We the People of Chard & Stripes are a service-minded couple with a love for huge salads, documentaries and the advertising arts.
MARY-ELIZABETH HARMON,
Chard & Stripes Founding Mother
DR. MARY-ELIZABETH “MISS BIZ” HARMON is a scientist turned storyteller, caregiver and founder of Village Company 360 and Chard & Stripes, a “school” of prosperity making and word-of-mouth marketing platform for kind people, products and businesses in food, fashion and more.
A graduate of MIT and The Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, Mary-Elizabeth embraced her childhood love of telling tales (truthful ones) to overcome a health crisis triggered by a stifling career. She’s now writing her second book, “STRIDING GIANT: A Former Over-Thinking Scientist Finds Her Footing in a Wobbly World,” which is about using imaginative storytelling as a tool of transformation, and describes the decades-long birthing of Chard & Stripes.
After leaving the laboratory as an HIV researcher, Mary-Elizabeth worked at Greenpeace before joining the federal ranks in the Department of Health and Human Services, first at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and then the Office of Inspector General. In OIG, she evaluated programs and wrote data-driven stories (i.e., reports) for Congress, including a compelling account of Medicare home health fraud that prompted regulatory changes and several indictments.
Through Chard & Stripes, Mary-Elizabeth is mixing her love for storytelling with hard-won and fun-won wisdom to meet her mission of spreading prosperity by showing engaged citizens ways to make a great-feeling life and world, especially through the power of food and fashion.
Click here to read about Mary-Elizabeth’s upcoming book.
JEFFREY DAITZ,
Secretary of Farmer & Food Business Love
JEFF “DOG CHARMER” DAITZ is an espresso aficionado and cyclist who once rode his bike from Jerusalem to Eilat to promote a sustainable, secure and peaceful Middle East.* Since then, he’s been using his leg power to promote hospitality in the food industry.
A connector by nature who’s worked in coffee distribution, Jeff has racked up tens of millions of steps through Atlanta’s boutique and fine dining scene, which has perfectly positioned him to bring growers and purveyors of nourishing food into the Chard & Stripes community, as well as to bring the right players to the table to “secure more of life’s pleasures for the farmer,” as put by FDR, and more of earth’s bounty for the emerging restaurateur.
A wordplay enthusiast who studied at the former La Jolla Academy of Advertising Arts, Jeff has an uncanny ability to pull concepts from a hat practically on demand. As Secretary of Farmer & Food Business Love, he’ll draw on that skill to help present Chard & Stripes to people we wish to serve, and to create media campaigns to start a wave of enthusiasm for real food and the fine folks who make it possible for us to eat.
Contact Mary-Elizabeth or Jeff through their shared inbox:
hello[at]ChardandStripes.com
*IsraelRide.org