Mentoring

In 2009, Ms. Brizel served as the full-time mentor at Palomar5, a residency-based technology innovation incubator developed by a half-dozen young people under the age of 25 running an NGO in Berlin. Funded by Deutsche Telekom, this incubator brought together 30 extraordinary thinkers under the age of 30 from around the world. Ms. Brizel shared her professional expertise, interpersonal communication skills, and technology background to support these young people as they navigated an intense learning and cross-cultural experience. Today, these men and women range in age from 26-41, and live all over the world, actively pursuing a wide variety of innovative and impressive careers.

One founded Startup Genome, a project whose goal is to increase the success rate of startups and accelerate the pace of innovation around the world by turning entrepreneurship into a science. This young man also co-founded blackbox, which is making startup seed acceleration scalable by building software on top of the Startup Genome. Another currently works at the World Economic Forum, heading its Eurasia division; still another completed a PhD program at MIT Media Lab. Palomar5 graduates also work for consultancies such as Tata (in Germany), Deloitte (in Australia), and Sidecar Lab (in the US). Other P5 graduates work in fashion, philanthropy, design, politics, and highly entrepreneurial endeavors all over the world.