The role of mentors at TTA
To get the most out of a venture business, mentors are vital in supporting entrepreneurs pacing their path. Success is often strongly influenced by getting the right advice or support from the right people.
Mentors are one of the most valuable resources an entrepreneur can have. They understand the ongoing sacrifices an entrepreneur has to make, the challenges that can arise along the way, and the most common mistakes that should be avoided.
A mentor is a person you can benefit from who has already reached the point where you are trying to get to, or who has learned from dozens of other entrepreneurs who have already built successful businesses.
On the other side, from the mentor’s perspective, mentoring entails giving back to the community. It is something they do as a practical lesson in leadership, sharing their valuable knowledge to a novel entrepreneur and creating value that contributes to their own career growth.
At the Transformative Technology Academy, our main goal is to connect and help the global community of entrepreneurs, innovators, leaders, investors, and community organizers focused on emotional wellbeing. The mentorship program will be a key element to provide our entrepreneurs a collaborative experience, helping them move faster, and accelerating the TT sector’s development.
The mentors are volunteers and a mixture of entrepreneurs, investors, and product or operations leaders. All of them have prior mentoring experience. Get to know them here!
Dr. H.Ping Wang, founder of Ansir Innovation, is an active entrepreneur and investor, advisor to various organizations on technology commercialization, as well as innovation and entrepreneurship.
He co-founded several startup companies and brands in consumer electronics and created the first tech coworking space in San Diego, and has worked in business development and strategic roles in robotics, manufacturing, cleantech, and medtech, spanning Silicon Valley, Asia, Mexico. He is also an investor and advisor to dozens of startups companies and entrepreneurial organizations throughout the world.
His goal here is to help make Taiwan an even more vibrant place for entrepreneurship and innovation that is also more globally interconnected and competitive.
Troy Haines, Managing Director of theSPACE Australasia, has worked with hundreds of entrepreneurs across Australia to develop and commercialize ideas. Amongst many awards, Troy was named Innovation Champion in 2014 by the Minister of Innovation and Premier of QLD.
Troy and the team at theSPACE have developed world class startup & innovation programs that help support people with ideas to make money from those ideas, quickly, efficiently and as risk adversely as possible.
Tracy Rosenthal-Newsom, Advisor/ Product Consultant from Various clients in the Digital Health, Video Games, Immersive Experiences area, offers creative vision, product insights and development oversight as a consultant to digital health and wellness companies, leveraging emerging technologies and the best of human experience design in service of reducing human suffering and enabling joy and well-being.
With over 20 years experience developing digital products and video games that inspire transformative change, Tracy is as an advisor and product consultant at Akili Interactive and the Neuroscape Lab at UCSF, pioneering the development of digital treatments with video game technologies. In addition, she serves as a career and life coach for executives and directors seeking to align their career and life goals with their values and purpose.
Todd Embley, founder and COO of HORIZONthree, is a serial entrepreneur with a background in VC, Accelerator operations, and corporate innovation. Todd spent 8 years in China, 1 year in San Francisco and is now back in Canada.
Emily Cohen, Marketing / Strategy Consultant at E Cohen Consulting, is an experienced marketing leader specializing in strategic advisory, brand management, general management, brand marketing, product marketing, growth marketing and customer acquisition across consumer products, technology, luxury, wine & spirits, hospitality and professional services.
Among others, her specialties are Strategic Advisory, Brand Management; Marketing & General Business Strategy; Innovation/ New Product Development; P&L Responsibility/Management and Executive Leadership; Advertising, PR & Marketing Communications; Competitive Analysis; E-commerce, Digital and Email Marketing, Customer Acquisition, Customer Retention, Consumer Insights & Market Research, Merchandising/POS; Promotions & Events; Strategic Consulting; Branding Strategy & Development; Business Development & Partnerships; Growth and Revenue Development; Local Marketing.
Rui Ma, co-Founder at Transformative Tech Academy, has 15 years of experience in technology and finance as an investor, spanning seed stage to pre-IPO investing
Rui Ma is the founder of Euzen Labs, a venture lab focused on technology for wellbeing and human flourishing. She is also an angel investor and advisor to several startups and funds, including Rain Neuromorphics, UNICEF Innovation Fund and Zeroth AI Accelerator, as well as adjunct faculty at National Science Foundation’s Innovation-Corps program, teaching early stage companies how to do customer development. She is a former Investment Partner, head of Greater China and global head of fundraising at 500 Startups, a global seed fund and startup accelerator.
Rohan Dixit, CEO and Co-Founder of Lief Therapeutics, a company delivering a device that measures your heart and breath to track your stress levels in real-time, using a clinically-proven biomarker of stress called heart rate variability (HRV).
Niraj Shah, Founder of Mind: Unlocked, is an experienced entrepreneur and investor, is captivated by the role technology is playing in unlocking human possibility. After a 10 year high-pressure corporate career in London & Hong Kong he started a real estate business which he continues to oversee 6.5 years later. Niraj has advised and invested in a number of businesses in both the wellness and technology sectors; his project MIND: UNLOCKED is one of London’s leading meditation and mental wellbeing movements.
Niraj is the UK Country Lead for Transformative Technology Academy.
Ivy Nguyen, associate of Zetta Venture Partners is a Seed and Series A B2B AI investor. She is expert on Data rights, AI as a competitive strategy, and the intersection of regulation and innovation.
Rose Lewis, CoFounder of Collider, an accelerator for marketing and ad tech startups. Collider find the very best startups to invest in and scale, bring solutions to corporates, and deliver impressive investor returns. With over five years of in depth, first-hand experience, one exit and over £13m going into the next generation of marketing and sales startups, they’ve been listed as one of Europe’s Top Five Seed Accelerators. Their alumni include the hugely successful Seenit; Pixoneye, Miappi and Living Lens.
Rose has over 15 years experience in early stage fund raising from founding Pembridge Partners, working at 3i and Creative Capital Fund. During this time she has invested in ad tech and media including: Optimad Media Systems, The Ministry of Sound and Cycling.tv.
Jeff Hsu, founder of Terra Labs, is a software architect and research scientist in data analytics and blockchain. He was previously CTO of Vericant, a scientist at Microsoft Research Asia, an engineer at Apple, and the cofounder of a data / behavioral analytics consulting firm.
Alan Guo, Founder of Renaissance Learning Labs, has worked both a tech entrepreneur and an educator. After completing his education at Stanford, he was involved in two Y Combinator-backed companies as founder and early employee. Since returning to China in 2013, he worked as a tech start-up VC, but hence then pivoted his interest in education. After gaining some first hand experience in teaching, he founded Renaissance Labs to explore scalable ideas nurturing creativity.
He also dabbles his feet into the social innovation space, and always appreciate hearing about projects that is well-thought and well-carried out. He believes technology can be used to solve some of the problems itself created, and nudge humanity to be a little better.
Grace Ng, Co-Founder and CPO of Javelin.com, a software platform to test demand of new startup ideas, and Lean Startup Machine, an entrepreneurship education workshop in 150+ cities globally.
She has trained thousands of people to turn their ideas into impactful new businesses, been a guest speaker at The U.S. White House and United Nations, and a guest lecturer at several Ivy League Universities. As an artist, Grace develops interactive experiences that expand consciousness and empower action using emerging technologies like brainwave sensors, VR/AR, and AI. Through her work, she hopes to inspire others to live creative, impactful lives.
Carl Wu, CEO of Coinect, the world’s leading exchange listing and market cap management solution for blockchain projects. Most recently, he founded and launched Uber’s Commute initiative from zero to one, and expanded it globally.
He fostered Uber’s amazing growth in China, going from no market share to become a significant player in the ride sharing business. Occasionally, an angel investor and advisor for cool startups.
We are extremely grateful to our volunteer mentors for sharing their time to help young startups along the way.
In excitement,
Nichol, Rui, Jeffery, Paola & the Transformative Tech Team
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