She built the one cacao company that shows you the receipt - the exact price paid to every farmer, printed and public. A decade later, still the only one.
At 5 in the morning in Cobán, Guatemala, a woman climbs into a truck for a two-hour drive into the highlands. By 8 she is standing over sacks of wet beans, cutting them open, checking fermentation, dryness, mold. A, B, or C. This is Emily Stone, CEO of a company that supplies hundreds of the world's best chocolate makers. She could be behind a desk. She would rather be at the fermentation pit.
Stone runs Uncommon Cacao, a group of Transparent Trade operations that sources from more than 10,000 smallholder farmers across 15-plus countries. The company does something no competitor will: it publishes the price paid at every link in the chain. Farmgate to exporter to chocolate maker. Names and numbers, out in the open. Ten years in, Uncommon is still the only international cacao trader that does it.
The distinction she insists on is the whole business. Traceability tells you where a bean came from. Transparency tells you what everyone got paid for it. Most of the industry sells the first and calls it the second. Stone sells the second and dares anyone to match her.
What she is really after is bigger than chocolate. She wants to decommoditize cacao - to end the arrangement where a farmer is an anonymous input and a price is a secret. In her chain, the farmer is the protagonist. The math is the marketing.
Smallholder producers across a sourcing network spanning more than fifteen countries.
The only international cacao trader publishing verifiable prices for every transaction - after 10+ years.
In Guatemala, where farmers once sold only to "coyote" middlemen, her operation paid roughly double.
Certified since 2013; 2024 recertification score of 113.4, nearly double the median business.
Maya Mountain Cacao grew from zero farmers at launch to 119 producers by 2012.
Double major in Sociology and Arabic - courses on trade and globalization pointed her south.
"Uncommon Cacao is telling the story of the power of connection."
The industry loves the word "transparent." Stone gave it a definition you can check: verifiable published pricing for every transaction related to a cacao purchase, including who produced it and where.
Most certifications stop at a label. A stamp says a bean is ethical; it doesn't say what the farmer was paid. Stone flipped that. In her model, the number is the proof - and the accountability runs in both directions, from jungle to bar.
"Transparent trade is verifiable published pricing for every transaction... including information about who produced it, and where."— Emily Stone
Directional illustration of Stone's stated model; not audited figures.
Graduates Georgetown (C'07), Sociology and Arabic. Then joins Green Corps, an environmental organizing program she credits for her management and strategy chops.
Co-founds Maya Mountain Cacao in Belize with Alex Whitmore of Taza Chocolate and Jeffrey Pzena. Launches that November, building a nearly all-indigenous Maya team.
The Belize farmer network grows from 0 to 52 to 119 producers. Word travels; the waiting list of chocolate makers outgrows the supply.
Named an Ashoka Fellow - the only one in the chocolate supply chain. Company earns B Corp certification. Selected as a McNulty Fellow at Agora Partnerships.
Launches Cacao Verapaz in Guatemala, becoming the first exporter of premium cacao from indigenous Maya communities to the U.S.
Consolidates under the Uncommon Cacao group, moves the operating base stateside, and is named an Unreasonable Fellow.
Re-certifies as a B Corp at 113.4 - and remains, still, the only international cacao trader publishing every price.
She insisted on driving herself through the highland villages, past the farms, in a place where women behind the wheel are rare. Not a symbol she planned - a decision she made.
"There aren't a lot of women who drive in the villages," she noted. Visibility mattered. Leadership, she figured, is partly just being seen doing the thing everyone assumed you couldn't.
There's a smaller confession in her story too. At Georgetown she dodged the finance classes. Later, forced to learn financial modeling through accelerators, she found she actually enjoyed it - because in her business the spreadsheet is not abstract. Every cell is a farmer's paycheck.
"Fearlessness is key in entrepreneurship - move forward with confidence and you will surprise yourself."On starting Maya Mountain Cacao
"There aren't a lot of women who drive in the villages."On visibility and leadership at origin
"Uncommon Cacao is telling the story of the power of connection."On the mission behind the company
"Verifiable published pricing for every transaction... including who produced it, and where."Her definition of Transparent Trade
Her Georgetown double major - the trade-and-globalization courses aimed her at Central America.
She is the sole Ashoka Fellow working anywhere in the chocolate supply chain.
Her Twitter handle still carries the name of the Belize company where it all started.
Her cacao ends up in Ritual, Taza, Dandelion, Dick Taylor and Raaka bars.
She once avoided finance - now financial modeling is a favorite, because it raises farmer pay.