Meet Elizabeth Gore, the co-founder of Hello Alice

Prior to her role at Hello Alice, Elizabeth served as the entrepreneur-in-residence at Dell Technologies, where she played a key role in starting initiatives to support small and medium businesses to help them prosper, expanding global entrepreneurship. She also advises the growth of purpose-driven companies, such as Scoop and Go-Fund-Me, and is an investing limited partner with Portfolia fund. Elizabeth is an advisor to Ring Ventures, a Texas A&M University oriented investment fund, and part owner of Gore Family Vineyards in Sonoma County.

Elizabeth's contributions to social entrepreneurship are unparalleled. She served the United Nations Foundation for nearly a decade, where she was the Vice President of global partnerships. During her tenure, Elizabeth founded strategic grassroots efforts like Nothing But Nets and Girl Up which have had a profound impact on the lives of millions of people around the world. Elizabeth is the emeritus chair of the United Nations Foundation’s Global Entrepreneurs Council and continues to play an active role in supporting entrepreneurship initiatives around the world. Elizabeth is a proud former United States Peace Corps Volunteer where she served in Bolivia, South America.

Elizabeth has been recognized for her work in various media outlets, including ABC, CBS, CNN, MSNBC, Fox Business, Fortune, Glamour, and Time. She has also been named one of People magazine’s “Top 100 Extraordinary Women,” one of Fast Company’s “Most Creative People in Business,” and one of Entrepreneur Magazine’s “Women to Watch.”

In addition to her professional accomplishments, Elizabeth is a world champion equestrian, a sprint triathlete, and has climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro to raise awareness on behalf of the UN. She serves on the board of The Global Entrepreneurship Network, which operates a platform of projects and programs in 180+ countries aimed at making it easier for anyone, anywhere to start and scale a business.

Elizabeth holds an undergraduate and masters degree from Texas A&M University and resides in Sonoma County, CA with her husband, James Gore, a California elected official, and their two hilarious children.

During her work with the UN and the Peace Corps, Elizabeth learned about the importance of small businesses. Post natural disasters, small businesses were extremely helpful in aiding the community. However, when working with small businesses, she realized that women in these areas could not gain access to land, money, or have resources to start these businesses. In fact, until 1985, women needed cosigners in order to get loans.

In addition to working on small businesses, Elizabeth Gore worked to found the Nothing but Nets program that worked to fight malaria, Girl Up which helped young girls advocate for girls around the world, and a Shot at Life which helped increase access to measle vaccinations. Elizabeth specifically put her heart and soul on the Girl Up campaign, which worked to engage girls in the US to have mentorship opportunities with girls in other countries such as Guatmela and Ethipopia and find a way to create new friends. The idea of Girl Up was visionary, there was no other organization which allowed girls to advocate for girls, without many adults getting involved. The girls worked on championing the end of child marriage, writing letters, and lobbying for policy change accross the world.

While evaluating her career, Elizabeth realized she liked having a career in public service, specifically her work at the UN, where she focused on helping small businesses and how the internet can help increase financial access. Using this experience, Elizabeth started working with as the second Dell Entrepreneur-In- Residence. As she worked with Dell, she started to help increase accessibility to technology for entrepreneurs and realized that it is proportionately more difficult for women to start businesses. As she worked more in the entrepreneur consulting area, her passion to help small businesses rose, as well as her frustration as it was difficult for women to join the industry.

Using her work and experience at the UN and Dell, Elizabeth decided to found Hello Alice with her friend and past digital media CEO, Carolyn Rodz. Both of them were busy at this stage of their lives since they were pregnant and very involved with their businesses. When developing her own business, despite being an industry expert, Elizabeth faced her own set of struggles. Specifically, Elizabeth and Carolyn didn't have trouble creating the idea because both of them knew that they wanted to help small business, rather it was getting funding. Elizabeth realized this was an issue for almost all businesses, and specifically ones owned by women as they get 2% of venture capital overall.

This was not just an issue just for Hello Alice, but all businesses as a whole. Women, especially those of color have particular issues in receiving funding, which is why Hello Alice has mentorship for business financial health. This includes education on how to get capital, education on how to start the development of a business, and information on expenses. Most business owners don't have business degrees so Hello Alice tries to teach businesses how to run, as well as provide mentorship and membership assistance.

Elizabeth’s advice for all the young women interested in business is to just go for it. It’s always going to be hard and complex to start your own business, but you should never be afraid to act on the ideas you have. If Elizabeth could talk to her younger-self, she would’ve advised her finance her startups differently, and spend time raising capital first since controlling the cash flow is hard. The hardest things she faced were all financial obstacles, weather it was renting a place for work, raising money to jumpstart her ideas, or ensuring that she had enough capital to make risks, she hoped her younger self knew about all the tips and tricks that she knows now.

You can support Hello Alice and Elizabeth by letting people know about their initiatives to help small businesses get started. They want to continue helping small businesses from all around the country get access to equal financial resources. Visit their website www.helloalice.com and their social media platforms to stay updated on what services and events they’re going to host next.