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OUR STORY
From one classroom to a movement
AI Friction Labs started in a rhetoric and inquiry course at Fairleigh Dickinson University, where founder Mike Kentz was using his own classroom as a product testing ground. The question was simple: what happens when you flip AI from helper to challenger?
The answer changed everything. Students who engaged with AI that pushed back — that asked harder questions, resisted jargon, and refused surface-level responses — produced thinking that was more rigorous, more visible, and more assessable than anything a traditional assignment had ever captured. AI Friction Labs was built to bring that experience to every educator.
The Team
The people behind the friction
Mike Kentz
Founder
Mike Kentz is a former Reuters journalist, keynote speaker, and educator with over a decade of classroom experience across secondary and higher education. He is an adjunct professor of Rhetoric and Inquiry at Fairleigh Dickinson University, where he runs live Friction Labs simulations with his students, and a professional development provider to more than 2,000 educators at 20+ institutions.
His work on AI and learning sits at the intersection of research and practice. He is an EDSAFE Alliance Catalyst Fellow, a Perplexity AI in Business Fellow, and an ElevenLabs Impact Program Fellow. He is completing graduate-level research on AI's impact on creativity at Wilkes University, where his mentor is Hugo and Nebula Award-winning author Ken Liu.
AI Friction Labs is the product of that research — built in classrooms, tested with students, and developed in partnership with professors and teachers who were asking the same question: if helpful AI is the problem, what does the solution look like?
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Doan Winkel
Chief Strategy Officer
Doan Winkel is the John J. Kahl, Sr. Endowed Chair in Entrepreneurship at John Carroll University, where he directs the Center for Entrepreneurship and the Donnelly School for Leadership and Social Innovation. His work sits at the intersection of entrepreneurship education and AI. Doan's approach to teaching with AI has been adopted by educators worldwide. He brings two decades of research and practice in how entrepreneurship is taught, how it should be taught, and why most of the gap between those two things is self-inflicted. As Chief Strategy Officer at Friction Labs, he's channeling that obsession into tools and processes that make friction-free AI adoption a reality for every educator.
Matt Bazin
Head of Customer Success
A New Jersey native and Carnegie Mellon Tepper School of Business alum, Matt brings over 15 years of experience scaling high-growth tech startups. His passion lies in Relationship Architecture, focusing on the cultivation of long-term partnerships and realized value for customers.
Gabriela Beni
Marketing Lead
Gabriela is a marketing, entrepreneurship, and ecosystem-building leader with experience spanning higher education, brand strategy, venture operations, and startup growth. She has led go-to-market strategy, branding, digital marketing, and cross-functional initiatives that increased engagement, launched new ventures and products, and expanded programming.
BOARD OF DIRECTORS
Daniel Mintz
Daniel Mintz is a technology executive and university educator who served as Chief Information Officer of the U.S. Department of Transportation and held senior leadership roles at the University of Maryland Global Campus, including Department Chair for IT Technology and Chair of the Academic Advisory Board representing over 4,000 faculty. He led UMGC's Immersive Pilot program exploring Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality in higher education — research covered by Forbes and GovTech — and currently serves as an adjunct professor focused on the practical application of Artificial Intelligence to learning. He has testified before the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives on technology and security matters, and has advised both federal agencies and private sector technology companies. He joins the Friction Labs Board of Advisors to help connect its AI-powered simulation platform with the higher education and corporate learning institutions that will benefit most from it.
Bruce Pellegrino
Bruce Pellegrino has had a 45-year career in Industrial B2B markets working in sales, marketing, product development, business development, government relations and general management.
He has served on the Board of Advisors of several companies specialized in the nondestructive testing (NDT) markets. Bruce has founded, run and sold several of these businesses to GE, Eddyfi Technologies, and Premium Inspection and testing.
Bruce is excited and pleased to assist Mike Kentz and the Board of Friction Lab ai in achieving commercial success and other related growth objectives.
Loren Appelbaum
Loren Appelbaum is a Senior Executive Consultant with decades long experience in leadership assessment, simulations, and development. He served as a senior global HR executive at AT&T and Cigna Corporation with responsibility across HR functions including talent management, development, and training. During his extensive consulting practice career, Loren has established himself as a trusted business advisor to CEOs and Boards for organizations across a wide range of business sectors. His
client engagements with companies like Walmart, Mutual of Omaha, Merck, and numerous others have focused on designing and implementing talent management, assessment, development, and c-suite succession planning initiatives. Loren is also a sought-after executive coach for CEOs and senior leaders across industries and geographies, helping them realize their potential.
