McKinney Founder Cherie Turner Takes Home $35,000 at eosera Foundation Pitch Competition

Fort Worth, Texas, November 15, 2025 – In a triumph for innovation and women entrepreneurs, Cherie Turner, CEO and Founder of McKinney-based Mommy Scrubs, has captured the top prize at the fourth annual eosera® Foundation Pitch Competition.

Turner walked away with a staggering $35,000, including a $5,000 people’s choice award and the $30,000 first-place award. This isn’t just a win for a single company; it’s a significant boost for healthcare mothers everywhere who juggle demanding careers with the realities of breastfeeding.

The competition, hosted by the eosera® Foundation, is specifically designed to support women founders with businesses less than three years old. This year marked a crucial expansion, opening applications across nationwide USA and drawing over 250 hopefuls, from which three finalists were chosen.

Fort Worth Mayor Mattie Parker kicked off the event at the Kimbell Museum, proudly highlighting that Dallas-Fort Worth now ranks second nationally for the growth of women-owned businesses. “You cannot be a world class city without pouring into the next generation of leaders,” Parker asserted, emphasizing the vital role of small businesses and entrepreneurs in the U.S. economy.

Turner’s winning idea was born from personal frustration. After returning to work as an occupational therapist in 2018, post-maternity leave, she faced the all-too-common inconvenience of fully undressing just to pump breastmilk.

It was uncomfortable, inconvenient, and sparked a brilliant idea: scrubs designed specifically for breastfeeding and pumping healthcare mothers. Her patent-pending design features snap-down fronts for easy access, seamlessly integrating with the standard function of medical scrubs. This $35,000 blessing, as Turner described it, will finally allow Mommy Scrubs to launch vital paid marketing efforts, putting her innovative solution directly “in front of the faces who need it.”

Elyse Stoltz Dickerson, CEO and Co-Founder of eosera®, understands this entrepreneurial journey intimately, having won a pitch competition herself a decade ago for her now multi-million-dollar ear care business. Her foundation was created to provide valuable seed funding to other women, a critical lifeline given that, as Melissa Wood, another finalist, starkly noted, “2% of women get venture capital funding.” The annual pitch competition, a highlight for Stoltz Dickerson, consistently inspires with the finalists’ energy and the audience’s unwavering support.

While Turner’s Mommy Scrubs took the top spot, the competition showcased other remarkable innovations.

Annika Lundstrom, CEO of New York City-based ReMinded, secured $5,000 for her company, commercializing the first clinical-grade, rapid saliva test for tracking cortisol, the body’s stress hormone.

Melissa Wood, CEO of Formus, an AI tool for home design professionals, earned $2,500.

The eosera® Foundation, along with sponsors like iHeartImpact, Simmons Bank, and Higginbotham, Sartori Capital, are not just writing checks; it’s making an “investment in the growth of women-owned businesses,” as Simmons Bank’s Lori Baldock stated. These aren’t just pitch competitions; they are vital incubators for the next generation of impactful, female-led enterprises.