About Futures Forge

Futures Forge is a for-profit educational organization (Futures Forge, Inc.) headquartered in the United States.

Our focus is post-high school education. Our pursuit is to create a global educational movement that efficiently and effectively develops in students the attributes, skills, and technical knowledge that they need for the greatest success in their lives and careers. We run as a for-profit organization because we believe that we should align our incentives with the choices of our customers, and that we will perform best if we can innovate free of excess bureaucratic constraints.

Futures Forge's founders and curriculum leads graduated from MIT and Oxford and founded multiple companies (management consulting, devtools startup, hardware startup). We have published books on political polarization, tertiary education, and technical problem-solving, and have jointly coached and managed over 100 top-talent young adults.

The foundation of our companies’ success has always been the rapid development of talented young people; our employees have gone on to found, lead, and accelerate dozens of great businesses. Today, we are developing talent all over the world using the methods we learned and developed.

Nathaniel Greene

FOUNDER

Nat has accelerated the careers of hundreds of professionals of all ages as a consultant, coach, and business leader.

Futures Forge is inspired by the success Nat had developing recent grads from Ivy+ schools in the firm he founded, Stroud International. Stroud’s success in helping Global 1000 businesses and the rapid learning of early employees, Stroud won “Best Small Consulting Firm” 7 times in 8 years.

  • Grew up in Hong Kong with a highly international peer group

    Studied at Oxford and Cambridge universities

    Founded and led Stroud International, an operations consulting firm

    Visited over 70 countries and 7 continents

    Bungee-jumped as a paid display artist

    Founded the Young Presidents Organization Seacoast chapter

  • Wedged, about the roots of US political polarization
    Stop Guessing, about the behaviors of great problem solvers
    Variable Analysis, a manual to solving valuable technical problems

  • Travel and adventure
    Reforming our political system
    Reforming education across the entire spectrum to better help young people create an incredible life
    Helping businesses and entrepreneurs seize opportunity
    Amateur woodworking, solving problems from first principles with limited tools

  • Developing and coaching young talent
    Motivating groups to achieve a common goal
    Challenging the status quo
    Solving “impossible problems” that unlock business potential
    Understanding technical details and translating them into action
    Identifying and building opportunities to create value
    Managing large business relationships and complex sales

  • Survived a terrorist bombing
    Skied to the south pole
    Earned his Home Depot Deck Building badge
    Won the Blackburn Challenge rowing competition in Massachusetts
    Earned money through various jobs and side hustles at a young age, and made his first investment buying physical gold at age 12 (Nat no longer trades in commodities)

    Nat’s four children are between the run-up to, and graduation from, private universities. Nat’s experience working with teachers and administrators through this process has endowed him with a deep passion for giving students all across the world a better path to success.

Erik Fogg

FOUNDER

Erik has coached, managed, and mentored well over 100 young professionals and startup founders as a business leader and as a volunteer mentor and teacher.

Erik (MIT 2009, Bachelors & Masters) is a serial tech entrepreneur and operational front-line and executive leader who has collaborated with Nat on various projects for over a decade. He was an undergrad and grad student at MIT, and a consultant at Nat’s firm. Erik learned three things about top-end postsecondary education:

  1. Many Ivy+ grads (including MIT grads) massively underperform their potential in their careers, including showing up to their career quite unprepared despite their 4 years and $250,000 education

  2. The most valuable part of being at MIT was learning with & from his peers, not his professors; he got the most out of projects, not lectures

  3. Erik learned more relevant skills in his first year at work than he did in 4 years at MIT

  • As early as 2013, Erik’s interest in improving the college experience inspired him to write a guide to graduating early called How to Crush College. Erik has always been passionate about repairing our society (Wedged, ReConsider podcast), and has evolved to see education reform as a critical step. As long as primary and secondary education are largely trapped by government, tertiary education will be the vector through which reformers can drive true change.

    Erik’s greatest skill and passion as a business leader is in coaching highly talented, motivated people to break through their own constraints and roadblocks to become the best version of themselves. What if we didn’t restrict this coaching to only the lucky few?

  • Erik has always been a teacher, ever since becoming a prefect for the freshman boys when he was a senior at The Lawrenceville School. He’s loved coaching and mentoring dozens of employees and fellow startup founders.

    Beyond teaching, Erik loves:
    1. Building costumes for festivals such as Burning Man
    2. Writing and podcasting about politics
    3. Cooking and throwing dinner parties
    4. Playing tactical video games, Dungeons and Dragons, and board games
    5. Skiing, bicycling, and weightlifting
    6. Traveling and discovering new cultures, languages, and food

About The Futures Forge Scholarship Fund

The Futures Forge Scholarship Fund is an independent nonprofit (501(c)(3) that oversees the raising and disbursement of merit-based scholarships for Futures Forge attendees. An independent board of 5 oversees operations and prevents conflicts of interest.

Board of Directors of the Futures Forge Scholarship Fund

Mark Daniels

Managing Director & CSO at Brookwood Financial Partners ($4.5B historical AUM). Founder/CSO, Yesway, Inc. Princeton AB (Astrophysics), M.Eng (Aerospace Engineering & Computer Science). Strength and experience in corporate finance, investing, raising equity, creating businesses, leading operations, and teaching.

Ben Heywood

General Partner, SkyRiver Ventures. Founded and led $15M+/yr medtech platform, experienced venture capitalist, startup mentor, nonprofit board member. MIT BS, Mechanical Engineering; UCLA MBA.

Ruvi Kitov

Co-founder and former CEO of Tufin, a cybersecurity software company (over $100M/year revenue, went public in 2019 on NYSE, acquired 2022). Experienced entrepreneur, executive leader, software engineer. University of Maryland, BS, Computer Science.

 

Nithya Ramanathan

Co-Founder, CEO of Nexleaf Analytics, a global tech nonprofit that recently received $12M from the McKenzie Scott Foundation to scale their products and services to the 60 poorest countries across Africa and Asia. 15 years experience leading strategic partnerships & fundraising, operations, executive leadership in the global nonprofit sector; TED fellow. Cal Berkeley BS, Computer Science; UCLA PhD, Computer Science.

Mike Salguero

Founder/CEO, ButcherBox, a $550M/yr D2C sustainable meat business with no VC capital. Expert at brand-building and marketing, executive leadership, business financial management, and experienced board member of for-profits and nonprofits. Boston University BA, Babson MBA.

 

Our Advisors

Futures Forge keeps its board of advisors private in order to attract and work with professors and other academics who might otherwise not be able to work with us due to our mission being potentially controversial within the university system.

We draw on advisors from our own networks:

  • Young Presidents’ Organization (largest group of CEOs in the world)

  • MIT faculty and alumni

  • Oxford University faculty and alumni

  • Cambridge University faculty and alumni

  • Harvard Business School faculty and alumni

Media Inquiries

Inquiries from news media, editorials, podcasts, blogs, etc, should be directed to: media@futuresforge.org

Non-Discrimination Policy

Student and Recruitment Nondiscrimination policy: Futures Forge recruits, tests, and admits students solely on their individual merit. Our admissions and learning practices do not discriminate on the basis of sex, race, color, or national origin. We admit and welcome students of any sex, race, color, national, and ethnic origin to fully participate.