Hema Hari

Hema Hari joined IvyAchievement after we successfully helped two of her children gain admission to universities abroad. As Outreach Coordinator, Hema develops and maintains relationships with families in India. She was previously a curriculum and event planner for a high school. She holds an MA in history from Ethiraj College, Chennai.

Tom Kovic

Tom Kovic advises individual families and prospective student-athletes in developing and executing personal plans for the college athletics recruiting process. Consequently, he has facilitated placement of over 750 candidates to top colleges and universities during the past 12 years. We are proud to partner with Tom and his team at Victory Recruiting to assist athletes from around the world.

Tom lectures widely throughout the United States and has delivered countless college recruiting seminars to thousands of participants. Notable presentations include The US National Lacrosse Convention, USA Gymnastics National Congress, the YPO Northeast Regional Seminar, and the IECA National Convention. Mr. Kovic is a nationally recognized leader in the field of college recruiting and the author of “Reaching for Excellence: An Educational Guide for College Athletics Recruiting.”

Tom is a regular contributor to numerous educational and sports publications. Noteworthy interviews include Forbes Magazine, Huffington Post, AOL Entrepreneur, US Lacrosse, US Fencing and USA Gymnastics.

In 19 seasons as Head Coach of Gymnastics at the University of Pennsylvania, Tom helped lead the Quakers to eight Ivy League team championships and two Eastern Conference team titles. Subsequently, he was twice named ECAC Coach of the Year and honored as the NCAA Regional Coach of the Year in 2004.

Tom received his undergraduate degree from Temple University (Phi Epsilon Kappa/Outstanding Senior Award) where he was a two-sport athlete. In addition, he earned his master’s degree from the University of Illinois. Tom, his wife Jennifer, and daughter Hannah reside in a suburb of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Priyanka Mehta

Priyanka Mehta graduated from Jesus and Mary College, University of Delhi with a B.A. (Honors) in psychology. 

Benjamin P. Stern

Benjamin P. Stern is the founder and CEO of IvyAchievement. He received his J.D. from Yale Law School and worked at two major law firms, Sullivan & Cromwell LLP and Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LLP in New York and Palo Alto. At Yale, he was Senior Submissions Editor of the Yale Journal of Health Policy, Law & Ethics and an Editor of the Yale Journal of Law & Technology. Benjamin received his undergraduate degree in biomedical engineering at Columbia University, where he was named to the Tau Beta Pi engineering honor society. At Columbia, he was a copy editor at the Columbia Daily Spectator and the Executive Editor of the Triple Helix: International Journal of Science, Society & Law.

Benjamin has an eye for detail and is a “straight talker.” He believes in honest, constructive feedback and invented IvyAchievement’s Four Point Review.

Angela Conley

Angela Conley has served as Assistant Director of Admission at MIT and reviewed applications for Cornell University as an Admissions Counselor. She has served as Residence Director and Assistant Dean at Barnard College, and Director of Student Activities at Sarah Lawrence College. Angela has worked in private consulting for individuals and non-profits, helping underprivileged children get into their dream schools. Angela recently returned from a three-year stint in China, where she worked for a major college counseling firm.

Arielle Time Burstein

Arielle Time Burstein graduated Barnard College of Columbia University with a BA in Film Studies and concentration in Creative Writing. In addition to working as a college admissions consultant, Arielle also specializes in resume consultation and design for job applications. She has helped get students into schools such as Stanford, UCLA, Boston University, NYU, Barnard College, and many more. She is currently in the process of applying for law school and hopes to pursue a career in civil rights and humanitarian law.

Arielle has also worked with Animal Planet and Investigation Discovery, and she worked on production of the recent blockbuster thriller, The Girl on the Train. During her free time, she takes Storytelling classes at The Magnet, and she is preparing her first solo show. She loves watching TV and has a passion for podcasts.

Mike Disman

Mike Disman is a writer and editor from the suburbs of Philadelphia. He is a graduate of Emerson College with a degree in Writing, Literature, and Publishing and a focus on creative writing. During his time at Emerson, he covered the Occupy Boston movement for the school’s newspaper, The Berkeley Beacon, and created and hosted his own radio show, The Spirit of Radio, on one of Emerson’s two radio stations. He has been refining his editing experience for years both inside and outside of the classroom, and recently helped edit a published book of poetry.

In his spare time, Mike enjoys writing short fiction, personal essays, and prose poems, as well as tussling with Russian novelists and exploring nature.

Rachael Drew

Rachael Drew is a Masters graduate in Global and International Studies from the University of California Santa Barbara, with a focus on postcolonial education curriculum. Her academic passion is culturally relevant syllabi material in history, social studies, and literature courses. She holds two BA degrees in Political Science and Global Studies from California Lutheran University in Thousand Oaks, CA.

With over 4 years as a writing consultant, Rachael has tutored international, adult, and undergraduate students in all aspects of the writing process, including brainstorming, thesis statements, flow, voice, grammar, organization, citation styles, and more. She strongly believes that writing is a personal process that requires work and reflection- writing is a living process of ideas and structure. She also believes that everyone has the ability to write, and feels a sense of purpose relaying this concept to students.

Jacob Edson

Jacob Edson is a writer, scholar, editor, and tutor in eastern Massachusetts, where he teaches writing, English as a Second Language, and religious history. He holds a Master’s degree in Late Antique Christianity from Harvard, and a Bachelor’s in Religion and History from the Memorial University of Newfoundland.

An avid reader and compulsive writer, he habitually juggles multiple ongoing projects, which currently include independent research into ancient monastic communities and curating a forthcoming blog on religion in the arts and entertainment. His work was recently featured in Harvard Divinity School’s Journal of Comparative Theology.

In addition to his academic and creative interests, Jacob enjoys exploring the landscape and natural history of his native New England.

Anna del Gaizo

Anna del Gaizo is a freelance writer and native New Yorker. Anna graduated summa cum laude from New York University’s Gallatin School of Individualized Study with a focus on creative writing and literature, during which she also served as an editor at The New York Observer. Her work has been published on Jezebel.com and Broadly.com, among others, and she has contributed to ELLE, Nylon, and Self-Services magazines. As a consultant and administrator for Bloomberg Philanthropies for several years, she led a number of multi-million-dollar grants, specifically for major employment and education initiatives in several African countries.

Anna’s passion for helping others find their voice and express themselves through the written word and in turn, construct the ideal essay, far surpasses her appreciation of fashion and more lighthearted pursuits (she moonlights as a fashion stylist). She takes immense pride in showing how satisfying writing can be to those who might initially feel otherwise and loves the unique and personal experience of working one-on-one with students.

Prarthana Jayaram

Prarthana Jayaram is a writer and editor from Portland, OR. She has been honing her skills for many years, working in the nonprofit sector as a grant-writer and communications specialist, as well as in the media as a freelance journalist and editor. Her interests and expertise include food and the restaurant industry, fitness, and education — but her greatest passions are language and grammar.

Prarthana holds a masters degree in data journalism from the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism and a bachelor’s in English literature from Haverford College in Pennsylvania.

Kristen Kapfer

Kristen Kapfer is an international academic editor who helps unriddle problems in dissertations, theses, and journal articles from around the world and in a broad range of fields. She is also a local writer coach for university and school-age students of many different backgrounds and abilities. Kristen moved as a child to German Switzerland and grew up Swiss, returning stateside to receive her B.A. from the University of Washington. Kristen also holds an M.A. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and completed her Ph.D. in Medieval Studies at Duke University. Bilingual and bicultural, she is familiar with the many awkward challenges of second language acquisition and works often with non-native and multilingual writers in English.

Kristen’s editing is perceptive and respectful of the author’s voice, an approach seasoned by years of close work with writers of all shapes and sizes. The hurdles that make up the writing process are normal and can be worked through together, as a team.

Ariel Schwartz

Ariel Schwartz is a writer, editor, scholar, and teacher in Chicago. Through the support of a fellowship from the American Association of University Women, she recently completed her Ph.D. in Religious Studies at Northwestern University. Ariel also holds an M.A. in Religious Studies from Northwestern, a B.A. in Religion from Barnard College of Columbia University, and a B.A. in Hebrew Bible from the Jewish Theological Seminary of America. She has published an encyclopedia article and academic book reviews and is at work on two academic articles based on her dissertation research. Her current book project examines the impact of hate crimes on religious minority communities in the United States.

Ariel has more than 15 years of editing and teaching experience, working with students of all ages from around the world, including New York, Chicago, and Mumbai. She especially enjoys helping Northwestern University and Lake Forest College undergraduates with their writing. She has worked as a dissertation editor and a freelance copy editor, and she served as the associate copy editor of the Columbia Daily Spectator during college.

Ariel loves travel adventures like white-water rafting in Costa Rica and bungee-jumping in Nepal. She is an avid reader and a coffee connoisseur; she enjoys doing both at once.

Tanya Shaffer

Tanya Shaffer is a freelance author and playwright living in the San Francisco Bay Area. Her critically acclaimed travel memoir, Somebody’s Heart is Burning: A Woman Wanderer in Africa (Vintage), was chosen by the San Francisco Chronicle as one of the Best Books of the Year and profiled in Vogue and USA Today. Her stories and essays have appeared on Salon.com and in numerous anthologies; her plays have been produced by several repertory theaters and have toured to more than 40 cities across the United States and Canada. She has also co-written two shows for the Tony Award-winning San Francisco Mime Troupe. Her solo show, Let My Enemy Live Long!, was awarded a Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle Award for solo performance. Tanya recently completed a four-year residency with the Playwrights Foundation, where she taught writing courses and had an opportunity to critique many students’ work. She enjoys working with other writers to help them present their ideas in the clearest, most engaging form possible. Tanya is a proud graduate of the Oberlin College creative writing program. Learn more on her website!

Zach Strassburger

Zach Strassburger is a lawyer and academic based in rural Minnesota. Zach graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Wesleyan University with a major in Women’s Studies, and worked at the Urban Justice Center and the Legal Aid Society of New York before attending Yale Law School. At Yale, Zach was an Articles Editor for the Yale Journal of Law & Feminism and president of Outlaws, the LGBT student group. After extensive work in the legal clinics at Yale, Zach won an Equal Justice Fellowship to represent young people with mental illness in the foster care system in Pittsburgh, PA.

Zach left legal practice to begin a career in academia as an Assistant Professor of Child Advocacy Studies at Winona State University. Zach has taught hundreds of students how to write cogent and concise arguments in the classroom and privately, and has served as an evaluator and advisor for Equal Justice Works fellowship applications for several years.

Zach is currently writing several papers for publication, including a groundbreaking study of how medical decisions are made across the United States for youth in foster care. Zach has two young children, likes to cook, and enjoys outdoor activities such as cross-country skiing and biking.

Nina Vasan, M.D.

Nina Vasan is a Resident Physician at the Stanford University Medical Center

• American Psychiatric Association Leadership Fellow

• M.B.A. Class of ’18, Stanford University Graduate School of Business
• M.D., Harvard Medical School
• A.B., Harvard University
  • Former Harvard admissions interviewer
• Co-Author, #1 Amazon Bestseller Do Good Well: Your Guide to Leadership, Action, and Social Innovation, Wiley & Sons (2013)
• Summer M.D. associate, McKinsey & Co.
• One of Glamour Magazine’s Top 10 College Women, 2005
• Other advisory positions
  • Clinical advisor, Lyra Health
  • Advisory board member, Cogito.org (Johns Hopkins University)

Pianpian Carolyn Xu

• M.A., M.Phil., Yale University
  • Coca-Cola World Fund Fellowship
• M.Phil., Hong Kong University of Science and Technology
• B.A., Sun Yat-Sen University
• Study abroad at Kobe University
  • Certificate in Survey Methodology & Quantitative Analysis, Peking University
• Languages: Mandarin, Cantonese, Japanese, English

Stephanie H. Lee

• Former associate, Wachtell Lipton Rosen & Katz
• J.D., Yale Law School
  • Editor-in-Chief, Yale Journal on Regulation
• A.B., Harvard University, magna cum laude
  • Phi Beta Kappa, John Harvard Scholar, Detur Prize, High Honors in Social Studies and East Asian Studies
• Languages: Korean, Spanish, English
  SAT: 1590/1600 (2390/2400)