Throughout her career, Elaine Welteroth has consistently carved out her own path to unprecedented success. A widely known and respected trailblazer, Welteroth has redefined what it means to break barriers within corporate America by being named Editor-in-Chief atwhere she in 2017 became the youngest a person ever appointed Editor-in-Chief and in 2012 had been the first African-American ever to hold the post of beauty and health director at a Condé Nast publication.
The launch of her memoir this year, brought her back to her roots, childhood, and the memories of having to navigate between two cultural worlds within her interracial family with her white father and African-American mother, while being raised in the small idyllic town of Newark, California. When writing her book, Welteroth explored family stories, collected oral history and gained a new curiosity for discovering the roots of her family tree.
Young people are multifaceted and they exist at the intersection of many identities and they come to this world and approach self-discovery from a place of being curious about more than just fashion, beauty, and celebrities. They want to understand what issues will affect them and understand how they can affect change within the world and shape the new direction.
One thing that I learned during the AncestryDNA process was how genetics actually works. I always thought that you pull an equal amount of DNA from each of your grandparents. We are 50 percent of our mom and dad’s DNA but thought that meant that we are also 25 percent of our grandparents but what I learned is that DNA isn’t a cocktail. When my DNA results came back I found out that I’m one 1 percent German, which was a shocker to me because my last name is German and my dad is German and Irish.