“I remember sitting in my dorm room, completely overwhelmed,” recalls Skye Blanks. “I had no family connections, no clear path forward. Just a vague sense that I needed to figure it out on my own.”
That memory – of genuine uncertainty and limited options – is something many mentors prefer to gloss over in their success stories. But for Blanks, these early struggles form the cornerstone of his mentorship approach. They’re precisely what make him such an effective guide for today’s ambitious but often directionless young entrepreneurs.
Growing up, Blanks believed athletics would be his ticket to higher education. When sports didn’t pan out as planned, he found himself at a crossroads familiar to many first-generation college students – how to navigate systems nobody in his family had mastered before.
“That’s when I realized I’d have to create my own roadmap,” he says.
That self-created roadmap eventually led Blanks through an impressive academic journey – putting himself through college, earning a BA in International Affairs, and later an MBA with a financial management certification. But the path wasn’t linear.
Unlike mentors who dispensed advice from positions of privilege, Blanks built his career from the ground up. As a Treasury Scholar in the U.S. Department of Treasury and later a Presidential Fellow at George Washington University, he was constantly learning while simultaneously seeking guidance.
“The most valuable mentors I found weren’t the ones with the most impressive titles,” Blanks explains. “They were the ones who understood the practical challenges of trying to break into spaces where you don’t naturally belong.”
This insight shapes his current work as a startup mentor at Yale’s Tsai Center for Innovative Thinking, where he guides student entrepreneurs through the messy realities of launching ventures. His mentees consistently note his rare combination of high-level experience and ground-level empathy.
“When I talk with students who are the first in their family to attend college or launch a business, I see my younger self,” says Blanks. “I understand the unspoken questions they’re afraid to ask because they think everyone else already knows the answers.”
This perspective sets him apart from typical advisors. While serving on the Advisory Council for the Hispanic Scholarship Fund and as an interviewer for the Gates Foundation’s scholarship program, Blanks brings a firsthand understanding of both ambition and uncertainty.
His entrepreneurial ventures reflect the same trial-by-fire approach that informs his mentorship. As co-founder of a top New Jersey cannabis dispensary and Chief Operations Officer at the International Council for Small Business, Blanks hasn’t stopped experiencing new challenges.
“The worst mentors are those who succeeded once and spend the rest of their careers telling that same story,” Blanks observes. “The best are those who are still in the arena, still facing new obstacles, still figuring things out.”
This commitment to ongoing growth has made him particularly valuable to first-generation entrepreneurs and students from underrepresented backgrounds. Where others offer platitudes, Blanks provides tactical guidance born from personal experience.
“I had to learn to ‘bury my dead quickly’ – to recognize when something wasn’t working and pivot without letting failure define me,” he shares. “That’s not something you learn in business school. It’s something you learn from failing and getting back up.”
As Blanks looks toward his goal of becoming an adjunct professor focused on entrepreneurship, his approach remains grounded in practical reality rather than academic theory.
“There’s nothing more powerful than hearing ‘I’ve been exactly where you are’ from someone who truly has,” says a former mentee. “Skye doesn’t just tell you it’s possible to succeed. He shows you exactly how he did it, step by step.”
For the next generation of entrepreneurs navigating their own moments of doubt, that kind of authentic guidance isn’t just helpful—it’s essential.
