Browse experts
Jacob H.
🏠 Buying a home
My name is Jacob Hogge (pronounced like “rogue” with an “H”) and I’m excited to chat with you!
I currently manage a team of 6 engineers (and a fluctuating number of interns) at SpaceX. Together, we’re responsible for the quality of thousands of components on the Falcon and Dragon spacecraft. Helping my team solve difficult technical challenges, and pushing them to grow personally and professionally is what makes me excited to go to work every day.
Outside of my career I enjoy backpacking, skiing, triathlon, and beach volleyball. I’m also passionate about Australian Shepherds, hot lattes, and key-lime pie; I try my best to indulge in these at every opportunity.
I’m a strong believer in continuous improvement, and I learned from an early age that mentorship is an excellent catalyst for growth. A great mentor can help you build the confidence and skills to reach your goals, while allowing you to learn from their mistakes and missteps. With that said, there’s no right way to live life; I don’t claim to have all the answers. Sometimes just having somebody to bounce ideas off of is all you need to move forward. I look forward to learning and growing together!
Manoela R.
😎 Consulting
I came from a small city in Brazil where people tend to stay forever (high school, college, first job, second, third, build a family, grow old), and I decided to challenge that - got out of my parents house when I was 16 and haven't come back since. I went to study engineering, joined an NGO, went abroad a couple of times, volunteered, got to McKinsey and now to HBS.
Since then, I've been trying to share a bit more of my accomplishments to see if I could help inspire others to also get out of their comfort zones - and I believe I've been successful so far, as people keep reaching out to me for career advice and mentoring in general.
Anthony V.
🙌 Nonprofit
I've mentored professionals since I was a full-time employee at Cisco. I've always enjoyed teaching other, and I come from an underprivileged upbringing, so I feel like I have a lot to give. Twenty excites me because it is an opportunity to help up and coming professionals. I feel like my experience is very expansive, and I've made a ton of mistakes, so people can learn from what I've done wrong.
Asli K.
💡 Product
I grew up in Turkey, attended high school in Istanbul, then moved to California for Stanford. After studying computer science and architecture, I specialized in product design over the last decade at tech startups like Asana, Twitter, and Autodesk. My professional superpower is bringing clarity and mindfulness to teamwork. Attending silent retreats and practicing meditation allows me to be my best self. I know we’re inter-connected to each other and with the Earth. I bring these mindfulness practices to the teams and individuals I work with. In the wild, you can find me exploring new instruments and singing with friends!
Tommy H.
🎒 Solo travel
My family left Vietnam when I was 4 and I didn’t return to my birthplace for 22 years. So there’s a lot of “straddling the line between being Vietnamese and American, trying to please my parents but also wishing they’d adopt more American values, finding the pride of being Asian-American in a society dominated by White people” stuff that I’ve grappled with throughout my twenties.
Work and career success was really tangled into my identity for a loooong time as well. Like, my self worth was tied to what I could achieve during my time on planet earth. I eventually found the unsubscribe button within the cult of productivity app, and realized my life, work, partner, friends, city, and bank account balance was all enough—stellar actually. Not to say I’ve figured it out; far from it. But I’m working on it every day.
I didn’t navigate and learn everything you’ve read on this page without people giving me a lot of their time and perspectives. So I’m here to listen, learn, ask questions, and hopefully pay it forward to you.
Dartis W.
🎨 Design & art
Hello Twenty-something my name is Dartis Willis II, I’m a Senior Product Manager (and former UX researcher) who just became a new mentor at Twenty. I would love to give you some helpful advice, but first here’s a little bit of information on my background.
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Viren S.
💸 VC & investing
I'm a serial entrepreneur who is building my 4th startup. I dropped out of my undergrad to build my last company. I'm excited to be a mentor on Twenty because I love helping others and I'm super passionate about this space - my first startup was a mentorship platform :)
Jake F.
🔥 MBA
My career path has been challenging, unexpected, and rewarding. I’ve served as a founder, a consultant, an advisor, and a Board of Directors member. I’ve founded both an unsuccessful business venture and a successful non-profit, worked in massive multi-national corporations and early- and growth-stage VC-backed startups. I've been laid off, low-balled, and have had to navigate toxic workplace politics. I chose an untraditional path for post-graduate education, learned what fuels me professionally, and have both slogged away doing menial admin tasks and been in the room with some of the most powerful people in my industry. And I’m still figuring out what I want to do when I "grow up".
A bit about my background, I graduated with a degree in marketing and global management, thinking I would go into the hospitality industry as a brand manager. It turns out I didn't actually like marketing in practice. So, with no educational background in healthcare or technology, I was thrown into the deep end of health tech when I became an implementations consultant working on the front lines in hospitals right next to doctors and nurses. I took everything that came my way as a learning experience and was promoted quickly until I got to an executive level IT strategy consulting role at a large corporation. The career plateau that came next was one of the largest struggles I had to face in my young career, and I think that a lot of people in their early- to mid-twenties may be experiencing this. I decided to pursue my education and, while still working full-time, got a masters degree from Penn School of Medicine in Healthcare Innovation. During this degree program, I moved to a venture-backed startup which doubled in size in my first year there. Dealing with the realities of what this meant not just for the business but for the job I was doing was another massive challenge, and I ended up leaving to start my next adventure. I am currently in the very early stages of building a business, while taking a much-needed break from the working world.
I get a tremendous amount of satisfaction mentoring young people through my university’s post-grad programs, as well as my own family members and other young professionals. I think a big reason for this is that a lot of the “influencers” giving advice are impractical for a professional environment (corporate and startup), and interviews with successful people such as Fortune 500 CEOs rarely give insight into actionable steps for young people to take in their careers. My approach is to be transparent and honest, and lean on my own experience to give examples of how you might want to (or not want to) approach certain topics. I hope to be able to create a space for college students and early career professionals to feel comfortable in uncertainty and in exploring their interests.
I also have a great network who are looking for bright folks to help bring new perspectives, and I’m always happy to make the connection.
Ryan M.
As I've progressed in my career, I've realized how important it is (especially for those in disadvantaged situations) to have a mentor and how my trajectory has been altered, for the better, by having someone to provide insight, bounce ideas off of and teach me about what is possible.
I received my bachelors in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Florida back in 2014, and decided to take a role as a field service engineer with Siemens Energy. I didn’t know it at the time, but this role has become a fundamental building block in my personality and work ethic, how I attack problems and deal with adversity, how I manage teams and interact with people, but most importantly, how I value my time and energy. After 5 years of 91 hour weeks, I was recruited to join EY in their business consulting arm out of Atlanta, GA. This was a 180 career change for me - I went from wearing cowboy boots and jeans every day to sitting in conference rooms with executives, and the first few months weren’t the easiest for me. But as I learned at Siemens, we learn, adapt and overcome!
I then spent 2 years getting my MBA at Emory University in Atlanta GA. I spent the summer interning at Nike HQ in Oregon, and could not have asked for a better summer. While I loved working at Nike, it made me realize that consulting was the current career path for me. I came back to Emory for year two and successfully recruited back into consulting to join McKinsey & Company’s Atlanta office.
While nearly everyone I met told me to take the summer off between school and work, I ignored their advice and pursued a passion of mine - 3D printing. During my MBA program, I came into contact with the CEO of a 3D printing company out of Austin TX, and expressed interest in formally gaining experience in the 3D printing space. She allowed me to join her company for the summer, and I’ve loved every second of learning from her and her team. I’m sure I would’ve been happier on a beach in the Maldives or driving a motorcycle through Vietnam for the summer, but this is a close second!
Twenty excites me because I love the success of others and I really love helping others realize their full potential. One of the reasons I mentor is the hope that I can infect my mentees with the desire to continue the mentoring, and we get this long web of knowledge transfer, excitement and success as a result. I've also realized that things I take for granted (like understanding the importance of keeping and maintaining a network, or things like good professional habits) are not common knowledge to everyone and I should share that from my place of privilege with those who may need it.
Jamie K.
I started my first company at 18 and transferred to a new school to scale it to well over a six-figure business. I ultimately decided it wasn’t what I wanted to do and pivoted from retail/eCommerce to product management and am now at Atomic Venture Studio (the studio behind HIMS/Hers, Found, Openstore, Terminal.io, and many others). I’ve worked for myself, a Fortune 500 (Macy’s), a Fortune 1 (Walmart), joined an early stage startup that became a unicorn ($1.B Evaluation), and navigated what would be the best next move (joining a pre-product team as a founding team member, venture studio, or business school) before landing at Atomic! I’m obsessed with start-ups across all sectors and love to help people navigate their career journeys to meet their goals.
Eric K.
Howdy y’all! Eric here - currently in my last semester of an MBA/M.Ed dual degree program at Stanford. My 20s were a hop-around kind of decade personally and professionally - created a little visual representation of that below:
About as un-linear a career path as you can find, but it’s been a fun ride. Along the way, I learned a lot about what a “good job” looks like for me, as well as what I want in my life outside of work. Does it mean I have it all figured out? Quite the contrary, but I’ve learned to embrace being a little bit lost and a lot of curious all the time. After Stanford, that will likely mean working in the social sector (probably in education) and living back in Austin (where I was prior to school).
I’ve had countless conversations with strangers during my 20s - with people who had no obligation to help me out or to give me their perspective, but who did so anyway (often after I reached out cold). I mentor today to pay it forward, holding a sprinkle of hope that I might be that randomly helpful person to someone in your shoes.
I’m about as positive and as energetic a person as you’ll find (fun fact: without having ever sipped coffee!), and you can expect more of the same from me as a mentor. In those moments where life gets real, we’ll find a silver lining or a path forward, and if I don’t have the answers you need, I’ll give it my all to find you someone who does.
Excited to hear from you - let’s get crankin’!
Ankush T.
I'm Ankush, and I am currently pursuing my MBA at London Business School. As an engineer turned consultant turned start-up & venture capital enthusiast - I've straddled various roles and would be happy to chat about any of them.
I'm an ambitious individual using my curiosity and passion to drive my decisions and carve my path in life. Obviously, along the way, I've faltered and learned from my experiences - would love to share and hopefully help you out in the process!
Janae B.
- Served as Peer Advising Fellow in college (mentor to college freshmen)- Served as official student recruiter on behalf of Harvard College Admissions- Harvard College Alumnae Interviewer- Currently a ICF certified professional coach; 100+ coaching hours (1:1 client sessions)- Born and raised in Miami, FL- I’m constantly on the move!- I teach beginner dance classes on the side
Lucy S.
Hi, I’m Lucy! I’m so happy to be here. Let me give you a little glimpse of who I am and what my twenties were like 😊
I love quotes so I’ll first start out with one by Elizabeth Gilbert to set the tone ;)
“Do whatever brings you to life, then. Follow your own fascinations, obsessions, and compulsions. Trust them. Create whatever causes a revolution in your heart”.
How I Discovered Twenty & My Passion to Mentor: About a month ago, I confided in a friend about my desire to make a more significant impact in the lives of individuals navigating this unique phase of life, beyond my work as a therapist. I was struggling to pinpoint the ‘how’ I was going to do this, but my friend encouraged me to let it go and that opportunities sometimes show up when they are meant to show up.
A month later, I saw an old teacher of mine on LinkedIn commenting on one of Twenty’s posts that Katie, the CEO of the company, had written. I began to read about why she was creating Twenty, and I deeply resonated with all of the points she made around this “defining decade”. Something inside me knew I needed to be a part of what she was creating.
And here I am!
I am such a strong believer of having mentors in your 20s. When we have mentors, we can truly “see to believe” what’s possible for us when we have direct access to people who possess what we desire or have gone through something challenging and made it to the other side.
I’m so looking forward to meeting all of you and helping you on your path forward!
Roberto B.
I LOVE mentoring and teaching, and have done so since my early undergrad years! Besides being a teaching assistant for multiple classes during undergrad and grad school, I had an undergrad scholarship called TEPP (which translates to Tutoring, Teaching, and Research of PUC) where I mentored multiple students. During my MBA, I was an Arbuckle Leadership Fellow, a program in which I took coaching classes and coached 3 students during their first year at the MBA. I'm excited to be a mentor at Twenty so I can help people while doing what I love the most - coaching you through the different problems in life and sharing my experience with you!
I’m a founder with work experience across early-stage (Shef), growth-stage (Instawork), pre-IPO (DiDi) and big tech (Google) companies. I specialize in operations and product management of marketplace startups, always bringing a strong emphasis on data storytelling and analytics to every decision I make with a team. My background includes Data Science, Operations and PM positions, besides a BSc and MSc in Electrical Engineering, and an MBA from Stanford Graduate School of Business.
Kat F.
I’m a mom and marketing professional, with over a decade of experience building brands and culture at large organizations and high-growth startups. My career started with the question, “What now?” English degree in hand, with email writing as my superpower, I entered a mentee program at Franklin Templeton to find my place in the corporate ecosystem.
Career and life moves since:
👉🏼 Moved from SF to Portland
👉🏼 Got a job at adidas in Digital Innovation
👉🏼 Met my now-wife, quit my job, and moved to Los Angeles
👉🏼 Joined an electric scooter startup in Series A and ended up in NYC for the IPO bell-ringing ceremony four years later
👉🏼 Became a mom at the height of the pandemic (July 2020)
👉🏼 Joined a seed startup as the first marketing hire
👉🏼 Partnered with LinkedIn as an LGBTQ+ Creator
👉🏼 Joined a Series A startup in DEI tech to build & grow their marketing department
👉🏼 Started a professional newsletter for people leaders (The Break Room)
