TKS is a global community of the world’s most curious, driven, and ambitious people that want to make an impact.
"If we can train Olympic level athletes from a young age, why can't we train Olympic level CEOs and innovators?"
- Nadeem Nathoo, Co-Founder of TKS
The co-founders of TKS are two brothers – Nadeem and Navid Nathoo. They founded TKS on the belief that as a society we are not optimizing human potential, and if we unlocked the full potential of young people they could solve the world’s biggest problems. Prior to TKS, they started and sold companies in Silicon Valley, consulted for Fortune 50 companies, and worked on microfinance and early childhood education in developing countries.
We built TKS on fundamental core beliefs that shape our mission and organization.
Our team is on a mission to help young people shape the future. These are the people behind the
scenes that are the building the foundation of TKS
Brandon is a passionate technology strategist, focusing on enterprise applications. A mechanical engineer by training, Brandon has held a variety of technical and operational roles in his career. Formerly, as the CEO/Co-Founder of JS Operations, he worked with clients in the consumer product space to integrate technology into their supply chain operations through developing novel applications of IoT systems. An avid lover of applying technology to solve problems, Brandon also worked as a Product Manager for Bowery Farming, helping define and build the future of precision agriculture. Brandon has worked at McKinsey, SpaceX, Raytheon, Li & Fung, and the US Army R&D center. He received his MBA from MIT Sloan, his MS in Mechanical Engineering from MIT, and his BSE in Mechanical Engineering from Penn. At MIT, Brandon was a Leaders for Global Operations Fellow, where he published work on leveraging technology to solve operational challenges in companies located in developing economies. He is an avid endurance athlete, and loves to train for triathlons and ultramarathons.
"The most effective technology leaders have to be able to speak multiple 'languages.' True technical leadership requires a deep understanding of the underlying technology itself, along with a keen intuition for the operational and strategic tradeoffs that must be constantly evaluated. To do this well, aspiring leaders need to train themselves to be able to talk shop to anyone in their organization, from engineers to front line operators. There are few who truly excel at this skill - those that do are invaluable and visionary leaders."
Damian Matheson is an entrepreneur and EdTech veteran, passionate about helping young people make more informed decisions about their futures. But it wasn’t always this way. Like many of you reading this, in high school, he was unsure about what he wanted to do with his life. Like most students today, his family (and our society) encouraged him to pursue the conventional path; to do what has always been done. Life had other plans for Damian. He still didn’t know exactly what he wanted, but he knew it wasn’t what our traditional education was shepherding him towards. After leaving school, Damian co-founded FoodStory; a company that brought the farmers markets of Toronto online, allowing conscious consumers to support local growers with a subscription based grocery delivery service. Following that, he led business development efforts at myBlueprint, helping to scale it’s adoption across over 400 school boards nationally, which now helps more than 1 million students plan for life after high school.
Learn to love the process. Learn to love yourself. Learn to focus only on what you can control, and you will create a life few imagined was possible, but you were destined to live.
Genni is a seasoned marketing and branding professional with 5+ years of team leadership and campaign management experience. Recognized for demonstrating a natural aptitude for strategic planning and process improvement, Genni has a verifiable history of contributing directly to company growth and expansion throughout her career. Genni's career has spanned SEO copywriting, web development, social media management, focus group and market research, public and media relations, product positioning and branding, training, and performance assessment at companies like Good Food, Mamamia, and with various consulting clients. Delivering superior administration on the latter areas of expertise requires exceptional utilization of effective communication and organizational skills.
"Surrounding yourself with people who are doing what you want to do and ensuring that you have the knowledge and skills for the job is pivotal to your success. If your environment doesn’t reflect where you want your future to head, then you’re in the wrong place."
Ian Lockhart is an energetic entrepreneur and public speaker who started his own investment fund prior to joining TKS. During that time, he invested in dozens of young entrepreneurs to help them turn their ideas into profitable businesses, including multi-million dollar revenues. Early in his career, Ian was focused on a series of startups that raised over 15M dollars in funding. Ian has worked with Fortune 500 brands in media, manufacturing, automotive, and e-commerce. Previously, Ian was a part of a Private Equity Fund, managing portfolios and leading acquisitions. To this day he continues to invest in entrepreneurs financially and through advisory positions
"Life isn't going to be spoon-fed to you. You need to realize that you own your success, no one else. The faster you realize this, the sooner you start your life."
Kim is a serial entrepreneur that has been involved in a wide variety of ventures – from organizing conferences & events to TV hosting & production to founding, and later successfully exiting, a commercial cleaning company. Kim’s most recent venture was co-founding the data architecture startup Truebase. Using the internally developed, open source data notation “Truth”, Truebase works with many different types of companies across Canada, the US and Australia, to create highly structured data models in the form of ontologies. These ontologies are used to power various business systems such as knowledge graphs, semantic networks, intuitive search, recommendation engines and various machine learning models. Kim loves working with creative & curious individuals, specifically, the young ambitious ones. She has served as an entrepreneurship coach for organizations such as YES (youth entrepreneurship arm) and as a mentor to the startup incubator, Founder Institute. She works closely with educational institutions like Georgian College (Big Data Analytics Program) as an industry advisor, and helps provide students with real world project experience. She is a frequent speaker on technology topics and shares much of her entrepreneurial journey on her various social media accounts.
“Applying concepts and methods learned under the umbrella of one specialty to a completely new field has birthed many of the greatest innovations we’ve seen. It’s important to explore broadly, but also to go deep in a few select areas - this is the playbook for generating intersectional ideas, yet so few people follow it.”
Michael Raspuzzi is a serial entrepreneur who focuses on innovation in digital health and global food systems. Formerly, as CEO/Co-Founder of Culinary AI Labs, he helped build algorithms to personalize nutrition support; and as Design Instructor for both the Harvard University Graduate School of Design and the Harvard University John. A Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, he focuses on applied learning and curriculum development at the intersection of design, engineering, and entrepreneurship. Raspuzzi received his Bachelor of Architecture from Cornell University and an inaugural Master in Design Engineering from Harvard University—where his project EMMA: Maternal Healthcare Coach, earned him the MDE 2018 Thesis Prize. He serves on the board of directors for Life Changing Labs supporting the Cornell startup community and on the executive board for the Boston Hub of the Global Shaper Community from The World Economic Forum.
"We cannot solve today's problems with yesterday's thinking. Collaboration and creativity are key to integrate ideas across traditional silos and perspectives. We need more intersectional innovators."
Nadeem Nathoo is the cofounder of The Knowledge Society (TKS), a human accelerator that focuses on exponential technologies like as artificial intelligence, virtual/augmented reality, nanotechnology, and the internet of things (IoT). His mission at TKS is to develop young people (age 13–17) to pioneer new industries using emerging technologies and sciences. TKS alumni have spoken at some of the world's largest conferences, worked at companies like IBM and Microsoft, raised money from some of the top investors in the world, and are building projects in areas including brain-machine interfaces, quantum computing, and genetic engineering.
Prior to his role at TKS, Nadeem was a management consultant at McKinsey & Company, where he advised Fortune 500 CEOs on their challenges in banking, mining, aerospace, telecommunication, and advanced industries, to name a few. Nadeem has successfully led turn-arounds and growth strategies that have had global implications, including facilitating a $500 million merger transition and a $2 billion strategic spin-off. He's also done development work in Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Bangladesh, East Africa, and Honduras. In his spare time, Nadeem is an angel investor.
"The most valuable resource isn't oil or gold. Human potential is the most valuable resource in the world. At TKS we're doing is mining the resource of human potential."
"The most valuable resource isn't oil or gold. Human potential is the most valuable resource in the world. At TKS we're doing is mining the resource of human potential."
Niloo has worked with prominent startups in San Francisco and Toronto, and was a founding member of Clearco (formerly Clearbanc), a billion dollar e-commerce lending platform run by Dragon’s Den judge, Michele Romanow. She's also worked as Head of Education at Blockgeeks, the world’s premier blockchain education platform, where she was a thought leader and advocate for blockchain technology. Her work in AI also led her to start her own company, Hello Iris, which was backed by leading startup accelerator, Techstars, and used Natural Language Processing to predict human behaviour.
"Everything is fascinating once you understand it. Not being interested in something comes from not truly understanding it. "
We fundamentally believe that there aren't enough smart people in the world working on solving hard problems. Here are areas that we think are important, which all have problems that need solving. Many of these problems are waiting to be solved by the next generation of people who care about the future of humanity. At TKS, we believe that society can't sit around and hope someone will solve these problems - we need to be intentional about training these people to learn how to solve big problems from a young age.