MSU alumna encourages shopping from women-owned brands, supports underrepresented communities

<p>“<a href="https://www.joindough.com/">Dough</a>'s mission is to drive consumer purchase power towards women-owned businesses,” <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/ericakangas">Kangas</a> says. “Our co-founders Vanessa and Anna created Dough out of their own experiences, grappling with the unique challenges that many women face in building successful companies and raising capital to grow their businesses. Before COVID, only something like 2.7 percent of investment dollars went to women-owned businesses. And since then, that number has actually shrunk to 1 percent. Meanwhile, only something like 20 women have founded and led a company that has gone public. </p><p>“With Dough, they really wanted to create a bottom-up approach to addressing the barriers we face in growing businesses and raising capital because our collective purchase power as everyday shoppers is massive. If everyone in the U.S. spent $20 a month at a woman-owned business, we'd drag nearly $5 billion towards women-led companies each month. And that kind of capital would move mountains in advancing women-owned businesses, ensuring that they have what they need for their businesses to grow and thrive.”</p><p>Diversity, equity, and inclusion are hallmarks of Dough’s mission.</p><p>“The tech industry can be notorious for being pretty hostile to those of us from underrepresented backgrounds. There's an inherent moral imperative behind DEI. Removing systemic barriers so that we have an industry that's able to not just accommodate, but actually embrace and foster multiple pathways for people from a range of backgrounds and experiences is just the right thing to do. </p><p>“Another reason DEI in tech is so important is the increasing influence of technology in our lives. For many people in our country, technology plays a critical role in how we work, how we live, and how we learn. As a society, we are in the midst of tackling so many complex problems whether it's addressing poverty, health, systemic racism, climate, the list goes on, right? But