Early-stage Investor | Startup Mentor | Serial Entrepreneur | Scientist | Board Member
For personal and professional growth, it's essential to be both a mentor and a mentee throughout your life. Let these relationships develop naturally and reciprocally, not transactional. A key lesson I've learned is the critical role mentors play, especially early on. The best mentors see beyond your credentials and invest in helping you become your best self. I met Scott Alpizar through the Material Change Institute. He's a fellow neuroscientist turned venture capitalist dedicated to empowering academic entrepreneurship in the life sciences. His is always looking for ways to support for local and regional ecosystem development. I look forward to future collaborations and his career trajectory! Mentors are found organically by building genuine relationships rather than through transactional interactions. Thank you Eve Blossom for starting such an important fellowship.
Empowering Academic Entrepreneurs & Early-Stage Startups | Consultant | Neuroscientist | STEM Advocate
One of the biggest perks of the Material Change Institute Fellowship is that we get plugged into Creative Destruction Lab for the year. We're paired with a mentor and get to shadow them through one of the CDL streams. I was lucky enough to get matched with Milad Alucozai as a mentor and to be placed into the Advanced Therapies stream with him. Over the course of the 9-month program I've learned so much from Milad, the other mentors in the room, and from the ventures themselves. Seeing the transformations of these founders from beginning to end was extremely rewarding. I also got to attend my first Super Session last week in Toronto at the University of Toronto - Rotman School of Management. This is their final event of the year and it was clear that all of the CDL staff put in a ton of effort to make it what it was. There were startup presentations, expert panels, and meetings happening all over the place. We even got to hear from Chris Hadfield on all of the exciting things happening on our quest to further explore space. This experience has been invaluable. Milad has become a mentor and friend far beyond just CDL and I look forward to continuing to learn from him for a very long time. I also hope to stay involved with CDL for years to come in whatever capacity they will have me! If you're interested, applications for next year's cohort are currently open and close on July 26th. Having seen it from the inside, I can confidently say that it is an exceptional program and that you won't regret it! Apply here: https://lnkd.in/e84k-ekN
You've been an incredible mentor Milad! I appreciate you taking me under your wing and always pushing me to be better. Can't wait to see what we both accomplish along the way!
Thank you, Milad, for you time and expertise to be a mentor for Scott Alpizar and some other Fellows in our earlier cohorts. So wonderful.