Having worked as an educator for more than twenty years, I find that my skills and experience are best put to use in helping individuals and institutions chart an exciting path forward. Personal and institutional change can be daunting, but also powerful!
Nothing excites me more than working with students, fellow adults, or institutions to elicit a clearer vision of where they are headed and then support in articulating practical steps to help them move in the desired direction.
To make a coaching appointment, sign up through my calendar on Calendly. All coaching takes place via Zoom.
Most of my teaching career has been spent working with students in their final two years of school, as they prepare to apply to highly competitive universities around the world, often requiring significant financial aid to realize their dreams.
In the last twenty years, I have coached hundreds of students through the writing of personal statements and college application essays. Successful students draft these essays multiple times, until each word fits in place. Not only that, but college essays present an opportunity for students to deeply consider their goals and aspirations. When done whole-heartedly, the college application process is not simply an exercise in hoop-jumping, but the chance for a child and his/her family to choose a path forward from a place of profound reflection and resulting confidence (which in turn reads very well to college admissions personnel!).
When I write recommendation letters for students, I focus on their experiences, gifts, and aspirations. I have written more than 500 college recommendation letters, which supported students in their successful application to Ivy League universities like Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Brown, and Swarthmore, as well as to numerous, small liberal arts colleges and large state universities. Around the world, I have written recommendation letters for universities in the UK, Netherlands, Germany, France, Czech Republic, South Korea, Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Thailand, and Australia. This has given me a high degree of familiarity with the range of university options and admissions practices.
After completing an MA in Ecological Design Thinking during a sabbatical, I have spent the last four years starting up the Centre for Imagination, which is dedicated to helping young people better find their place in the world. The Centre has already worked with a large number of students to develop their ideas into viable projects or products (from gravity-powered lights to the creation of Arabic-English primary education materials to the launching of student-run coffee houses, and everything in between!). I love taking any young person's idea and helping her or him figure out how to bring it down to the ground and put it into action.
My design training assists in offering a clear framework for coaching projects, using multiple models of design thinking. I help students by giving them a structure and path for their project, which aids in helping them track their own progress.
Is there a topic you'd like to investigate or a question you'd like to answer, but you don't know where to start? Or is there a course you'd like to take on your own, but you're not sure where to start? I can help! I've guided a number of independent studies over the years, working with students to create a program of study and then checking in along the way as they work towards a meaningful end product that we define together. Some of these projects have been deeply personal, some more abstract or academic, but all have been rewarding.