Meet The Team
Obe received his Doctor of Musical Arts from the University of Colorado at Boulder and immediately earned a development position at The Colorado Symphony. He worked for over 12 years in the nonprofit sector before starting The Preservery with Whitney in 2016. Together they owned and operated their Denver restaurant for seven years before pivoting into the nonprofit sector with The Preservery Foundation in 2022. In addition, he turned his lifelong passion for cars into an informative social media platform for car enthusiasts called I Would Buy This Ride. You can find him at car shows all across the country and he is also passionate about mountain drives and spending time with his daughter, Adira.
Dr. Obe Ariss, Founder & CEO
Whitney Ariss, Founder & Communications Director
Whitney Ariss studied Vocal Performance at the University of Colorado at Boulder and nearly finished her degree before dropping out to work in restaurants. She has almost two decades of experience in food service, from restaurant line cook to personal chef to coffee shop manager, lastly working as marketing director for Marczyk Fine Foods, a beloved neighborhood grocer in Denver. In 2016 she opened The Preservery restaurant in Five Points along with her husband, Obe. After almost seven years they closed the restaurant and started The Preservery Foundation, a nonprofit focused on hunger relief. She is passionate about feeding people, developing as a nonprofit director, addressing hunger and food insecurity in her community, and teaching cooking lessons to kids of all ages, including her five-year-old daughter.