The Mentors
People,
Not Panels.
Every mentor is here for a specific reason — not celebrity, but direct relevance to what students face building a creative career in the age of AI.
Meet our
Founding Mentors
4
Tracks
16
Weeks
1:1
Access
Business Storytelling
Boaz Santiago
ARTIFACT® · Co-Founder, Volume.Zero
Co-Founder of Volume.Zero and an accomplished entrepreneur with deep expertise in business strategy, entrepreneurship, and neurodiversity-focused innovation. He builds ventures that unlock human potential through inclusive approaches to hiring and organizational culture.
“Business strategy, neurodiversity, and venture building”
Editorial Voice
David Granger
Esquire (former Editor-in-Chief)
Editor-in-Chief of Esquire for 19 years (1997–2016), where he revamped a fading men's magazine into a 17-time National Magazine Award winner. Previously a senior editor at GQ, Granger is one of the most celebrated magazine editors of his generation.
“Magazine editing, long-form narrative, and award-winning journalism”
Editorial Voice
Amy Cosper
Success Magazine · Co-Founder, Volume.Zero
Editor-in-Chief of Success Magazine and former VP and Editor-in-Chief of Entrepreneur Magazine. One of the most prominent voices in global entrepreneurship, she shaped how a generation of founders understood what it means to build something from nothing.
“Entrepreneurship media, editorial transformation, and founder culture”
Business Storytelling
Ted Zoller
UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School
Ted Zoller is the T.W. Lewis Distinguished Clinical Professor of Strategy and Entrepreneurship at UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School and one of the most respected entrepreneurship educators in the United States. For more than two decades, he has sat at the intersection of academic rigor and real-world venture creation — building programs, networks, and research frameworks that have shaped thousands of entrepreneurs across the country. Zoller served as Director of the Entrepreneurship Center at UNC Kenan-Flagler for 15 years, where he built a portfolio of landmark programs including Startup-UNC, the Launch Chapel Hill Accelerator, the Adams Apprenticeship, and the BLUE Live-Learn Entrepreneurship Community. His pedagogical model — Learn, Launch, Lead — has been adopted by accelerators and entrepreneurship programs internationally. His flagship longitudinal research project, the Entrepreneur's Genome, investigates the patterns of high-performing entrepreneurial leaders and forms the backbone of his "On the Heels of Innovation" podcast and his Entrepreneur's Lab course. His 6M Venture Circuit© framework has been standardized across UNC Kenan-Flagler's venture creation programs and implemented in accelerators globally. Zoller is a Senior Fellow at the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation and the Global Federation of Competitiveness Councils, and has collaborated with the Blackstone Foundation to implement entrepreneurial networks nationally through the Blackstone Entrepreneurs Network. He founded CommonWeal, a global business intelligence advisory firm, and is founder and chairman of the board of AMBit, which facilitates public use of private lands. In 2025, he received the Karl Vesper Pioneer Award — one of the highest honors in entrepreneurship education — recognizing his passion, perseverance, and decades-long impact on the field. He is a Justin T. Longnecker Fellow of the United States Association for Small Business and Entrepreneurship, and has received the Legacy Award from the Global Consortium of Entrepreneurship Centers and the Outstanding Contributions to Advancing Innovation Award from the Deshpande Foundation. Zoller holds a PhD from UNC-Chapel Hill, master's degrees from the Maxwell School at Syracuse University and the University of Virginia, and a dual bachelor's degree from the College of William & Mary.
“Entrepreneurship is not a destination — it's a practice. The founders who build lasting ventures are the ones who learn to read their networks, act before certainty, and find the story in the data that others miss.”