Linus L.
⚡️ Program management
I’m Linus, and I work in startups! I grew up in the Bay Area, and was a History major at Yale. I started my career in the public policy space before pivoting into startups. I’ve worked in BizOps, product management, Chief of Staff, and more, across consumer, B2B SaaS, and health tech companies. I’m currently a Talent Investor at Entrepreneur First, helping to find and nuture exceptional individuals they begin their journey as startup founders. Outside of work, I host a podcast and online salons with the Interintellect, and I love reading, classical music, and cooking.
Luis G.
📍 Moving to the US
I've been a design mentor for Out in Tech for the past 6 years, helping young queer folks break into the world of design. Currently working at Indeed as a design manager.
I switched my career focus from engineering to UX about 12 years ago. I took the scenic but this path has taught me so much. Moved to the US about 10 years ago to pursue my career in UX
I also collect a lot of music, I've curated a list of my favorite 500 songs, hopefully you'll find something you like: spoti.fi/3E9ZdWY
Paige L.
🙏 Exploring religion, faith, spirituality
Ciao Twenty Mentees,
With an academic background in Sociology and a career in developing people and teams, my personal and professional journey can best be described as non-traditional and required me to be observant, scrappy, vulnerable, and creative. I’ve worked across various industries such as professional sports (San Francisco Giants, MLB and NHL) to a career pivot into software and VC (Hired, MasterClass, Motive, AngelList, Atomic, Tandem Capital) to becoming my own business woman (co_foundry) helping founders and creatives focus on their core product while providing resources that help the business run. In the last decade I have experienced 4 layoffs and I know first hand the stress and struggles you’re feeling. I understand the hustle and internal struggle that comes with losing your job overnight - let me guide you and support you in this trying time.
My spiritual journey has been developed through years of traditional therapy, reiki and shamanistic guidance, yogic practice, and learning how to cultivate a community that serves my highest good.
I’d be a great mentor for those who are willing to discus the “crispy bits” of life. My mantra is “practice mode” because everyday is a practice towards self improvement and realizing our fullest potential. Obstacles are the threads that make us who we are if we have the clarity to see the potential it has to shape us.
Before joining twenty I mentored in the work-place and professionally in my 1:1 sessions through co_foundry. I’ve helped junior colleagues get promoted, interview, and pivot careers. I have also helped women do product sprints to tease out business ideas through a 3-day program to identify their product/service offering along with a 1-minute pitch. I’m embedded in female founder circles such as The Female Founder Collective, The Weekend, and Brydge Club. My passion is in supporting women and POC to birth creativity and connect them with the resources they need. This is a lot of the work I do at co_foundry!
Marissa D.
💍 Getting married
I’m an identical twin, mom to 3 kids under 4, I like to write poetry about my kids and pre-covid times kept juggling balls and legos on my desk at work to have as connection starters. I take the work I do seriously but never myself. I work to live and spend time with my family and have learned what happens when you don’t set boundaries the hard way. I lead a brand new function at a tech company and our team is building out some really cool People experiences and People products.
When I entered the workforce, I was lucky to have leaders who believed in me and mentored me and some of the best life and career advice that sticks with me to this day is from them. I have two people I've mentored over the past 4+ years and it's been a joy to see them grow! I'm excited to continue to pay that forward with an awesome company like twenty.
Kelly C.
🩺 Healthcare
Hi there! Here comes the fun part. My story starts in Alexandria Virginia (east coast born and bred) until I took a scholarship to play Division 1 Lacrosse at Stanford University. Fast forward a few years, I moved up to San Francisco to start my career at Twitter as a Strategic Partnerships Manager. Life post college is wild (to say the very least) and frankly, for the past 6+ years it’s been a crazy ride of trial and error to figure out what fits. From Twitter I pivoted to scrappy startup life, then transitioned into formal consulting and finally landed on building my own coaching platform for integrative health (the club). I specialize in supporting women with hormonal and gut issues, to repair their relationship with their well-being (physically, mentally and emotionally). I'm currently a certified nutritionist, pilates instructor and crazy passionate about what I do in San Francisco. Great reminder that life and success is anything but a linear path up. When people asked that big question to me: “what do you want to do with your life?” I used to freak out. Now, when people pose the “what do you want to do” question, I smile and respond “does anyone really know?”
Morgan M.
🎉 Entrepreneurship
Hi! I am a MBA and MS Biotech graduate student from Harvard. I have a background in VC investing, therapeutics development, bioengineering, fundraising, product management, and operations. I am currently working on a digital health startup tackling stress management and a bioelectricity startup tackling cancer prevention and tissue regeneration.
Jennifer T.
🔥 MBA
As the child of refugees and a first generation college (now MBA) graduate, Twenty’s mission resonates deeply. It was hard to find mentors when I was younger and I struggled to find my way in my 20s. But when I did find mentors, they helped change the trajectory of my life. I would love to pay that forward.
Professionally, I've worked across tech, nonprofits, and government. For the last 5 years, I have been in B2B product marketing and customer success at ML/AI, edtech, and fintech startups, as well as larger companies like Apple. I'm now a product marketing manager at DeepL, a German unicorn that uses ML/AI to break down communication barriers. I recently moved to London, and graduated last May with an MBA at Berkeley Haas.
DC R.
🌎 Moving outside the US
Hi, I’m DC, a UX Designer and Researcher based in the Bay Area. After college graduation, I moved to Berlin, Germany to work for a service design studio, where I learned a lot about stretching outside of your personal and professional comfort zone. Prior to landing my current job, I used my engineering degree to explore various career paths, from early childhood education to IT hardware.I’m passionate about: teaching; creating beautiful, helpful, functional products; and understanding the relationship between achievement and mental health.My formative years were shaped by great mentors, and I’m excited to pay it forward!
RJ S.
Hey y’all! I’m Chelsea.
Professional Me - The Jobs:
Professional Me - The Navigation:
I’ve gone through a major transformation in my identity as it relates to work. I forged my sense of self on the idea that I need to ‘achieve’ in order to be liked and respected. As a child, I was put into accelerated learning and AP courses. I received a full tuition scholarship to college and was part of a very rigorous honors program. I would put 150% toward every internship and role and only feel good when I would receive validation of my output.
I also feel like I prioritized the words and direction that people had ‘for me’, instead of me giving myself the chance to really uncover what I liked and didn’t like. This suppression of expressing my true self and putting so much effort and energy into work would often lead to burnout and feelings of ‘not good enough’ or ‘how can I be better.’
Now, I’ve finally gotten to a place where I’ve found some balance between ‘work me’ and ‘me outside of work’. I still work hard and do a good job, but also prioritize joy and exploration and my relationships.
If you’re in a similar boat, we can definitely chat about this. It’s a topic I’m very passionate about.
Personal Me:
Chelsea A.
Hey y’all! I’m Chelsea.
Professional Me - The Jobs:
Professional Me - The Navigation:
I’ve gone through a major transformation in my identity as it relates to work. I forged my sense of self on the idea that I need to ‘achieve’ in order to be liked and respected. As a child, I was put into accelerated learning and AP courses. I received a full tuition scholarship to college and was part of a very rigorous honors program. I would put 150% toward every internship and role and only feel good when I would receive validation of my output.
I also feel like I prioritized the words and direction that people had ‘for me’, instead of me giving myself the chance to really uncover what I liked and didn’t like. This suppression of expressing my true self and putting so much effort and energy into work would often lead to burnout and feelings of ‘not good enough’ or ‘how can I be better.’
Now, I’ve finally gotten to a place where I’ve found some balance between ‘work me’ and ‘me outside of work’. I still work hard and do a good job, but also prioritize joy and exploration and my relationships.
If you’re in a similar boat, we can definitely chat about this. It’s a topic I’m very passionate about.
Personal Me:
Katalina B.
Who I am: Hi! I’m Katalina. I grew up internationally (Germany & Switzerland) and moved to the states when I was nine. As both a middle child and third-culture kid, I always felt a bit in-between. My career has been similar, working across CPG and tech, going from brand management to product management. Lately, I’ve been leaning more into embracing the ambiguity and not needing to define myself by external labels, achievements, or affiliations as much — it’s an ongoing journey.
I’m passionate about: Mental health (overthinkers anyone?), dance (modern, jazz, ballet, hip-hop, tap, lyrical), dogs (ask me about my cute 3-year-old golden retriever cocker spaniel mix, Jovie), people (psych undergrad), sunny weather (find me at the beach).
Why I mentor at Twenty: I have mentored throughout all stages of my career - from being a dance instructor in high school, to providing mentorship through StepUp in Los Angeles, to interviewing and mentoring for Duke University. I want to give back, help navigate, and provide support in ways that I wish I had in my early twenties. I love that Twenty provides the type of support, direction, and guidance that was previously hard to come by without either access to top institutions or a ton of potentially awkward conversations.
Let's break the ice and make the twenties the best decade for the next generation!
Kruti M.
Who am I? I’m Kruti - a native Texan (I love my homes of Houston and Austin equally!) currently living in Brooklyn. I’m a former management consultant, and for the last 3 years, have been helping grow a network of high-performing public startup schools in underserved areas of the Bronx. I am about to start my next adventure: getting my MBA at Chicago Booth. There, I will focus on my interest in building and scaling a new generation of sustainable nonprofits that provide direct services to children and families while also influencing broader public policy.
I’ll also be using this time away from work to pour into the things that bring my endless joy: spending more time with my family (happy to talk about being the only person in your family that lives in a different place!), making up new recipes and feeding all the people in my life, and all things yoga/hiking/boxing.
Why am I here? Mentoring is incredibly personal to me because I did not find real mentors in my life until my mid-twenties. I know the challenges of finding people with the right experience to guide you, and know that this depends heavily on the complex combination of who you are, where you come from, and where you're trying to go.
If I can be a part of your journey, just as many have been for me, I would be thrilled!
Clara M.
Hey Future Mentee!
I’m a Bay-Area native who grew up in the OG Silicon Valley (my dad was a chip programmer) so tech has always been a part of my life. In my career, I’ve worked almost exclusively at early stage startups (AngelList, On Deck, Hugging Face) with a stint at a Bollywood fitness company, and most recently, I’ve started my own recruitment and placement agency for Chiefs of Staff. Looking back on my career, I can weave a concise narrative of why I went from place to place but while I was going through it, I felt lost and like I was never going to “catch up” to my peers who were all engineers or product managers or data scientists.
I’m a strong believer in operationally minded folks being the next wave of talent that startups and companies want (it’s already starting to happen) but it’s a hard role to feel successful in because of it’s generalist nature. I can help you better define what it is that brings you joy and how you personally define success so that you feel more fulfilled.
Outside of work, I love staying active and seeing friends. I grew up dancing (competitively like on Dance Moms and was also on my school’s dance team) and so I try to take a dance class whenever I can - my favorite teacher is in NY. I’ve also been nomadically traveling around for the last year and a half so finding community around me has been something that I’ve grappled with and know the struggle to do so first hand.
I’m excited to share all the things I’ve learned in my twenties with people who want to listen and chances are, I’ll learn a lot from you too! I’ve mentored folks both within the companies I’ve worked at as well as through the communities I’ve built and my favorite thing to do is help others succeed. I can’t wait to meet you!
Chase D.
Twenty excites me because I remember feeling overwhelmed with the number of seemingly "life critical" decisions I was making. I want to help give back by providing guidance and frameworks to help people understand how they make the best choices for their future selves (professionally and personally) while still taking care of their present selves.
Teddy S.
I have always pushed myself to the extreme in many facets of my life. I played lacrosse in high school which allowed me to get recruited to some of the best colleges in the country. When I got to Amherst College, I gained an affinity for computer science and soon found myself taking twice as many classes as I needed to major in CS. While there is also played lacrosse and sang in the Glee Club.
After college I went to Bridgewater as an engineer and quickly found myself working as an Investment Engineer on the FX research team. I have some wild stories from those years 😄. But I realized I wanted to do more in ML/AI and left Bridgewater for a small start-up in NYC where I got deep into building neural network models.
At the same time, I also applied to HBS and was accepted and started a year later. HBS really opened the aperture of what was possible in life and the different paths I could take.
If you want to hear more, happy to tell you over a call!
Lastly, I've always mentored those earlier in their career than me as it is one of the activities which brings me energy, in a world where many activities deplete. I have helped many navigate finance (hedge funds), start-ups, and venture capital.
Justin S.
I led an LGBTQ+ mentorship program and Dartmouth and loved helping students in that context. I have spent the last several years focused on finance and am working on a personal finance mini-course at HBS, and would like to help individuals in their 20s improve their financial lives and financial decisions.