Christie L.
💻 Startups
When I meet new people, I like to say that I grew up with Southern sensibilities and East Coast values. Take what you will from that.
I spent my childhood between Baton Rouge, Louisiana and the greater Dallas, Texas areas. I was fortunate to have two older brothers who navigated the American public school system in the South, college applications and the job search as Asian Americans. They filled in many of the gaps that my parents, who will forever be immigrants in their eyes and others, had.
After graduating high school, I moved to the East Coast to attend Wellesley College, an all women’s college right outside Boston. I loved it, and that’s all I’ll say here. Please ask me more.
Prior to graduating, I realized that I needed to delay my graduation by a few months because I was missing one core requirement…don’t tell my parents. (Yes, I am 30 and still keeping some of my academic history a secret from my parents.)
I was fortunate to have internships during my college years, mostly geared towards the public sector. However, after graduation, my career has take me down a path of product and strategy within financial services and healthcare.
Mentorship has been so valuable to me as both a mentor and mentee. The most exciting aspect of mentorship is that both people grow and hopefully make better decisions because of the relationship.
Gabrielle W.
😎 Consulting
I've been a mentor with my alumni group for years. I also work with two charities - one that provides financial counseling to young families and one providing comfort to terminally ill children.
I am a bit older than some of the other mentors, but it took me a bit longer to get my professional career to a place where I now feel I can give back in this way. I am 37 and look like I am in my mid-20s. I know the feeling of being in the corporate world and trying to be taken seriously but being looked at as a "little girl." I want to help other young women navigate the corporate world with confidence.
Madelyn S.
📕 Education tech
I’m Maddy and I’m excited to meet you! I’m super passionate about education, great marketing, and social impact.
I’m a Bay Area native — I grew up in Marin County, moved to Los Angeles for college at the University of Southern California, and now live in San Francisco.
I’ve had a mix of roles across research, marketing, and business development/partnerships. Currently, I’m part of the industry partnerships team at Coursera — helping companies like Google and Facebook create job-training programs for people around the world. I’ve also worked at design and marketing agencies (IDEO and Hero Digital) in marketing and business development roles.
Recently, I started my MBA at the University of Southern California (USC). This is a hybrid program, and I’m working full-time while in the MBA program. Happy to discuss any topics pertaining to applications, managing work/school schedules, and more.
Over the last 8 years I’ve mentored middle school, high school, college, and post-undergrad students across a wide range of both professional and personal topics. I am thrilled to be part of Twenty to help share tips and tricks on what I wish I had known in my early twenties.
Jamie P.
🩺 Healthcare
I know how beneficial it can be to have relationships with people who are just ahead of you in their career and life. I personally have benefited from this, and would like to help others in this way. I’ve spent the last nearly 15 years trying to figure out what how to find fulfillment in my career and personal life. I’m still on that journey, and would love to join you on yours.
Morgan H.
🧦 Fashion & retail
Hi there! I am a Nashville, TN native, which I hear is a unicorn these days around here :). I graduated from UT Chattanooga, although huge UT Vols fan! I have the cutest little Pomapoo dog, Ollie, and live with my Fiancée. (Getting married in Dec 2023)
I started my career back in 2012 in the Recruiting Agency world. I learned the fundamentals (good and bad) in that world + met a lot of good connections, that I still communicate with now. I found my passion lied in the Corporate space so switched over to my first Corporate recruiting job in 2015 and have never looked back!
While at my past company Asurion I stood in as the main mentor on our TA team. I thoroughly enjoyed having 1:1 conversation with my teammates about what their future career could look like, giving them advice, I had learned from my time thus far and how to approach certain situations. I have recently gotten into people management, and it still always takes me back to really enjoying the mentorship side of it.
I really feel everyone, especially in early stages, should get access to a mentor, or mentorship program. Remote work can make it very dangerous if there is not that structure, as most can feel on an island or scared to ask questions. Whether you are hunting for specific advice, or just want someone you can throw an idea to, I am happy to help!
Katya N.
🔥 MBA
Hi all! I’m Katya — I was raised in Bangkok, Thailand; my father is Indian-Thai, and my mother is American and German. I graduated from the International School of Bangkok and, at the age of 18, moved to Burlington, VT to pursue a Bachelors of Science in Social Work. I then went on to receive a Masters in Nonprofit Management from Northeastern University.
I started out my ecommerce career at Seed Health as one of its first hires, and helped build the foundations for their member experience, ecommerce and operations teams.
I recently transitioned out of my role as Director of Strategic Operations at Tomorrow Farms, a venture-backed food and beverage startup that I had joined pre-launch of its first brand and product, Bored Cow. In this role, (a la Chief of Staff), I was responsible for all customer experience, people & culture operations and internal communications, executive assistance, and internal operations, including process establishment and improvement and management of company softwares, systems and tools.
Having traveled to over 30 countries, my experiences in various cultures has deeply influenced how I build and scale with a human-centric approach. As a champion for candidate, employee and customer experience, I foster organizational health, drive operational efficiency, reduce friction, and eliminate pain points cultivated with the highest level of thought, care and intention.
John N.
💻 Startups
I come from a low-income first-generation household and spent 8 years as an officer in the U.S. Navy before pivoting into a PM role at Meta. I then became a Project Manager supporting eLearning efforts at Google before transitioning into my current role as a Senior Project Manager at Boeing. I understand both sides of the coin when it comes to military/civilian life and the challenges that come with each. I'm currently a mentor for transitioning veterans through Veterati and have been in the mentorship space for over 10 years. A big passion of mine is sharing the knowledge I've learned in order to set folks up on a trajectory towards success. Twenty is a program I see big potential in because of the capability to create huge impact for such a small personal investment on my part. I'm excited to have the chance to not only help you navigate your professional career but also be a resource for life in general.
Jara M.
🙏 First-gen
I’m an educational strategist, program designer, and illustrator. With a background in art and education technology, the bulk of my work aims to mitigate the education and equity gap using design. Currently, I work at Webflow where I scale education programming for the larger design community and students. Prior to Webflow I worked at Coursera as a Program Manager and Salesforce as an Instructional Designer.I’ve worked as a mentor since 2016, specifically looking to increase access to tech for underrepresented communities (Black, Latinx, disabled). I've mentored with SMASH, BuiltByGirls, and Young Data Scientists League (YDSL). Related, I am currently the Outreach and Education lead for Techsgiving, where I teach UX design & prototyping to students.I grew up in Palo Alto, but currently live in Brooklyn!
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)