Browse experts
Amelia W.
📕 Education tech
When I scroll through Instagram or LinkedIn, it can be easy to fill in the gaps with stories about other people: “Their career has been smooth sailing!”; “Their relationship looks so easy”; “How are all of my friends somehow in Italy right now?!” However, when we create space for authentic and genuine conversations, we quickly uncover that all of us are having imperfect and sometimes frustrating moments in our personal and professional lives; leveraging some combination of skills, luck, and privilege to navigate our careers and personal lives; and simply doing our best to grow and succeed in a challenging world.
When I left Teach for America as a transitioning teacher, I felt unsure how to land a job at a top startup or how to apply my leadership skills in a new industry. Through the support of mentors and networking, I was able to land a great role in Customer Success at a really exciting EdTech start up. After my successful transition into EdTech, I found that many teachers were eager to do the same, and I started offering pro bono mentoring sessions to provide advice on how to navigate the transition and set yourself up for success. After supporting 20+ mentees, I have learned that sometimes the most impactful tool a mentor can offer is to believe in the mentee and just nudge them along the path they are already building for themselves.
I am eager to help early career leaders (especially young women) harness their greatness, see their potential, and take bold steps toward the life they want to create. Mentors have been critical to my personal and professional growth, and I am eager to pay it forward.
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Jackie H.
💻 Startups
Hey! My name is Jackie Y. HU, born and raised in the city of Shanghai and had my first college dropout experience in Shanghai (ask me more!). At the age of 19, I moved to the U.S. with my parents and started college at UC Berkeley.
I wandered quite a bit in college and explored different aspects of college life before committing to taking Economics and East Asian Studies as my majors. I still remember how my college advisor wanted to dissuade me from doing two majors by saying ‘unless the other major is the first thing you want to do waking up Sunday morning’😅.
I still can’t wake up on Sunday mornings, BUT I am so happy that I wasn’t discouraged! Taking the East Asian Studies major and becoming involved in writing and conscious critical thinking really lifted me up spiritually, and that level of motivation made everything fall into places.
I LOVED social science and humanity so much so I decided to attend Oxford University for a master program that focused on contemporary China. The reason why I picked a UK school instead of a U.S. school (which is supposedly the strongest in the field) is that I just … loved a vegetarian buffet place in London so would want to always go back! Sadly by the time I attended Oxford, the restaurant was permanently closed down due to rising rent and I literally cried for 3 days and lost the sense of purpose going there.
At Oxford, I focused my research on a youth community in mainland China and did an interesting virtual ethnographic study about it (ask me more!).
I now work as a Data Science Manager at a dating company, leveraging data to spread love. I feel so loved by having the privilege to working with a group of super authentic, logical, reasonable, and open-minded people. My company has a very unique culture of bringing everyone close together while working and it exemplifies so many American ideals that attracted me to move to this country at the first place. I feel very proud of my work and fulfilled, and I am ready to invest in my mentees and to give back to the community that cultivated me!
At Twenty, being able to give authentic talk excites me! I love being explorative, real, and grounded with my mentees instead of coming to be prescriptive or pedagogical. Being authentic also helps us to learn from EACH OTHER — this would be a great opportunity for me to grow so I am looking forward to our conversations!! 😃
Christal W.
🌈 LGBTQ+
I’m a little bit of everything. From solo backpacking to permaculture farming (during the pandemic) to raising VC $ & running a startup to consulting to social impact… I’m happy to talk about it all. What strings across it all is my values & why I do what I do:
Life is not just about achievement & busy-ness. Life also isn’t about living for other people & their perceptions of you. That’s why I think it’s super important to know what is important to you and build a life that celebrates that. F everyone else 😇
Julia O.
🎨 Design & art
Hi there! I’m Julia, a mid-westerner who has spent my adult life in CA (Stanford for 4 years + 3 years in SF) and Austin, TX (past 2 years). I’m a former innovation consultant at a Management Consulting firm, and recently took 6 months away from the career hamster wheel to travel, read a lot, noodle on ideas, and spend time with family and friends. My next adventure is in the land of startups, where I recently joined a small 12-person team working to help athletes achieve their performance nutrition goals. While my whole career has been in the product space, I’ve jumped around a bit between design, innovation, and Product Management roles.
Outside of work, I stay busy with my 2-year old dog, Hazel, lots of outdoor adventures, racket sports, and exploring the live music and taco scene in Austin.
Why am I here? Mentoring is something that gives me a ton of energy, and I am where I am today because of my “village” of career mentors, close friends, family, and therapists helping me navigate my 20s. “The Defining Decade” is an accurate name for your 20’s - it’s when we start to build our careers, figure out our passions, and cultivate meaningful relationships. I believe each person needs that village of support to help them navigate this tricky decade and I would be honored to be part of someone’s circle of mentorship.
Kevin V.
💍 Getting married
I have a strong interest in driving value for visionary leaders and ambitious, mission driven organizations seeking to make a meaningful impact. Given the various industries and companies I’ve been a part of, I like to think I have a diverse and grounded perspective. At my core is the unwavering belief in servant leadership - placing the needs and well-being of others at the forefront of my actions.
I started my career in investment banking, both on the equity research and M&A side. Then I spent some time doing venture capital and private equity. Currently, exploring the “operator” side of me at a beverage company called Guayaki Yerba Mate and have done a few stints at startups (with Chief of Staff and finance-related responsibilities). On a personal note, I moved to Los Angeles from Texas (grew up in Austin, TX, went to college at Texas A&M, and lived in Houston for a few years) at the beginning of 2019. I am currently engaged and have a puppy Golden Retriever named Goose. When I’m not going on long walks and exploring new places with my fiancee, Tara, and Goose, you’ll catch me playing pickleball or golfing. On his lazier days, Kevin loves to watch any sports events on TV (and sometimes catches himself watching reality TV shows with Tara).
Shivani M.
🎉 Entrepreneurship
I'm a design strategist and management consultant with a background in sociology. I started my career as an entrepreneur and switched to corporate consulting. I’m now on track to start my own consultancy! I’m action-oriented and a big picture thinker. I love learning from real situations and hence, I’m an opportunist. I actively seek out ways to help others and grow myself at the same time!
Rajeev P.
📈 Marketing, sales, & business
Ask me/Talk to me about:
Katy H.
🌎 Social impact
After 5 years in digital advertising program management & production, I pivoted to become a classroom educator. As a teacher I've mentored new teachers and led instruction for groups of students from K-12 learners to adults in the business world. I recently made another transition to re-envision my work life, and currently work as a consultant developing curriculum (ie. online courses and learning experiences) for organizations like The Life Brief and Rewiring America.
Also, as is common for many people, some of my most important learning and personal growth has happened outside the classroom and the office. After studying World Arts and Cultures (Dance) and geography in college, I moved to Spain for a year to teach English. Traveling and immersing myself in different cultures through language and the arts has continued to be a big part of my life, inspiring trips to Mexico, India, Japan, Korea, and around Europe. Some other jobs and side projects that have shaped my perspective are leading interactive art tours in New York City, planting trees in LA, serving drinks on a cruise ship in the Bay—and during the pandemic, starting an interview-based podcast about learning styles & stories called Still Learning. I’m also a nonfiction & aspiring fiction writer, and believe in the power of telling our own stories in order to see and know ourselves more clearly.
I’m excited to be a mentor with Twenty because connecting with mentors has provided such comfort and inspiration for me in both my personal and professional life. Conversations I had with former teachers, managers and wise, slightly older friends helped me to name and eventually pursue both major career shifts as well as smaller, also meaningful, adjustments to how work fits into my life. Finally, as someone passionate about being a lifelong learner, embracing a growth mindset, emotional intelligence and seeing the career journey as a learning process—all of which I'd be eager to discuss—are all topics near and dear to my heart!
Lanita P.
I’m passionate about empowering others and helping them to shine in a way that is authentic to them. I'm also a consumer enthusiast who loves brands that empower communities.
As a former consultant and now Harvard MBA, I am applying my passion for elevating the stories and experiences of overlooked consumers through the products that they use. CPG plays a significant role in consumers' identities and, and my mission is to make consumers feel seen, heard, and confident in who they are and how they show up. \n \n Professionally, I have gained a number of skills from my almost 6 years in consulting including: project management, cross-functional collaboration, executive communication, data analysis, budget management, and human capital management. Through my internships in early-stage VC and at Procter & Gamble I learned investor relations and brand management respectively. As an entrepreneur I've learned strategic branding, partnerships, digital strategy, and scrappiness. \n \n I wouldn’t be where I am today, without countless professionals and friends mentoring me. I am passionate about paying it forward to help provide access to knowledge that will help other break down barriers and eradicate statistics. If you would like to chat about career, life, or business school, schedule a chat and let’s get to work!
Leigh H.
Hey there! I’m Leigh, a recent Harvard Business School MBA grad, pursuing a career focused on the intersection of strategy and social impact. Let me tell you my story.
I graduated from Wellesley College at 22 thinking I had everything figured out. I had a great job in a city that I was excited about. I negotiated a salary that I was proud of and that would allow me to start the life I wanted. I was living with a good friend and had a community of college friends with whom to share the New York City experience. And yet... I felt lost. I started my job, and feeling unchallenged, under-stimulated, and undervalued, I quickly learned that it wasn't for me. I was overwhelmed by the size of the city and didn't know my place in it. I was working long hours and didn't have the time that I wanted and needed to take care of myself. For the first time in my life, I didn’t feel that I was learning, and felt pressure to find new educational channels.
Ultimately, I took a big risk. I left finance and New York City, took a 60% pay cut, and moved to Boston to work in an unconventional consulting role for a professor. It was because of the challenges that I struggled with in New York - allowing me to reflect and grow - that I could make progress in moving toward my passions and goals.
But, uncertainty, unease, and change aren’t parts of life that just go away, or that you simply grow out of. My pivoting career-wise was the progress I needed back in 2019. Now in new season of life as a newly minted MBA, I’m still addressing that familiar “lost” feeling although from a different standpoint. Facing a tough job market, I’m needing to define my goals and success more definitively than ever before. I often feel stuck in the comparison that “everyone else has it figured out,” and staying steadfast in what I care about and what I do and don’t want is more easily said than done. And yet, I’m learning to embrace the stillness and freedom of this reflective moment. I get to decide what progress means to me at age 29, and I’m growing in that process.
Twenty is the resource I needed out of college to help reflect upon and grow from change. It’s a resource that I still need today to help me reflect and learn in moments when the path ahead isn’t clear. I hope to be a mentor to those like my younger self, who could use the wisdom of someone with just a little bit more experience and distance. I also hope to be a mentor to those who find themselves struggling with the question marks that are inherently part of life as a 20-something. (I promise, no one has it all figured out!)
I look forward to connecting & hearing your story.
Becky L.
I’m a mixed race design leader & strategist. I was born in New York City’s Chinatown and spent most of my childhood on the Jersey Shore. I can’t be away from the ocean for too long and jump in to mark moments of transition, no matter the season.
I’ve spent my entire career finding the right intersection of creativity, learning, and supporting my almost-but-not-quite bi-coastal lifestyle.
I love postcards, Little Free Libraries, and my cattle dog mix, Luna.
I've tiptoed around teaching professionally for my whole life, from teaching SAT prep classes in college, to being a volunteer ESL teacher in NYC, to spending a year at a university in Brazil as an English Teaching Assistant. Ultimately, I like being able to form meaningful relationships with my students and have learning go both ways, which usually means small group or 1:1 relationships with other adults or near peers.
I've volunteered with Braven for over a year as a Leadership Coach for their Accelerator program at San Jose State University, leading 8 students through a course that included career coaching and a design thinking capstone challenge. My team won the challenge, but it wasn't about winning ;) Afterward, I became a Professional Mentor, working 1:1 with students to help them find a job.
I’ve also deeply benefitted from mentoring and coaching in my own professional career. It’s helped me get over humps of insecurity, little and big, and lean into opportunities I wouldn’t have dreamed of before.
I try to overindex on supporting students who wouldn't otherwise have mentorship support, whether they're first-generation college students, BIPOC, or don't have a degree.
In my job as a Senior Director at IDEO, I regularly mentor and guide more junior designers and design teams on client work, and more informally through ERGs and programs like Color by Design, an apprenticeship for BIPOC Design Researchers.
Emily G.
Professionally, I began my career as an educator after I got my Masters. I really loved the idea of my students finding their own voice and driving their own learning. I tried to use technology as a way to allow students to dive into what they loved to learn about in the way they loved to learn it.
I moved from New York to San Francisco in 2015 and joined a company called AltSchool in its early stages. They were personalizing learning for students using innovative technology and I learned first hand what being involved in a startup meant. I felt like I was at “Startup University”- I learned about office culture, work relationships, being part of a team, how to make a slide deck, and more. I also learned about how teams connect and interact and how being a collaborative partner and connective tissue within an organization holds so much value.
Over the past 5 years or so I moved out of K12 education/edtech and into early childhood/parenting technology. I have two of my own children (4 and 2) and know first hand just how much information parents need about parenting. Through my work at Higher Ground Education/Guidepost Montessori as well as Lovevery, I have helped organizations reimagine their place in the world of parenting startups and rethink how parents access content related to parenting.
I have launched new digital products and services for families and understand the cross functional nuances that go into building something from scratch. I am a user-first driven creator and always think about the experience of the person using the product.
Personally, I love cooking and all things food-related. I also am an ex-theater major and to listen to Broadway show tunes and sing to myself in the car. My kids think I’m nuts. I promise I won’t burst into song on our call!! I look forward to connecting with you and learning more together!
Percy B.
In previous mentoring experiences, I've guided other creatives (brand and product designers) through navigating an in-house design role; I've also offered advice around freelance and recharging from work.
Twenty excites me because I'm able to give back to the generation beyond me, and in a sense be able to give back to my past 20-odd-year-old self. And at least in unprecedented times, trying to alleviate some of the stress navigating through those uncertainties.
Nikhil K.
Why am I here?
I've had the pleasure of having mentors in my life who helped me through some of the most challenging times. Im here to do the same for others.
Im currently at Apple building computer vision algorithms for the cameras hundreds of millions of people use. I love it and the life I’ve built. The least I can do is give a helping hand.
Katia T.
My name is Katia and I am the Head of Product at Mighty, a platform that empowers the next generation through creativity and the skills of entrepreneurship. I’ve been a part of the NYC tech scene for 7 years now as a product manager and project lead. Over time I’ve discovered that I have a knack for nurturing happy, cross-functional teams and am obsessed with building playful consumer products that help individuals believe in themselves and realize their potential. Eventually, I’d like to launch a company of my own.
So why am I here? I see mentoring as a skill and a give and take. I get mentored and like to mentor as way of improving my capabilities and a way passing it forward. But also, I enjoy human connections more than anything else. I can’t wait to partner together to help you navigate a defining decade and this beautiful thing called life.
Katie K.
Hey hey! I’m Katie, the founder & ceo of twenty! Up to this point, I’ve been building twenty behind the scenes, but I got FOMO… so now I’m here to join the party 🙂 Can’t wait to meet many of you in person - I’ve heard so much about you!!
To give a more “formal” introduction…
But here’s my real talk, just for twenty:
With all this in mind, I can’t wait to meet you. Thank you for being here 🫶
