Coaching Sessions allow successful Bentley alumni to engage with the student community to share their experiences and wisdom with students in a short but intensive format. Bentley alumni who participate offer a unique perspective drawing on their entrepreneurship journey. Coaching sessions typically focus on a specific aspect (e.g. developing a pitch deck, brainstorming an idea, exploring the angel investing landscape, and others).
Graduate and undergraduate students, staff and recent alumni are invited and attendance is capped at 15 participants. These 90-minute Coaching Sessions are held at The Somers Garage on weekday evenings and consist of a presentation followed by a discussion driven by those in attendance.
Upcoming Spring Coaching Sessions
Troy Boutelle ’01 MBA ’11 Troy Boutelle is the General Manager and Vice President of Commercial Operations at MeMed, a diagnostics company redefining how infections are diagnosed and treated. He holds both undergraduate and graduate degrees from Bentley University, where he also served as an adjunct professor in Professional Selling. Troy brings over 20 years of commercial leadership experience and a passion for helping the next generation connect business strategy with real-world impact.
In this session: When you think about innovation in healthcare, it’s easy to picture scientists in labs or surgeons in scrubs. But behind every breakthrough is a commercial engine that determines whether that innovation reaches the people who need it. In this session, Troy walks you through the journey of building an entirely new medical device category—and why, at every turn, everything came back to commercial. From strategy to storytelling, the biggest lessons were less about technology and more about traction.
Harrison Levitsky
In this session: TBD
Kurt Strandson
In this session:TBD
Brian Manning is a tech executive, investor, and advisor with a focus on healthcare. He has spent more than 20 years building technology companies, including Bamboo Health, PatientPing, Zocdoc, and Next Jump. He invests in and advises early-stage health technology companies. Focusing on companies where he can add value by providing insights from his personal experience and network.
In this session: TBD
Past Events
| Date | Topic | Coach |
|---|---|---|
| February 03, 2026 | From Finance to Family Business: The Making of a 4th-Generation Entrepreneur | Josh Fuller |
| March 25, 2026 | How to Launch a Business in the CPG/Food Space | Ruby Chan |
| April 1, 2026 | Idea to Exit – How Lockers Became a $100M Business | Arik Levy |
| April 7, 2026 | What Do Growth Consultants Actually Do? | James Arredondo |
| April 8, 2026 | How to Scale a New Business? | Todd Pavone |
| Date | Topic | Coach |
|---|---|---|
| November 18, 2025 | Entity Selection and Early Stage Tax Considerations | Lisa Willauer |
| November 12, 2025 | You Are the Startup: Navigating a Nonlinear Career with Founder Instincts | Cody Aguirre Clearwater |
| November 5, 2025 | Selling to the C-Suite: Make your pitch land when engaging with the C-Suite | Dean Cimini |
| November 4, 2025 | Raising Capital from VCs | Todd Forrest |
| October 28, 2025 | My Road In Commercial Real Estate | Cyrus Sakhai |
| October 21, 2025 | From Tactile Perception to Product Innovation: Designing with the Senses | Mounia Ziat |
| September 24, 2025 | Build a Significant & Valuable Business | Matt Wizeman |
| September 17, 2025 | CEO Not Required: Building Big Impact Without the Title | Courtney Woronka |
| September 16,2025 | The Opportunities & Challenges of Starting a Blockchain Company | Sol Nasisi |
| September 10, 2025 | Raising Capital for Your Startup: “The do’s and do not’s” | Riley Rogers |
| April 15, 2025 | Skip the Startup: How Acquiring a Business Can Fast-Track Success | Devin McGrath |
| April 9, 2025 | Wearing Many Hats: Lessons from a CFO/COO in Boston's Tech Scene | Stephen Gregorio |
| April 2, 2025 | From Corporate Leader to Entrepreneur | Marc-Olivier Zwicky |
| March 25, 2025 | Beyond the Big Idea: Building Businesses with Labor and Capital | Doug Adams |
| March 19, 2025 | Scaling Across Different Sectors | Damien Stile |
| February 11, 2025 | My Road in Commercial Real Estate | Cyrus Sakhai |
| Janurary 30, 2025 | Starting a Business with an Idea and No Money | Phillip Mastroianni |
| Date | Topic | Coach |
|---|---|---|
| November 12, 2024 | What is purposeful selling? | Chris Tardiff |
| November 6, 2024 | Never Stop Moving: an Entrepreneur’s Approach to Firing Up your Life | Sheri Saperstein |
| October 23, 2024 | Building a Unicorn: The road less traveled | Debbie Millin |
| September 24, 2024 | How to Run a Successful E-Commerce Business | Bhargav Shah |
| September, 17 2024 | Building and Scaling Startups: Insights from Entrepreneur and Venture Investor | Sergei Revzin |
| April 17, 2024 | Building a Product-Led Culture | Ed Gaudet |
| April 9, 2024 | Journey in Commercial Real-estate | Cyrus Sakhai |
| March 26, 2024 | From Bentley to Harrods | David Mintz |
| March 20, 2024 | Family Entrepreneurship and Independence Beyond | Luis "Lucho"Noboa |
| March 19, 2024 | Being a Loan Officer and Mortgage Broker | Shant Banosian |
| March 6, 2024 | From College Learning to the Business Sphere | Ira Bornstein |
| February 27, 2024 | Mastering Self-Introduction, Pitching Ideas, and Asking Great Questions | Garren Hilow |
| Date | Topic | Coach |
|---|---|---|
| November 29, 2023 | The Misunderstood Realm of Productivity | Oleg Popovsky |
| November 15, 2023 | Raising Capital - Exploring Alternative Approaches to Financing | Todd Forrest |
| November 2, 2023 | How to be a Startup in the age of ChatGPT | Sree Sundaram, Mike Sternberg & Andrew Wolff |
| October 25, 2023 | High Tech Finance/Accounting, Software, and Revenue Recognition | Jim Kelliher |
| September 27, 2023 | The Disciplined Entrepreneur | Paul Cheek |