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.

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I’ve spent my entire career finding the right intersection of creativity, learning, and supporting my almost-but-not-quite bi-coastal lifestyle.

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I love postcards, Little Free Libraries, and my cattle dog mix, Luna.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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 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.

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!

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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.

1. Born and raised in the suburbs of Detroit Michigan
2. Went to the University of Michigan
3. Moved to LA, worked in consulting and contracted for Apple
4. Hired by Apple full-time, moved to SF, discovered a love for the outdoors
5. Pandemic hit, moved to Chicago, discovered a love for cooking and met my partner
6. Wanted to focus my life on the outdoors, so moved to Denver CO, still working for Apple

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.

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.

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…

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• I’m a hybrid product x design x startup leader trained at Stanford, IDEO, & Harvard Business School. I've spent my career launching new products, programs, & ventures in education.
• I also serve as a global advocate for women's rights x education. Over the years, I've worked & lived at a K-12 boarding school in India, helped scale a menstrual healthcare organization in Uganda, and co-founded my own nonprofit, Girl Possible. We first launched on Kickstarter and spent 14 weeks roadtripping across the US in an RV, teaching design thinking & leadership workshops for girls across 32 states.
• My work has been featured in Fast Company, Lean In, Ms. Magazine, SXSW Edu, and Edtech Insiders. I've also taught at Stanford's d.school and Harvard's Graduate School of Education and joined top startup / VC programs like On Deck Founders, Galvanizer, & Reach Roadrunners.

  But here’s my real talk, just for twenty:

• I think navigating your twenties is hard, complicated, emotional, transformational, intense… all of the things. I think we receive ZERO training on how to make the most of this “defining decade” and that colleges / schools are designed to just pump us out like machines with fancy degrees on paper but no actual sense of where we belong in the real world and how to define success on our own terms, outside of a report card.
• I’ve been through my fair share of ups & downs, trying to figure out what I really want and how to get there. I’ve been a marketer, a designer, a business development operator, a founder (non-profit and for-profit), a full-time “gap year” volunteer & globe-trotter, a “design program manager,” a consultant, etc. I studied engineering and product design, then got my MBA. I feel like a real “jill of all trades”—mediocre at a LOT of things but expert at none. At first, this gave me a ton of anxiety, but now I think it’s my superpower.
• At first, I also felt pressure to set a 5-10 year career plan & stick to it. Now, I refuse to lock myself into anything of the sort. We are constantly pivoting, evolving, & growing in unexpected, beautiful ways, and for me, embracing that journey (rather than the “destination”) is one of the greatest joys of life.
• I’m obsessed with asking both myself and others, “what would you regret NOT doing?” and live my life by that principle. I’m a fiery creator, product-builder, and people-connector. Nothing energizes me more than meeting new people (like you!) and asking them the real deal, big life questions - what do you really want to do, and how can you get there?

  With all this in mind, I can’t wait to meet you. Thank you for being here 🫶

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I’m Claire, a software designer and strategic planner. I’ve dipped my toes in many industries and skills with my main constant being my own high bar for building design driven and ethically-sound products in each of my work experiences.

I originally grew up in Houston, the fourth largest city in the US, with a highly medically-focused Argentinian-Jewish family. While studying pre-Med at Stanford and shadowing a few physicians, I found myself much more interested in the efficacy and beauty of their medical devices rather than the practice of talking to, diagnosing, and treating patients. That served as my wake up call to try out some engineering classes. Long story short, I loved them and ended up declaring Mechanical Engineering: Product Design as my major.

Having worked on a range of physical and digital products at Stanford related to the medical field; I decided to explore my ability to move and learn quickly by joining Accenture’s digital consulting practice after college. Fast forward 3 years, 6 industries, and 4 live products later, I felt I had acquired enough skills during my time at Accenture to lead design at a startup. That led me to a 10 person virtual fashion startup called Forma Technologies (recently acquired by Snap) for a brief 6 months until I realized I wanted to work at a medium sized company and have the ability to critique and collaborate with other designers again. I then landed my current position at Silicon Valley Bank where I was designer no. 5 to join our rapidly growing team of almost 45 designers now. I’ve now been at SVB almost 2 years and look forward to continued work building internal and external tools for our Global Fund Banking and Corporate Finance sectors.

In my personal life, I spend most my free time either playing and caring for my Aussie puppy named Gio 🐶, at Austin Bouldering Project (ABP), running, learning about climate change mitigation, painting, and hanging with loved ones! I also love to cook and bake and try new recipes (particularly on a Yotam Ottolenghi kick recently).

I’ve been mentoring via my Stanford, Accenture, and Brown networks both informally and more formally for a couple years. I particularly like working with passionate students and early/mid career employees to guide them to find what fulfills their purpose or ikigai in life and work. Understanding the concept of ikigai (japanese term for “reason for being”) and putting it in practice in my life played a significant role in my early twenties and the concept continues to keep me grounded and navigating my life in the right direction for me.

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Hi! My name is Devika, and I'm a designer and public health researcher, originally from New Jersey, recently living in San Francisco, and now a medical student at Penn State University, College of Medicine. 

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I studied product design engineering before pivoting to focus my career on healthcare disparities research (via a Master’s degree in Community Health and Prevention Research). For the past five years, I was the Design Manager, and then Design Director at The Better Lab, an academic research laboratory that utilizes human-centered design to address vexing healthcare challenges facing disadvantaged patient populations in San Francisco and beyond.