Jeff Cott

Originally from Dallas, Jeff graduated from Harvard in 2018 as a first-gen college graduate. There, he focused professional and extra-curricular efforts across the public/private sector in the US and LatAm. After college, he worked in consulting at Deloitte, where he focused on government, social impact, and DEI-related projects. Most recently, Jeff graduated with his Stanford MBA in 2024, where he served as President of the Hispanic Business Student Association and interned with VamosVentures and the City of San Antonio Office of Innovation. At Stanford, Jeff founded Trailblazer, a grassroots-focused near-peer advising platform that connects high school students and counselors with first-gen college students from their home community who now attend colleges nationwide. Trailblazer pays its first-gen advisors $20/hour, boosts local advising capacity, expands information on post-secondary routes, and rebuilds community capital among hometown peers. The platform supports school/charter networks, college access organizations, and Tribal Nations while centering cost-accessibility for organizations historically left behind by EdTech. As Trailblazer scales nationally, it will deliver analytics insights to inform student-centered programming and university talent recruitment among its partners. Jeff credits his change-making aspirations to growing up in a working-class single-parent Latino household, and to his mother who filled their home with love and support for higher education.