Meet your Elevate program expert mentors dedicated to helping you grow!

Kevin Felix Chan

As a certified EOS Implementer, he helps business owners get what they want from their businesses by applying the Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS) to drive clarity, alignment, and traction—drawing on over a decade of experience scaling a nationwide company and leading entrepreneur communities.

From Overwhelm to Ownership: this workshop series is for founders building six- and seven-figure businesses who want to scale to multimillions with clarity instead of chaos. Each session focuses on a high-leverage inflection point that founders must navigate to move from working on everything in the business... to the business working for you.

  1. From Founder to Leadership Team
    Every founder hits a ceiling when they're the one wearing all the hats. This workshop dives into what "Right People, Right Seats" looks like at scale, what's the right team structure for your next level, and what works (and doesn't) when elevating team members into leadership roles. You'll walk away with a clearer path to your most important hires.

  2. The Six Drivers of Multimillion Growth
    Businesses feel stuck despite hard work because one of the hidden core drivers is quietly limiting scale. This workshop uncovers the six essential areas that determine whether your company grows or plateaus. You'll walk away with clarity of what strengths to accelerate, and what bottlenecks to fix, in order to break through to the next level.

  3. Playing 10x Bigger
    Small goals are hard, because the team will get distracted with too many ways to achieve it. 10x thinking forces clarity. When the vision is bold enough, it narrows the paths to a few strategic moves that truly matter. This session will help founders expand on their vision -- while focusing on the decisions that would realistically make it come to life.

  4. Annual Planning for 2027
    Get ahead of next year with this simplified Annual Planning session for 2027. This practical session will help you clarify your long-term vision, define the few priorities that truly matter next year, and translate vision into a plan that your team can execute. Leave with a simple, focused roadmap so you can enter 2027 with more confidence and clarity.

David Choi

David Choi is the Hilton Chair of Entrepreneurship and Director of the Fred Kiesner Center at LMU, where he has spent over 20 years building a top-ranked entrepreneurship program and launching multiple academic and incubator initiatives.

Join Professor David Choi for exclusive Office Hours - open, interactive sessions where you can ask anything and get his candid, no-filter perspective. With deep experience across food, software, and biotech startups, David has advised dozens of high-growth CPG and software companies and brings real-world insight you can apply immediately.

Joon S. Han

Strategist and CEO Mentor Joon S. Han’s insights and frameworks are trusted by Fortune 20 executives, Inc. 500 founders, and Ivy-League institutions and it’s his absolute honor and joy to help ACE NextGen members grow from being very busy to very effective.

  1. Your $5M Toolkit
    You've probably heard the leadership adage that "what got you here, won't get you there" so let's explore the various roadblocks that often keep entrepreneurs stuck at the same level for years and years.

    After helping so many smart entrepreneurs grow their companies from $5M to $20M in just a few years, Joon is excited to share exclusive insights, research and the five essential tools you need to blow past this threshold in your business.

    Whether you've been stuck under $5M for way too long or just want to fast forward a couple years in your success story; come and get what you need from this unique perspective on success and your fellow brilliant entrepreneurs to help make 2026 your best year ever!

  2. Business Development
    Your WANTED List/ideal customer profile

  3. Business Development
    Your expert position + greatest hits

  4. Business Development
    Your 80% Close

  5. Executive Leadership
    The Silent Killers shrinking your profit margins

  6. Executive Leadership 
    Annual Strategic Planning Process

  7. Business Development
    Big Whale Hunting

  8. Executive Leadership 
    Leadership Growth Check-In and Succession Planning

    PLEASE NOTE that these sessions will NOT be recorded so that Joon can freely share from his full playbook of years of proprietary research and client work.

Shefali Lakhani

  1. Trademarks and Intellectual Property: Protect What You Build
    An overview of trademarks and key IP categories, including what’s protectable, what to document, and common ownership mistakes.

  2. The Contract Toolkit: What You Need as You Grow
    An overview of essential business contracts, key deal points, and how to de-risk relationships with clients, vendors, and partners.

  3. AI in Your Business: Risk, Guardrails, and Vendor Review
    Learn how AI impacts your business, where risks arise, and the guardrails needed to protect IP, privacy, and operations.

  4. Growth Moves: Hiring, Collaborations, and Expansion
    Learn the key risks to watch for as you scale—hiring, partnerships, and expansion—plus guardrails to grow without surprises.

This four-part workshop series gives businesses a practical legal framework for protecting core assets and scaling with fewer preventable problems. Across trademarks and IP, contract systems, responsible AI use, and growth execution, you will learn what to put in place now so growth does not create avoidable risk later.

Shefali Lakhani is the Founder and Managing Attorney of Lakhani Legal, a business and IP law firm supporting businesses, startups, and creatives.

Soo Jin Lee

Soo Jin Lee is a licensed therapist, executive director of Yellow Chair Collective, and co-founder of Entwine Community whose culturally responsive, community-centered mental health advocacy—shaped by her experience as an Asian immigrant—has been nationally recognized through her book Where I Belong and features on NPR, PBS, CBS, and at CUNY

Nervous System Leadership is a four-part workshop series supporting Asian American entrepreneurs in understanding how culture, chronic stress, and responsibility shape the way we lead. Through four 1-hour sessions, we’ll unpack the emotional patterns that often accompany entrepreneurship—burnout cycles, perfectionism as a coping strategy, people-pleasing and guilt-based boundaries, and the mental load of leadership and visibility. Participants will learn nervous-system-informed tools that support regulation, resilience, and healthier leadership—so success doesn’t require self-abandonment.

  1. Burnout and the Driven Nervous System
    Explore how chronic stress, cultural responsibility, and overfunctioning shape burnout cycles in Asian American entrepreneurs, and learn regulation strategies that support sustainable energy.

  2. Perfectionism as Protection
    Understand perfectionism as a nervous-system survival strategy rooted in cultural and relational expectations, and practice tools for self-trust, flexibility, and compassionate standards.

  3. People-Pleasing, Guilt, and Boundaries
    Examine how belonging, harmony, and fear of disappointment drive people-pleasing leadership patterns, and build boundary skills that reduce guilt while preserving connection.

  4. The Mental Load of Leadership and Visibility
    Name the invisible emotional labor and vigilance that come with leading while marginalized, and develop nervous-system-informed practices that support confident, values-aligned visibility.

Tristan Nguyen

  1. Money Basics Every Business Owner Should Actually Understand

  • How to read a Profit & Loss (without accounting jargon)

  • Cash vs profit (why you’re “busy but broke”)

  • The 3 numbers that matter most each month

  • Red flags that signal financial trouble early

This three-part workshop series is designed to help business owners build financial clarity, confidence, and control. Members will learn how to understand their numbers without accounting jargon, make smarter tax decisions, and transition from reactive money management to a simple, repeatable financial operating system. Through practical guidance and real-world examples, founders will gain the tools needed to move from day-to-day hustle to CEO-level financial leadership.

Tristan Nguyen is the Founder and CEO of Tristan CPA, providing fractional Controller and CFO services to help small businesses build strong financial foundations.

2. Tax Planning for Business Owners

  • Difference between tax prep vs tax strategy

  • Common tax mistakes immigrant & first-gen founders make

  • S-Corp vs LLC vs sole prop (real-world pros/cons)

  • Paying yourself correctly (W-2 vs distributions)

  • How to legally reduce taxes before year-end

3. From Hustler to CEO: Building a Financial Operating System

  • Monthly financial rhythm (what to review & when)

  • Systems: bookkeeping, payroll, tax, forecasting

  • KPIs by business type

  • When to outsource vs DIY

Ian So

Co-Founder of ACE NextGen & Co-Founder of Chicken & Rice Guys.

After graduating from Babson College, Ian founded Chicken & Rice Guys with a $19,000 food truck and scaled it into a multi-million-dollar company, becoming one of the fastest-growing private businesses in Massachusetts and the U.S. Building on that success, he now helps small business owners gain personal and business freedom through strategic consulting, business operating systems, and personal coaching—while continuing his mission to “Do Good With Food” through community impact.

The Zero-Meeting Calendar Life

WARNING: This workshop is for a very specific kind of lazy entrepreneur—one who values time, freedom, and lowering their golf handicap.

In this one-hour, two-part workshop, Ian shares a brutally candid account of his entrepreneurial journey—from his lowest lows (owing the government $1M in taxes) to becoming semi-retired.

In Part Two, he breaks down the actual skills and frameworks CEOs must develop to go from 100-hour workweeks to ZERO.

Ben Tao

Ben is a seasoned $1 million+ sales eCommerce seller, with extensive experience with multiple sales channels (Amazon, Walmart, Shopify, eBay, Faire), launching products, listing optimization, importing from Asia, inventory management, influencer marketing, and PPC advertising.

  1. Amazon Capabilities & Strategy Overview
    A practical map of Amazon’s core options and programs (e.g., FBA vs FBM, AWD, Amazon Global Logistics, and related tools) so members understand what’s available and can choose the right “Amazon stack” for their business model, margins, and goals.

  2. Listing Conversion System
    How to turn traffic into sales by improving conversion through listing structure, imagery, A+ content, offer setup, and review fundamentals (focused on conversion and best practices).

  3. Amazon Advertising Fundamentals
    An owner-friendly breakdown of Amazon ad options and a simple framework for launching and managing PPC in a way that drives growth while staying profitable.

  4. Social Selling & Creator Commerce
    How brands are driving demand and traffic today through platforms like TikTok Shop (primary focus), plus how to leverage creator/affiliate programs and social channels that can support Amazon performance.

A four-part workshop for intermediate business owners on building, optimizing, and scaling an Amazon eCommerce channel—from listings and ads to demand generation through social selling and TikTok Shop.

John Victoria

Build a Measurable Marketing Engine
If you’re serious about scaling, your marketing needs a system - not random tactics. This quarterly workshop series is designed to help business owners build the right digital foundation, execute high-impact improvements, and use real performance data to guide decisions throughout the year.

  1. Set the Foundation
    Tracking, attribution, and a baseline audit so you can measure progress accurately (Analytics, Search Console, call tracking, pixels/retargeting setup where appropriate). We’ll also set your annual growth targets.

  2. Execute What Moves the Needle
    Prioritize and implement the most meaningful improvements based on your early data and business goals.

  3. Optimize With Evidence
    Review results, troubleshoot friction points, and refine your strategy based on what the data is showing.

  4. Review + Scale the Winners
    Analyze the year, identify the highest-performing channels and actions, and create a focused plan for next year using a Pareto-style approach.

You’ll finish with a practical marketing roadmap, cleaner reporting, and clarity on what to double down on.

John Victoria is an entrepreneur, SEO expert, and founder of Polianna and Blue Collar Engine. He’s an Amazon best-selling author and speaker

Ryan Villanueva

Ryan Villanueva is an entrepreneur, consultant, and Head of AI at Crews & Co. who works with CEOs to grow revenue, profit, and valuation through strategic planning, business coaching, and practical AI, bringing experience from Goldman Sachs, a Yale education, and co-founding Best Delegate, which has reached over 7 million people worldwide.

AI April & AI August are hands-on workshops led by Ryan Villanueva, Head of AI at Crews & co., designed for AAPI NextGen entrepreneurs who want to use AI to drive real business results. Drawing from practical use cases across $1M–$200M businesses, these sessions show how operators are using AI today to improve sales effectiveness, operational efficiency, and profitability.

Participants will walk away with concrete AI workflows and playbooks they can deploy immediately to save time, reduce costs, and make better decisions, turning AI from experimentation into a durable competitive advantage.

Larry Wu

Larry Wu is the founder of WUJU Foods, a brand dedicated to bringing bold Asian-inspired flavors to everyday kitchens. Growing up in a family of restaurateurs, he developed a deep appreciation for food as a bridge between cultures and launched WUJU to expand that legacy through packaged foods.

  1. Channel and product strategy

  • Amazon, Direct-to-Consumer Website, Food Service, Traditional Retail, Off Retail, and Club

  • What channel is best for you, and what was our journey with WUJU Foods?

  • Our experience working from commoditized products to specialty products to mass products

  • Even if you're B2B, you have to think about the B2C

2. High level financials for retail

  • Gross profit margin versus markup

  • Forecasting and cash flow (some tools and templates will be provided)

  • Realities of selling into traditional retail: promotion expectations, slotting fees, margin expectations of distributors and retailers, unexpected chargebacks

  • Fundraising: what worked for us as we raised multiple angel rounds and debt rounds for inventory financing

3. Branding/positioning

  • Experience share on our rebranding journey, and how we found out that branding was our biggest core issue. This will hopefully provide insights into how you can avoid making the same mistake

  • Considerations for traditional retail, like positioning to them, new buyers/category managers, money hungry retailers

4. Working with contracted partners

  • Co-manufacturing teams, brokers, Amazon partners, designers, and branding experts

  • Pluses and minuses, and knowing when to split up

Romell Zabate

Romell Zabate is a physical therapist dedicated to helping active adults and athletes recover, prevent injury, and perform at their best through patient-centered care, individualized programming, and a movement-based approach shaped by his background in personal training and the fitness industry.

A Starter Guide for High-Performing Entrepreneurs
This four-part workshop series helps entrepreneurs build sustainable health habits to boost energy, focus, and performance. Learn to understand your body, fuel it effectively, and adopt movement strategies that fit your lifestyle—so you can protect your health while leading and growing your business.

  1. Health Foundations for Entrepreneurs
    Learn to view health as a system, not isolated habits. This workshop shows how sleep, nutrition, movement, and stress interact to affect energy, focus, recovery, and long-term health—and how small, consistent changes can yield big results.

  2. Nutrition for Sustainable Energy
    Learn simple, flexible nutrition strategies to boost focus, energy, and resilience—whether at home, traveling, or on the go—so you can power through long workdays sustainably.

  3. Choosing the Right Exercise
    Learn how to match exercise to your stress, workload, and schedule, exploring when strength, cardio, mobility, or recovery work is most effective—no single “best” workout required.

  4. Building Your Sustainable Health Routine
    Turn knowledge into lasting habits. Learn to create a personal, adaptable health routine—covering nutrition, exercise, and stress—that fits real life and keeps you healthy without guilt or burnout.