Giving Compass' Take:

• Elizabeth Gore developed an AI platform that helps entrepreneurs of color start their own companies with the goal of creating long-term sustainable change. 

• How does Gore's AI provide targeted resources to underrepresented entrepreneurs and why is this an important tool for elevating small business owners of color?

• Read more about how to support the talent assets in diverse communities. 

"Our goal is to help 4 million women, minorities, and veterans scale their companies by 2021," declares Elizabeth Gore. The way Gore plans to achieve this is through Alice, a platform powered by AI that works as a personal business adviser to aspiring entrepreneurs.

Gore grew up on a cattle ranch and was the first woman in her family to graduate from college. From there she gravitated to humanitarian and nonprofit work, from the Peace Corps and Share Our Strength to the United Nations, where she became the U.N. Foundation’s first resident entrepreneur and manager of the Global Entrepreneurs Council.

"I kept seeing that small business owners are really the ones who create long-term change appropriate for their community," she recalls. What she also noticed is that in places like refugee camps, when the U.N. and NGOs left, the entrepreneurs who figured out ways to set up internet access or barter for services were the ones who really picked up the community. "They are going to last longer and be more sustainable," she says.

As Alice’s machine learning gathered more data from entrepreneurs such as their location and type of business, the code was expanded to ask them to submit answers for gender, race, ethnicity, LGBT status, and more. In this way, she says, the platform could offer ever more specific advice to the business owner, such as pointing them to specific banks that offered special loan terms for veterans, meetups for underrepresented minority groups, discounts on software, or other resources.

So far, more than 50% of Alice users are non-white, 70% of Alice users are women, and entrepreneurs are using the platform in over 50 countries.

Read the full article about Elizabeth Gore's AI platform by Lydia Dishman at Fast Company.