100 Years | 100 Lives: Chocolovers

April 20, 2016

100 Years | 100 Lives: Chocolovers

Thanks to a grant from FedEx to document the lives of 100 JA alumni, we get to take you to El Salvador to meet Cindy Jazmin Amaya Gomez, CEO of Chocolovers, a JA company she started in high school. Working side-by-side with her grandmother, Cindy roasts cocoa beans over an open flame, hand peels them, and blends them into dark chocolate bars. With access to both local and international markets, to which she overnights deliveries, Chocolovers has been successful enough to pay for all four years of Cindy’s college education, and she plans to grow the company, using the marketing and production tools she learned in the JA Company Program. JA is “a way to empower yourself not only in business,” Cindy says, “but also as a person.”

Special thanks to FedEx, for helping us share our alumni stories; to Cindy, for letting us into her life; and to Persistent Productions for their beautiful video storytelling.