible. We’re doing a lot locally with the library. The goal is to begin to create a community of caregivers.

What about the caregivers who are feeling pandemic fatigue?

That is huge. We all feel that. Some days you won’t want to pick up this book, some days you will. And as much as we don’t want to hear about the pandemic more, the nice thing about the book is that it is forward thinking and hopeful. The book is really focused on tapping into humanity. Your kids are little humans, and raising them is a hard job anytime. Now, we are faced with doing it in a time of greater stress. This next generation has been forced to grow up a little faster, and in a way, that is going to serve them well.

Esther Bobbin only had to be near the chocolate industry to fall in love. Now, through her nonprofit United By Chocolate, she’s trying to change the business for the better by breaking down language barriers.

“There are about 4.5 million cacao producers worldwide, and the majority of them don’t speak English,” Bobbin says. “And yet, the majority of chocolate industry groups do all of their events in English. Imagine what we can do, especially now with Zoom and other technology, if we could just translate events into one other language. We can reach so many more people.”

Years ago, Bobbin was working for a government contractor in Seattle and learned her firm’s neighbor was Theo Chocolate, the first fair trade chocolatier in the United States. Drawn to the Theo mission, Bobbin toured the facility multiple times and learned cacao producers often struggle to earn a living wage.

Bobbin, who “grew up in a very international household” with her father and Peruvian mother, eventually left her government contractor job and completed an MBA. She then got involved with the Northwest Chocolate Festival—never forgetting about those industry-wide wage disparities. She thought making the festival accessible to non-English speakers could give them game-changing new networking and educational opportunities.

“It started as something simple, and honestly it was kind of naïve of me,” Bobbin says. “But you would see the cacao producers, who would come to the festival with these baggies of beans to try to connect with the chocolate makers, and they were losing out on this huge opportunity.”

In 2018, Bobbin and her husband moved away from the Pacific Northwest. They had ties to central Virginia and chose Charlottesville as their new home. In February 2019, Bobbin founded United By Chocolate, a nonprofit aiming to “lift the barriers of language to amplify connection and trade” in the cacao industry.

Bobbin and United By Chocolate spent their first several years on translation projects, first manually transforming existing conference videos into new languages, then launching two automated translation efforts with Arizona State University and the University of Virginia. But the UVA project relied on dictation technology that wasn’t quite where it needed to be, Bobbin says, and she and her team tabled it.

In March 2021, Bobbin turned her attention to hosting her own chocolate industry conference. And in January of this year, the first inaugural United By Chocolate festival debuted virtually in three languages: English, Spanish,
and French. 

Bobbin hopes to hold the event annually and add Indonesian translations at some point in the future. In the meantime, United By Chocolate will distribute the money it has already raised through its Language Bridges program, work with other industry event organizers to encourage translations, and raise funds for future projects.

“For me, cacao and chocolate can be a vehicle for change,” Bobbin says. “The majority of cacao is grown in the southern hemisphere, and they take on so much risk in the supply chain…and end up getting cut out of pricing. It has always been an issue. It’s just that now, we are seeing it more.”