After her first business failed, Carolyn Rodz is now making it her mission to help other entrepreneurs succeed.

Rodz was an investment banker for JPMorgan Chase between 2001 and 2005, per her LinkedIn. After exiting her job, she ventured into entrepreneurship, but that did not fare well, leading her to reenter the workforce. Although this was a trying time, it did not deter her from entrepreneurship altogether — she launched Cake, a digital media company, in 2009 and exited in 2015 — and it paved a pathway of opportunity for a wider community.

“I knew very little about starting a company and my first business failed,” Rodz said in an interview with the “Black Tech Green Money” podcast. “I went back to work, paid off debts, licked my wounds for a bit, started a second company that I ultimately sold, ran it very differently with the lessons that I learned and feel very fortunate that I got to start over again because many people don’t have that opportunity. I was young and single and could handle bumps and bruises enough at the time, but it was that experience that really got me focused on ‘how do I help others to not experience this?’ It was very difficult. I was getting myself out of debt. I was sorting through a lot of financial troubles and difficulties.”

The sale of her company placed Rodz in a position to have a seat at the table, and she attributes this to an increase in credibility. “The world opened” to Rodz, she says. Her network and invitations to conferenced increased, she was being exposed to more resources, which made her ponder the possibilities for other entrepreneurs if they were supported in this way. This gave birth to Hello Alice in 2017, a fintech platform that connects entrepreneurs to capital, connections, and education. According to its website, 90% of its community comes from historically underrepresented groups, including women, BIPOC, LGBTQ+ individuals, military-connected founders, and entrepreneurs with disabilities.

“We started boiling the ocean saying, ‘We’re going to help the whole world and we’re going to help every entrepreneur’ and really honed in on small businesses and on micro-businesses because of the volume, because we said it’s a very narrow segment that no one’s paying attention to — and certainly nobody was back in 2017,” CEO Rodz told host Will Lucas, brand manager of AFROTECH™. “If we can solve it for this narrow piece of the segment, it’s the majority of small businesses and they don’t look like the businesses that we often think of when we think of entrepreneurs and when we think of successful business people. That’s not what everybody was imagining, but the reality is that is what business in America is.”

The Hello Alice community has access to the firm’s Small Business Mastercard, which also grants access to experts and events. Additionally, it offers a marketplace for financing. Through its partnerships, it has ensured that 92% of its businesses are still active, and 44% have seen an increase in revenue, per its website.

Hello Alice, which was created alongside Elizabeth Gore who is president, has reached more than 1.4 million entrepreneurs, and its impact also includes the deployment of over $50 million in grants since its inception.
The firm’s efforts were questioned in 2023 in a class action lawsuit filed by Nathan Roberts, the owner of a trucking dispatch company in Ohio. Hello Alice had awarded up to $25,000 in grants to 10 Black-owned businesses alongside Progressive Insurance Co., and Roberts, who is white, claimed he was not aware the grants were limited to Black-owned businesses, as AFROTECH™ previously reported. The case was later dismissed by an Ohio federal judge.
There continue to be growing efforts to dismantle support for diverse groups, with corporations such as Walmart, Meta, and Target scaling back their commitments. The White House strongly opposes DEI, and President Donald Trump has issued executive orders to dismantle its execution within initiatives, agencies, and programs on the federal level. This is spilling into the education system as well, with a portal being provided to file complaints regarding “illegal discriminatory practices” at publicly funded K-12 schools.
Rodz says she has heard both sides of the discussion as it relates to DEI, and she believes ultimately everyone deserves a seat at the table. She stresses the importance of having conversations across the board to ensure that opportunities are truly accessible to all.
“That’s the way that I look at DEI, is we’ve got to make sure everybody’s having that conversation at the dinner table,” she shared on “Black Tech Green Money.” “Everybody knows where to show up to take advantage of an opportunity. Everybody understands that they are meant to be in this conversation. That’s success with DEI. If we do that and we’re making sure everyone has access to the resources, everyone has availability to these things.”

She added, “Technology is helping to close a lot of those gaps as well. But we still have a long way to go. When you look at the disparity between the Black community and the white community, there is a huge disparity there. And we have to do work to close that in, and when we do it, the best are going to rise to the top.”

To check out the full interview, click here.