Going behind the spotlight to meet Vanessa Bruce, co-founder + CEO of Dough. Vanessa is an award-winning, patent holding, founder, operator, and designer passionate about transparent commerce, driving change with our purchase power, and financial independence. Dough was founded when Vanessa and co-founder Anna caught up over coffee and chatted about the struggles of being a female-founder. The conversation quickly led to late-night texts sharing articles on the capital gap (can you believe women receive only 2.7% of investment dollars?), the pink tax (did you hear women get charged on average 7% more products like razors?), and spending power (wait, we as women control 80% of consumer-driven purchases?). The duo thought, "What if we could direct spending dollars back to women-owned companies to create economic equity?"

Beth and Vanessa discuss:

• How her family inspired her to create her own path
• Conscious consumerism
• Creating Dough
• Transparency and some of Dough’s other company values
• How Vanessa balances family and business
• How Dough really embodies collaboration and community over competition
• What’s to come for the brand
• And more!

Vanessa’s work has been featured in Fortune, Bustle, and the New York Times as well as recognized by the Stevie Awards, Adobe Creative Jams and W3 – just to name a few. She believes in building a more inclusive, compassionate, and equitable community and volunteers as a mentor at Hack.Diversity as well as advises early stage DTC founders. She is a first generation college graduate, an alumni of Simmons University, a women's college in the heart of Boston, where she studied Design and Public Relations.

Connect with Vanessa:

https://www.joindough.com/

https://www.instagram.com/joindough/

Beth is joined by fierce coach, intensely driven entrepreneur and comically authentic speaker and connector, Melanie Curtis. Melanie has jumped out of an airplane over 11,000 times in over 20 years and has circled the globe as a headlining professional skydiver and eventually founded How to Fly, Inc. where she works with Type A high-achievers through fear and the feelings that come with it across widely varied life challenges and business pursuits. She helps her clients get through the super unsexy work of building the internal emotional skills external high-achievers so often lack and only realize when faced with a life challenge they can’t seem to figure out how to get through. 

Melanie shares on:

• How she got into skydiving (and why she avoided it for many years before facing her fears)
• Some pivotal and transcendental moments in her life
• Holding positive space for clients
• Accountability and communication
• How she operates as a life coach
• Identifying fear, clarifying values and employing courage
• Tapping into ones creative abilities

Melanie leads through her keynote speaking and significant online presence, extracting useful insight and inspiration for others in all the content she contributes to or creates. She has been featured in Fast Company, Elle Magazine, Give Me Sport, Ellevate Podcast, Success IQ and on numerous other podcasts and in other publications over the years.

Connect with Melanie:

http://melaniecurtis.com/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/melanie-curtis-she-her-74ab3540/

Join Jacklyn Mellone and I talk all thing digital entrepreneurship. The pitfalls, the tragedy as well as the triumph.