Patty Alper is president of the Alper portfolio Group, a marketing and consulting company. She is also a prominent speaker and the author of Teach to Work: How a Mentor, a Mentee, and a Project can Close the Skills Gap in America. Patty’s 35-year career in business, coupled with two decades of hands-on experience working directly with youth, uniquely qualifies her to understand the growing skills gap from both perspectives: the employers who seek to build a pipeline and hire better-prepared youth for twenty-first century jobs, and the youth who are often ill-equipped or ill-trained to enter the new workforce.In her book and speaking engagements, Patty describes how Project Based Mentorship® brings together corporate employees, retirees, and businesses as a corps of knowledge practitioners, with the common goal of passing on skills to the next generation. Patty draws on her extensive philanthropic work to bring the business and education sectors together meaningfully, building on the strength of each to close the skills gap.Patty serves on the National Board of the Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship (NFTE), where she developed the Adopt-a-Class program in 2001. She invited countless business leaders to NFTE’s classrooms as on-going mentors who helped teachers inspire and coach entrepreneurship students on their business plans. This work was the grounding for Patty’s vision, and her extensive philanthropic work that focuses on bringing the education and business sectors together meaningfully. A trustee of the Alper Family Foundation for the last 18 years, and a trustee on the Phillips Collection, Patty’s approach to giving and to mentorship has received recognition awards in the DC area, as well as being featured in the New York Times, The Huffington Post, The Washington Post, Philanthropy Magazine, and Time.