Flossie Hall is on a mission to help women founders raise capital and women investors deploy it with impact.

As an active-duty military spouse, Flossie’s advocacy for military spouse entrepreneurs landed her not one, but two invitations to the White House and partnerships with companies like Amazon.

Last year, Flossie took over as CEO of Stella, expanding her impact beyond the military community. The nonprofit helps women unlock access to capital to launch and scale their startups, while also cultivating a thriving network of investors.

Stella’s work culminates at the Women’s Venture Summit in San Diego in September. Flossie said the annual conference is an opportunity to put founders and investors in a room and “make magic happen.”

“We get entrepreneurs from ideation to seed, and we meet them in the middle with investors learning to invest. Then we put them in the same rooms together, we help make sure the women on the entrepreneurial side are as fundable and strong as possible. And then we’re creating as many women investors as we can,” Flossie said.

An unstoppable advocate

Flossie’s journey to becoming CEO of Stella started in her home kitchen. She launched a meal prep company, with no prior business experience, over a decade ago, scaling Healthy Momma to seven figures in under a year and employing over 100 military spouses.

The lessons she learned propelled her to become an advocate for military spouse entrepreneurs. Military spouses are 92% women, and around 25% of active-duty military spouses are unemployed, far higher than the national average.

“Most resources given to them at the time were about employment which just wasn’t sustainable or portable or relocatable. I became this big pillar on teaching military spouses … and started building entrepreneurial programs,” she said.

Flossie had to rely on Google searches and YouTube videos when she launched her business. She knew military spouse entrepreneurs need a carefully-crafted, step-by-step curriculum to successfully navigate everything from marketing and legal, to production and revenue models.

She built seven programs and co-founded the Association of Military Spouse Entrepreneurs, helping 2,000 military spouses build their business. She partnered with major companies like Google and Amazon, was featured in Forbes and on the Nasdaq Tower in Times Square, and invited to meet twice with Second Lady Karen Pence.

Then Stella came knocking.

On a mission

Flossie first joined Stella to run an educational technology platform she had built for the nonprofit. She stepped up as CEO in 2023 and has raised over $2 million.

Flossie said fundraising over the last year hasn’t been easy given “budgets are down, wallets are tighter.” But she said she works 10 to 12 hours a day committed to Stella’s mission to help women founders excel.

“Our single success metric as a nonprofit is to help women become as fundable as possible and then help connect them to access that capital.” Flossie Hall

“It is a different, trusted environment to be with 10 or 15 other women who have the same background, who are going through the same things, are allowed to be emotionally vulnerable or ask questions or don’t feel judged,” Flossie said.

And on the investor side, women need to be matched with mentors, see other women writing checks and have women who are five steps ahead of them say, ‘This is how you can do it too,” she explained.

Rolling up your sleeves

Some organizations provide “cookie cutter” information to women founders. But not Stella.

“We’re rolling our sleeves up and helping these women move the needle, one by one,” Flossie said. Stella pays its team to work directly with founders’ businesses. Everything from building a landing page, to developing a pitch script, to crafting a financial model, Stella is on hand to help women secure funding.

“Our benchmark is fundability, so our single success metric as a nonprofit is to help women become as fundable as possible and then help connect them to access that capital,” Flossie said.

At the annual summit and other events throughout the year, Stella doesn’t ask investors in attendance for funding. The focus is entirely on funding the women-led startups that Stella supports. But some founders who see their businesses grow do pay it forward. “They are some of our largest donors,” Flossie said.

Looking ahead to the Women’s Venture Summit on Sept. 25 to Sept. 27, Flossie said this year’s theme is “Elevate Equity.” The conference hosts sessions both for entrepreneurs raising capital and women deploying capital. Under her leadership, it broke even for the first time last year, and is on track to be profitable this year.

“We put four to 450 women in one room together over the course of three days, and make magic happen,” Flossie said.

The investor-focused work at Stella is just as important as the work with founders. Flossie understands that in a new light as she recently began angel investing herself.

“You learn the hard way if you’re not born into this world or you don’t have people around you that have done it. And I don’t. I grew up welfare poor. I was the first person to graduate high school, go to college, have a career, definitely be a CEO, and make the amount of money that I do. But I have zero humans in my personal life that have shown me what it means to be financially savvy, to invest, to build businesses, to build an investment portfolio. But I’ve learned that from the ecosystem I’m part of now,” she said.

Women are taught that money is a dirty word. But as Flossie looks to the future, she is excited about a changing approach to wealth among women.

“I’m really excited to see the shift in wealth and the shift in the mindset for women to go out there and own it and demand it and not be embarrassed to make money or be wealthy,” she explained.

Read more on Women of Impact: ‘Bad Bitch Empress’ Lisa Carmen Wang on building successful businesses for women | Kelly Ann Winget on her alternative investment fund and gender bias | more articles in this series here.