Mentors in the network he built to match K-12 kids with near-peer, college-age guides.
When the pandemic shut schools down, a lot of kids lost the spark that makes learning feel alive, the mentor who makes a subject click. Alec Katz saw that gap and also saw who could fill it: college-age students, close enough in age to feel like a cool older sibling, who were passionate about the things kids actually wanted to learn.
So he built the matchmaker. Katz founded Curious Cardinals, a platform that pairs K-12 students with near-peer mentors, and grew it into a network of more than 200 of them. Instead of standardized tutoring, the mentors teach what lights kids up, from cryptocurrency to aviation, meeting curiosity where it actually lives.
It reframed what a teacher can be. By making the mentor young, relatable, and genuinely excited about the subject, Curious Cardinals turned learning from a chore into something closer to being let in on something cool by someone you look up to.
"He matched kids not with another tutor, but with the older version of who they want to be."
The usual fix for a learning gap is more of the same: more worksheets, more drilling. Katz built something different by starting from how kids actually get inspired, which is usually a person, not a program. He designed around curiosity instead of against it.
This is the builder thinking ANF keeps spotlighting. Solve the problem the way people actually experience it. Katz bet that the right mentor beats the right worksheet.
Kids did not need more drilling. They needed someone to look up to.
