Full disclosure: Ariel Segall (pronounced like the bird) is not comfortable being featured in this Donor Spotlight. In her own words, “This isn’t about me. This is about making good things happen for First Nations. I am not important.”
This bubbly, self-described “New Yorker from New Jersey” moved to Massachusetts to earn a bachelor’s degree in computer science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and she never left.
While in college, she started a chocolate truffle business out of her dormitory kitchen because, well, what else are you going to do with 50 pounds of chocolate you ordered online? In a nod to MIT, she named her new venture the “Laboratory for Chocolate Science (LCS)” and grew it into a popular student club that is still active today, decades later.
Segall (far right) poses with her crew at Dark Matter Chocolate.
LCS has even been featured in the New York Times and Doonesbury cartoons, and her chocolate legacy is now a sweet spot at the university. “What I value more than anything else is hearing that today, at least among some students, truffle-making is considered one of the quintessential skills to learn at MIT,” the university’s founding chocolatier writes.
Some years later, Segall launched her second chocolate company, “Dark Matter Chocolate,” which specialized in molded chocolate confections sold mostly at conventions. She ran this side business for more than 10 years until the pandemic essentially brought these in-person gatherings to a close. “If I ever run into someone who wants a chocolate business, I have everything packed away carefully in my basement.” She envisions writing a cookbook one day filled with chocolate recipes.
Professionally, Segall worked as a cybersecurity engineer specializing in compliance for nearly two decades. “There is actually fun hiding in the horrors of compliance,” she jokes, adding that in addition to loving chocolate, she is a “geek” who has always been an engineer at heart.
A sample box from Dark Matter Chocolate.
First Nations is grateful to Segall for her generous donations to our Tribal Lands Conservation (TLC) Fund. First Nations President and CEO Michael Roberts explains its mission: “The TLC fund is designed as a vehicle that will let smaller donors, small family foundations, and individual donors step up and help us support the work we think needs to be done in and among Native communities doing frontline work for climate change and ecological stewardship.”
Why First Nations?
Segall, now 43, had been wanting to contribute to a Native American charity for many years. “I have cared about Native issues for a long time, but I had very little knowledge of where to put my money. I’m a white techie from Boston. I should not be making these choices,” she laughs.
Her journey to find a reputable charity that served the Indigenous population and was run by people who knew what the Native American community truly needed led her right to First Nations’ doorstep.
“I have had a lot of privilege in my life. I am a Euro mutt, a miscellaneous European American. But I have studied Native American history and, my God, the sheer number of broken treaties is horrific,” Segall speaks of her empathy for the Native population. “While I wasn’t directly involved in what the American government has done to Indigenous people, I have benefitted indirectly from a lot of those historic events. So how could I not give part of my financial windfall to the people who deserve the break?”
These frog candies were made with green tea white chocolate, no dye.
In addition to the treaties broken by the U.S. government, Segall says that another Native issue that strikes an emotional chord with her are the Indian boarding schools. “My parents were alive when these children were being sent to these residential schools. It’s not the distant past I thought it was when I was a kid.” She believes the long-term consequences of these injustices run deep. “They affect culture, individual family relationships, diet, where people are living. They affect everything.”
Segall has a big heart for other notable causes, too. She supports and donates to the Southern Poverty Law Center, LGBTQ rights movements, ProPublica and National Public Radio, to name a few. “I think good news and good education are the only way we’re going to make up for a lot of the deep inequalities in our educational system.”
Both her parents were teachers, so she speaks from experience. “My dad became a school administrator in a district that was under a desegregation lawsuit for all 20-some years he was there. Nobody talks about segregation in New Jersey. But it was there.”
Segall, the happy bride, on her wedding day.
A Legacy Society Donor
Segall is part of a tier of First Nations donors called the Legacy Society ─ a giving option for donors who have pledged to name First Nations as a beneficiary in their wills.
“Giving to charity is what responsible adults do, in my mind,” says Segall, who has also recommended her parents as potential Legacy Society donors. “My parents have also been looking for Indigenous charities to give some of their money to when they pass away.”
The New Jersey native says that her desire to donate to First Nations does not come from a place of guilt, but rather, it is the right thing to do. When a culture is lost, it is everyone’s loss, she says. “Helping to preserve a heritage and culture means so much, not just to the people who are the inheritors, but humanity benefits from our diversity and wisdom, too.”
Her advice to other potential donors? “Remember how little you know and give in ways that will make a difference despite that.”
