Sonoma County entrepreneur Elizabeth Gore tapped to lead board of California Partners Project

Healdsburg entrepreneur and humanitarian activist Elizabeth Gore will chair the board of directors for the California Partners Project, a new nonprofit launched by California first partner Jennifer Siebel Newsom to improve access to the levers of power by women and to address issues that affect the well-being of children.

Gore, president and board chair for HelloAlice.com, the first-ever artificial-intelligence-based digital adviser for business owners, has spent recent years working to advance opportunities for women and people of color in business, especially through access to capital.

She said she’s eager to begin working with the group her friend has assembled to tackle important issues.

“We’re in Day One right now in building this out, but we’re excited about it,” Gore said Monday.

Siebel Newsom told Politico she intended to engage “the best and brightest in California to expand our work uplifting women and children, and sustain our state as a leader in equity, innovation, and opportunity.”

First up? Working to bring gender equity to corporate boards in California and, second, understanding the implications of media and social media on young people, Gore said.

“As the mother of two young children, it’s something I’m petrified about and think it’s critical that we get in front of it,” said Gore, whose children are 5 and 8.

The wife of Sonoma County Supervisor James Gore, first elected in 2014, Elizabeth Gore has a national media profile and service that includes leadership on the United Nations Foundation’s Global Entrepreneurs Council, for which she was the first-ever entrepreneur in residence and vice president of global partnerships.

She later served as entrepreneur-in-residence at Dell Technologies, promoting initiatives that fueled the expansion of global entrepreneurship and particularly enhanced the prosperity of small- and medium-size businesses.

She and her husband met while serving in Bolivia as Peace Corps volunteers.

Gore said she came to know the governor’s wife, a documentary film producer whose subjects have included the underrepresentation of women in positions of power, over several years in which the two appeared on some of the same discussion panels.

When her own husband decided to consider political office, Gore consulted Siebel Newsom, whose husband was then lieutenant governor, about what to expect. “I sat on her living room floor, and she told me everything,” Gore said.

More recently, Siebel Newsom told Gore about her idea for a new nonprofit.

“I told her I felt like this is an amazing way to use her platform to both call attention to the need, but also, most important, highlight who is doing it well, and how do we take steps around that,” Gore said.