My background

Since 2006 I have worked extensively in my private practice with a wide range of students in the New York area, around the nation and in Europe.     

Since 2018 I have also been a college counselor for first-generation-to-college students in the Mid Hudson Valley, primarily from Spanish-speaking immigrant families. This work is through a community-based organization in Rhinebeck. We collaborate with school counselors, families and the community to help young people get to college without taking on much debt, thrive there, and launch themselves into the world and their careers.

​

I grew up in England and moved to the U.S.A. after completing my bachelors/masters degree at Oxford University, where I studied Latin, Greek and ancient history.   While working as a freelance editor in Boston I became interested in the newish field of computers and took classes at Harvard's brand new extension school. I went on to have a twenty-year career in technology management at The New York Times and the Paris-based International Herald Tribune. When my own children were starting high school I began to read widely about college admissions practices.  What I learned shocked me.  I could sense the confusion and concern among well-educated parents faced with a bewildering maze. I wondered, too, how students from less affluent backgrounds with parents who had never been to college were faring.   I decided to educate myself to become a college adviser, an expert guide to the admissions process, learning first through a U.C.L.A. online program and then with a non-profit organization, Project Reach Youth, helping low-income teenagers at public high schools in Brooklyn.  

​

My background helped.  After training as a computer programmer and systems analyst, I'd become known at The New York Times for successfully managing complex projects for the newsroom. So demystifying the college admissions system seemed a challenging but not impossible project. Having grown up in a family of educators, I was an avid consumer of education trends and news. I'd even become the go-to parent among my friends for insights into New York's public and private elementary and secondary schools. And with my Oxford education in Classics, plus my experience of living and working in France and Germany, I brought a fresh perspective to looking at American liberal arts education. 

I have two 20-something daughters who went to Columbia and Bard. When their friends were applying to college, I could relate equally to science/math kids, serious humanities scholars-in-the-making, athletic all-rounders, and artistic teens with unique talent in music or creative writing. And as a parent myself I find the counseling side of my career to be both natural and rewarding.