Why We Exist
Our mission is to bridge secondary education and professional adulthood by providing critical skills not typically taught in schools.
David Lee
Alacrity Co-founder
David has spent the last two decades guiding students on their academic journeys as a college consultant, private tutor and university teaching assistant. Passionate about mentorship, he finds fulfillment in helping students build confidence and reach their full potential.
He earned his undergraduate degree from Columbia University and his MBA from The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. He began his career as an equity analyst at Bank of America Merrill Lynch and has since built a career in enterprise software, both in startups and at large companies such as Microsoft and Sprinklr.
Outside of work, you can find David struggling on the golf course or experimenting with new recipes in the kitchen.
Albert Kao
Alacrity Co-founder
Albert helps young adults figure out what they want and where they’re going—whether it’s getting into college or developing real-world confidence and skills, He has been mentoring for years: first as a camp counselor for kids whose parents had cancer, then coaching MBA students as a Leadership Fellow. He works closely with both students and parents to make the next step feel less overwhelming and more intentional.
Albert earned his undergraduate degree from MIT and his MBA from The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. He began his career as a consultant in Deloitte’s Technology Consulting practice and has built a career in product management in early stage startups.
Outside of work, you can find Albert experimenting with ways to build a meaningful family life or training with barbells and sandbags.
Our Story
Alacrity [uh-lak-ri-tee]
Cheerful readiness, amenability, promptness, willingness
As long as we can remember, we've approached education – sharing knowledge, giving advice, helping others reach an "aha" moment – with alacrity. This has taken on many forms through the years: private tutor, college consultant, teaching assistant, camp counselor; mentor. We’ve grasped every opportunity to help students throughout our journey because we didn’t have the system to help us realize what really matters in the long run.
Our backgrounds are similar to that of many others in the US. Our families immigrated to the US when we were young because our parents wanted to give us opportunities to pursue the American Dream. Getting into a top university was the ultimate end goal and we poured everything into the well-known formula: top grades, stellar test scores, and an overflowing list of extracurriculars. We ended up attending elite universities and continued to single-mindedly pursue academic excellence as a formula for success.
This is where we hit a brick wall. The students with the best grades were not necessarily getting the best internships and finding their footing in the professional world. The people with the best GMAT scores were not necessarily getting into the best business schools. The smartest and hardest working professionals were not necessarily the ones getting promotions. No one in our families had ever climbed the corporate ladder here in the US and we had to learn the hard way how to make the pivot from being a student to a working professional.
Fast forward to today, we’ve refined a different formula for success based on careers in Wall Street, management consulting, Silicon Valley, and an MBA from Wharton. The vision for Alacrity is to distill this formula for students to provide a foundational toolkit for adulthood. This toolkit includes soft skills (e.g. public speaking), hard skills (e.g. financial literacy), and exposure to different career paths - we’ll be speaking from direct experience and curating a diverse panel of young professionals to help broaden students’ perspectives. We know these early steps will serve as a powerful combination to set your student up for success not just to get into college, but to flourish as an independent adult.