Jorge M. Torres
Jorge serves as a Lecturer on the faculty of the Yale School of Engineering and Applied Science (SEAS). He is also an Entrepreneurship Fellow at the Tsai Center for Innovative Thinking at Yale (CITY), which is Yale University’s hub for student-facing innovation education. He previously served as the Dean of Pierson College from 2020-2022, which is a living and learning community for Yale undergraduates, where he was the principal academic and personal advisor to 700 students during his tenure.
Jorge’s work at Yale includes teaching courses and leading co-curricular programs that touch on entrepreneurship, venture capital, and innovation. Since 2017, he’s taught a venture capital seminar (ENAS 403) that introduces undergraduates to the fundamentals of early-stage technology investing. Building on that work, he created the Investing in Innovation Intensive, which is 5-week workshop series at Tsai CITY for undergraduate, graduate, and professional students who are curious about venture capital. At SEAS, he supports several academic programs that give students experiential opportunities to learn about product innovation and the process of commercializing engineering science.
Prior to working in higher education, Jorge served as an original member of the investment team at Silas Capital, which is a venture capital firm that partners with the founders of early-growth stage consumer brands. Through his affiliation with Kauffman Fellows, he is also a limited partner in Truebridge Capital Partners, a venture capital fund-of-funds.
Jorge’s advising and coaching focus on new venture creation, entrepreneurship, and venture capital. He has taught courses that introduce undergraduates to investing fundamentals as well as continuing education programs that help seasoned investors raise their practice to the next level.
He also mentors entrepreneurs through his affiliations with Techstars, Founder Institute, and Endeavor. His mentoring relationships focus on helping founders and their teams develop new products, raise capital, and enter the market.
Jorge was engaged in the full-time practice of intellectual property law for 15 years prior to working in higher education. He received a B.S. in Molecular Biophysics & Biochemistry from Yale and a J.D. from the University of Pennsylvania Law School. He also completed the Kauffman Fellows Program in venture capital while at Silas Capital. Jorge was born in the Bronx, New York, raised in the borough of Queens, and has roots in Ponce, Puerto Rico.