The Back-lash Survivors

Don't challenge Elizabeth Gore and Carolyn Rodz to a game of highs and lows. The Hello Alice co-founders will win-by a long shot.

- ALI DONALDSON

Over the past year, the Houston-based startup, which connects small businesses to resources and funding, confronted an existential legal attack, one that could have potentially shuttered the company and destroyed seven years of work helping entrepreneurs-particularly underrepresented ones like women, veterans, and people of color-scale their businesses. Even worse, if Hello Alice had faltered, the impact could have reverberated among other firms looking to tip the balance for traditionally disadvantaged communities.

While fighting off a well-financed federal lawsuit, the fundingplatform founders became two of the most public faces of anti-DEI litigation. The lawsuits, filed by conservative groups, number more than 125 since the Supreme Court's decision to strike down affirmative action in June 2023, according to New York University School of Law. Forty of those cases have been aimed at targeted programs, like the one that sparked the case against Hello Alice.

When asked to sum up their 2024 in one word, Gore said "resilience." Rodz chose "resourcefulness." The two serial entrepreneurs needed both of those traits to survive this hellscape of a year they've endured.

The 10-month saga started with a cold email. In August 2023, a summons appeared in Hello Alice's public inbox. The head of customer service flagged the message. She thought it was probably spam, but worth checking out. Gore agreed and forwarded the email to their corporate lawyers, who immediately got on the phone. This was not spam. America First Legal, a nonprofit founded by former Trump White House adviser Stephen Miller, had filed suit against Circular Board, the company that operates Hello Alice, on behalf of Nathan Roberts, the owner of a trucking company in Cleveland called Freedom Truck Dispatch.