About Steve Wallace

Steven Wallace (no relation to No Map. No Guide. No Limits. Founder/Editor Lane Wallace) started out on a very conventional career track. After graduating magna cum laude from Brown University, he went to the University of Chicago Law School and became a tax attorney. At the age of 29, however, he decided to pitch his law career in order to start the Omanhene Cocoa Bean Company in the West African country of Ghana—a country he’d gotten to know and love as a high school exchange student during the summer of 1978. (He stayed with a traditional Ghanaian family, which consisted of a host father and his three wives and 21 children.)

Wallace’s chocolate adventure, which he manages by dividing his time between Ghana and his home and family in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, has been ongoing for the past 18 years. Omanhene was the first entity to sustain exports of gourmet chocolate made entirely in Africa, and Wallace has been recognized by President Jimmy Carter, former ambassador Shirley Temple Black and the United Nations Global Compact for his entrepreneurial accomplishments and Omanhene’s path-breaking business model.
Wallace often speaks on economic development, cross-cultural issues and the challenges of starting a gourmet food business in Africa. He was a guest panelist at the US State Department sponsored AGOA Forum in Accra, Ghana and has presented programs at many educational institutions including The University of Chicago Graduate School of Business, The University of Michigan Graduate School of Business and Ms. Pamela Marshall’s second grade class at Cumberland Elementary School.
Wallace also served for 11 years on the board of directors for AFS-USA and the board of trustees of AFS Intercultural Programs, Inc., in the hopes of expanding the horizons of other high school students who might then grow up and try audacious, cross-cultural adventures and endeavors of their own.
For more information on Steve or the Omanhene Cocoa Company, see www.omanhene.com.