Admissions Officers + Award-Winning Writers
We combine years of experience in law school admissions offices with the editorial talent of professional, published authors.
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Aaron Thier
Director of Admissions Services
Aaron Thier
Director of Admissions Services
Aaron received a BA in Literature from Yale University and an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Florida, where he taught both creative and expository writing. He is the author of three novels: The Ghost Apple (a semi-finalist for the Thurber Prize), Mr. Eternity (a finalist for the same award), and The World is a Narrow Bridge. His essays and criticism have appeared in The Nation, The New Republic, The Los Angeles Review of Books,Lucky Peach, and other magazines, and in 2016 he received a Literature Fellowship from the National Endowment from the Arts.
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Dan Grossman
Admissions Sales Manager
Dan Grossman
Admissions Sales Manager
Dan Grossman holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Florida and a BA from Williams College, where he graduated summa cum laude and won the Arthur Kaufmann Prize in English. He has published short stories, book reviews, travel pieces, and cultural essays in a variety of publications such as Jewish Currents, Marginalia, and The Millions. His hobbies include baseball, chess, and old films.
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Tajira McCoy
Admissions Officer
Tajira McCoy
Admissions Officer
Tajira worked in law school admissions for ten years, most recently as the Director of Admissions and Scholarship Programs at Berkeley Law. At Berkeley Law, her primary responsibilities included recruiting and advising prospective law school applicants about the application process, evaluating applicants for admission and for incoming scholarship opportunities, managing the scholarship reconsideration process, and supporting diversity recruitment efforts.
During her tenure in law admissions, her recruitment efforts spanned JD and LLM programs at four law schools, including public and private institutions, a Jesuit institution, and an HBCU. Tajira built and cultivated relationships within the law school and pre-law communities, often speaking on panels about the admissions process, diversity in law schools, personal and diversity statement workshops, and financial aid talks. For the Law School Admissions Council, she served on the Misconduct and Irregularities in the Admissions Process Subcommittee, the Subcommittee on DiscoverLaw Plus Programs, the International Outreach and Recruitment Work Group, the Annual Meeting Planning Work Group, and the Diversity Committee. She also evaluated submissions to the LSAC Diversity Writing Competition, and she presented at several Annual Meeting Conferences and numerous LSAC Forum events.
Tajira received her bachelor’s degree from California State University, Northridge and her JD from Southwestern Law School. She currently serves as the Director of Career Services at the University of San Francisco School of Law, where she cultivates employer relationships and advises students and alumni on career planning and job search strategy. Tajira is also the debut author of a rom-com forthcoming from MIRA Books of HarperCollins in early 2022. When she’s not advising students or writing, you might find her testing out new recipes and hosting Supper Club meals for close friends.
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Josh Brooks
Admissions Officer
Josh Brooks
Admissions Officer
Josh served on the admissions committee for Cornell Law School, where he read applications, conducted interviews, and advised the committee on candidates. Josh holds a JD from Cornell Law School, as well as bachelor’s and master’s degrees from other institutions. In law school, Josh served as general editor of the Cornell Law Review and was one of the few students to be published in an elite law journal. Josh started his legal career at a Vault number-one labor and employment law firm, but quickly transitioned to an academic focus when he was awarded the e-Government Fellowship of Cornell Law School. As the e-Government Fellow, Josh taught law students, managed research projects, published multiple articles, and represented Cornell University’s interests in legislative initiatives in New York City. Josh has been featured on NBC New York and in Ezra Magazine and Politico for his work in NYC. Josh then accepted a position as head of the Office of Distinguished Graduate Fellowships at Arizona State University, where he built what started as a small unit into one of the largest and most successful graduate student advising programs in academia, significantly increasing prestigious fellowship grants university-wide. Josh also served as the development chair for the Chicano/Latino Faculty & Staff Association and advised undergraduates in the honors college on law school admissions. Today, Josh owns two successful businesses and is presently writing a book about the wonderful, surreal, and disturbing history of the southwest United States.
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Brigitte Suhr
Admissions Officer
Brigitte Suhr
Admissions Officer
Brigitte holds a BA from the University of Texas at Austin and a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. For two years, she worked in admissions at the University of Virginia School of Law. As she assessed prospective JD files, she often thought about how the applicants could have done a better job of conveying their strengths and contextualizing their weaknesses.
Prior to her work as a consultant, Brigitte traversed the globe as an international human rights lawyer, advocating for truth, justice, and reparations in post-conflict societies. Working for organizations such as Human Rights Watch and the Coalition for the International Criminal Court, she carried out fact-finding, training, and advocacy missions to more than two dozen countries, meeting with stakeholders from presidents to survivor collectives. She feels honored to have had a hand in the legal reforms of over fifty countries ranging from Costa Rica to South Africa. Brigitte also spent several years working in Guatemala, first as counsel to a human rights NGO and then as an investigator of the atrocities committed during the country’s thirty-six-year armed conflict.
Brigitte continues to consult with foundations and non-profits on human rights programs and research covering issues such as justice reform, LGBTQ advocacy, and anti-slavery initiatives. When she’s not working, you can find Brigitte hiking the trails of the Santa Monica Mountains with her ball-crazy Labrador named Milo.
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Ethan Madore
Writer
Ethan Madore
Writer
In the past four years, Ethan has coached hundreds of students through the application process. Ethan's clients have earned below-the-medians admissions at every T14 law school. He takes a very hands-on approach, organizes frequent meetings, and particularly enjoys working with splitters, contrarians, and those from unconventional undergraduate backgrounds. "A lot of my students feel like they need to make up some flashy story. But I view a personal statement as an actually far more interesting and subtle exercise: it's an intellectual autobiography, a chance for you to demonstrate how you think. I love an essay that can take something mundane—a dead-end job, a study of political economy—and use it as a window into the entire world."
Ethan holds an MFA from the University of Iowa, where he was selected first from among his graduating cohort as the Provost's Visiting Writer. He taught on-faculty at Iowa's famous Nonfiction Writing Program, leading classes on personal writing, nature writing, and the political essay.
Before studying writing, Ethan was a nationally and internationally competitive debater and a guide on the Appalachian Trail. He is currently writing his first book.
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Lulu Dewey
Writer
Lulu Dewey
Writer
Over the last five years at 7Sage, Lulu has worked with hundreds of clients to gain admission to their dream schools (and had a lot of fun along the way!).
Lulu’s clients have matriculated to every T14 law school, including Harvard, Stanford, Yale, and Columbia, and frequently gain admission to stellar programs even with below-median stats. She believes that the process of applying to law school can be truly enjoyable—no matter what Reddit would have you believe!—and loves building strong relationships with clients as they work together to build a compelling narrative across each component of their application.
Lulu holds an MFA in writing from the University of Iowa, where she won the Carl Klaus Teaching Award. She has over seven years of experience teaching writing at the college level, including roles at Drexel University, Moore College of Art & Design, and Penn State, and has also successfully taught her chihuahua Jolene to sit, shake, and lie down.
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Kristen Gleason
Writer
Kristen Gleason
Writer
Kristen holds a BA in English with Honors from the University of California, Berkeley, where she was a Regents’ and Chancellor’s scholar, and an MFA in Creative Writing (Fiction) from the University of Montana. She studied linguistics in Tromsø, Norway on a High North Fellowship. She is currently a doctoral student in English at the University of Georgia.
Her fiction has appeared in Boston Review, Fence, Prairie Schooner, and elsewhere. She was selected as an A Public Space Emerging Writers Fellow and was the winner of BOMB’s Biannual Fiction Contest and the North American White Review Short Story Prize in 2017. Recently, she was awarded a Fulbright grant to Norway for the 2018-2019 academic year.
She has taught creative writing and composition at the University of Montana, Montana Tech, and the University of Georgia, where she received an Outstanding Teaching Assistant Award. She was the managing editor of the University of Montana’s literary journal, CutBank. She has also worked in the Oakland, California public school system, edited for an academic publisher, instructed students in GRE and SAT test prep, and tutored in the University of Georgia’s Writing Center.
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Joy Wang
Writer
Joy Wang
Writer
Joy Wang is a graduate of Harvard Law School (JD). She also holds an MFA from Hunter College in Fiction, and a DPhil in Postcolonial Literature from Oxford University where she was a Rhodes Scholar. She is currently a senior attorney at the Legal Aid Society in New York City, where she represents defendants from arraignments to jury trials. Prior to becoming a practicing lawyer, Joy published in a wide range of academic journals including Race & Class, South Asian Review, and Journal of Postcolonial Writing. She taught English Literature as an Assistant Professor at Brooklyn College, NYU in London, and the University of Stellenbosch. Most recently, she helped to train Indonesian lawyers in criminal and civil matters as a Fellow for the International Legal Foundation. Joy has a decade of experience helping students write essays for applications to law school and other graduate programs. She especially enjoys pondering the connections between literature, humanities, and public interest law. In her spare time, she plays tennis and cooks.
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Selene Steelman
Admissions Officer
Selene Steelman
Admissions Officer
Selene holds a BA with Distinction in English from Swarthmore College and a Juris Doctor from the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law where she was Senior Managing Editor of the Cardozo Women’s Law Journal.
For the last 14 years, she evaluated LL.M. and JD applications as a member of the Admissions Committee for Cardozo School of Law. As Director of LL.M. Admissions, she admitted and welcomed 27 new classes of LL.M. students from over 25 countries. Prior to joining Cardozo, she was a structured finance associate at a top-tier Manhattan law firm. Before she decided to pursue a legal education, she worked at a New York City literary agency, editing book proposals, negotiating subsidiary rights in the pre-digital era, and searching for the Great American Novel in the slush pile.
She resides in northern New Jersey. When she is not helping law school candidates achieve their dreams, she spends her time playing the violin and ballroom dancing.
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Jacob Baska
Admissions Officer
Jacob Baska
Admissions Officer
Jacob has worked in undergraduate and law admissions for over a decade and has reviewed tens of thousands of applications. He most recently served as the Director of Admissions and Financial Aid at Notre Dame Law School. In that role, he was responsible for all matters related to recruitment strategy, file reading and decision making, yield programming, scholarship modeling, and connecting admitted students with faculty, alumni, and current students. Additionally, Jacob has been active in the law admissions community, serving on panels and subcommittees for the Law School Admissions Council. Despite a great deal of experience working on macro strategy for law schools, his most rewarding moments have always been connecting directly with students to help them achieve their goals, especially those from non-traditional backgrounds and marginalized communities.
When not working, Jacob spends a great deal of time with his family, coaching one daughter's Girls on the Run team and serving as the cookie manager of another's Girl Scout troop. He is an avid BBQ aficionado and never shies from sharing his strong opinions about the St. Louis Cardinals.
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Jennifer Kott
Admissions Officer
Jennifer Kott
Admissions Officer
During a law admissions career that has spanned over twenty-five years, Jennifer Kott has worked at Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law, Tulane University School of Law, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and the University of Arizona James E. Rogers College of Law, where she served as Director of Admissions.
Jennifer enjoyed counseling, coaching, and advising alumni and students about law schools, the admissions and application process, scholarships, and the overall strategic approach to getting into the law school of their choice. She holds a BA in Sociology from Elon University and is a founding sister of the Theta Nu Chapter, Alpha Xi Delta Fraternity. She has been active in national admissions organizations, including the Law School Admission Council (LSAC), serving as a panelist at multiple annual meetings and conferences and as a member of the LSAC’s Misconduct and Irregularities in the Admissions Process Subcommittee and the National Recruitment Calendar Workgroup.
Kott is an advocate of animal-assisted therapy and participated at law school student service functions with her service dog, Sara. When not enthusiastically helping others to reach their goals, Kott is wickedly cheering on all Boston (pronounced “Bahstin”) sports teams and fruitfully enjoys spending time with her family in North Carolina and floating on the James River.
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Samuel Riley
Admissions Officer
Samuel Riley
Admissions Officer
Dr. Riley worked in law school admissions for seventeen years at the University of Texas School of Law. For most of that time, he served as the Senior Director of Admissions Programs. In that position, his duties included recruiting, advising prospective JD applicants about the application process, organizing prospective and admitted student programs, and reviewing and making decisions on JD and transfer applications.
In his last few years at Texas Law, he helped create the Pipeline Program and its Cohort Program, which is for prospective law school applicants. As the Director of Pipeline Programs, he assisted Cohort Program students with every aspect of the admissions process, including school selection, interviews, and scholarships, and he reviewed their résumés and personal and optional statements. He also continued to review an average of 2,500 JD applications per year.
Dr. Riley served in several different positions within the law school community including, in 2015 and 2018, as the Interim Assistant Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid at Texas Law. Outside the law school, Dr. Riley served on the following committees for the Law School Admissions Council: the National Recruitment Work Group (two terms); the New Admission Personnel and Faculty Members Workshop (faculty member); the DiscoverLaw.org PLUS Subcommittee; and the Finance and Legal Affairs Committee.
Dr. Riley is considered a triple Longhorn. He received his bachelor’s degree from the University of Texas at Austin College of Natural Sciences, and his master’s and doctoral degrees from the School of Education. In his spare time, he loves following Longhorn sports and trying to improve his golf game whenever he can.
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Elizabeth Cavallari
Admissions Officer
Elizabeth Cavallari
Admissions Officer
Elizabeth Cavallari spent nearly six years as a senior and assistant dean of admissions at William & Mary Law School and three years in undergraduate admissions at Bucknell University. She has evaluated thousands of law school admissions files, interviewed hundreds of applicants, coordinated the waitlist, and advised both domestic and international candidates on the law school admissions process. She has also presented at the LSAC annual conference and at multiple prelaw advisor conferences on subjects ranging from waitlist strategies to resources for LGBTQIA students. Elizabeth is passionate about building relationships with her students as she guides them through the application process. When she’s not thinking about law school admissions, she advises a sorority at William & Mary, supporting collegiate leaders, and coordinates a 40+ Career Club to assist older job seekers. You can often find Elizabeth running through Colonial Williamsburg, pushing a double jogging stroller.
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Ren Arcamone
Writer
Ren Arcamone
Writer
Ren Arcamone holds a BA in English Literature from the University of Sydney and an MFA in Fiction from the Iowa Writers' Workshop, where she was awarded the College of the Liberal Arts and Sciences Fellowship and a postgraduate teaching fellowship. She's taught introductory courses in fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry, and upper-level undergraduate courses on sci-fi and fantasy, as well as online and in-person writing courses for the Iowa Young Writers' Studio. She's served as an admissions reader for the Iowa Writers' Workshop and the Iowa Young Writers' Studio, and she's currently an editorial assistant for the Iowa Review. Before moving to the US, Ren lived in Sydney, Australia, where she worked at Writing NSW, an educational arts organization for emerging and established writers. Her fiction is published or forthcoming in Gulf Coast, Heat, and Electric Lit. She lives in Iowa City, where she's at work on a short story collection and a novel.
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Jonathan Gharraie
Writer
Jonathan Gharraie
Writer
Jonathan Gharraie holds degrees in English Literature from the University of Leeds and St. Catherine’s College, University of Oxford. In 2014, he graduated from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and stayed on as a Post-Graduate Teaching Fellow. He has written for The Atlantic, n+1, The Paris Review Daily, The New Statesman, Review 31, and Vogue, and is currently at work on his first novel. He lives in South Derbyshire, England.
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Christie Belknap
Admissions Officer
Christie Belknap
Admissions Officer
Christie holds a BA in history from the University of Pennsylvania and a JD from Emory Law School, where she served as an editor on the Emory Law Review. She worked at two top-tier law firms in New York City, but after getting her fill of late nights, fancy lunches, and (perhaps most importantly) paying off her student loans, she shifted gears and landed a job in the admissions office at Cardozo Law School. There, she reviewed applications, met and counseled prospective students, spoke on admissions panels, and travelled to such exotic locales as Pittsburgh and Columbus. She returned to practicing law as the real estate counsel for the New York City Economic Development Corporation, where she helped move the Fulton Fish Market from South Street Seaport to a refrigerated, state of the art facility, and got to use the term “fishmonger” on a regular basis. In her latest role as an admissions consultant at 7Sage, she’s happy to draw upon her past experiences as an admissions officer and lawyer to help advise prospective students in the law school application process.
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Jenifer Godfrey
Admissions Officer
Jenifer Godfrey
Admissions Officer
Jenifer worked in law school admissions for nearly ten years, most recently as Assistant Dean for Admissions & Scholarships at the William H. Bowen School of Law, University of Arkansas | Little Rock, where she served as first reader and had sole discretion on recruitment scholarship awards. Prior to that, she worked at the University of Idaho College of Law and the Paul M. Hebert Law Center at Louisiana State University.
Jenifer has demonstrated expertise in diversity pipeline programs and has served on LSAC’s Diversity Committee. She is skilled at helping future law students of all backgrounds understand how to best frame their values, experiences, and other attributes to showcase their unique contributions to diversity and the celebration of differences. She also served on LSAC’s Services & Programs Division Working Group, LSAC’s Information Services Division Working Group, and various LSAC Forum panels in addition to presenting twice at the LSAC Annual Meeting and Educational Conference.
Jenifer earned both her bachelor’s and JD from West Virginia University and her PhD in Educational Research & Leadership at Louisiana State University. Jenifer is published in The Review of Higher Education and the Journal of Cases in Educational Leadership, and she teaches graduate- and professional-level courses at a large research university. When she is not working, you can find her enjoying her family’s zoo membership and sharing her love of animals with her children.
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Amy Bonnaffons
Writer
Amy Bonnaffons
Writer
Amy holds a BA in literature (magna cum laude) from Yale University and an MFA in fiction writing from New York University, where she won the Goldwater Teaching Fellowship and an Outstanding Graduate Teaching Award. She taught in the Expository Writing Program at New York University for four years before deciding to pursue a PhD in English at the University of Georgia. Her story collection THE WRONG HEAVEN was published in 2018 by Lee Boudreaux Books at Little, Brown, and will be followed by THE REGRETS, a novel about the afterlife. Her writing has appeared in publications ranging from The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal to Kenyon Review and The Sun, and has won awards and fellowships from Yale University, Open City magazine, Bread Loaf, and The MacDowell Colony, among others.
Amy is a founding editor of 7x7, a literary journal promoting collaboration between writers and visual artists, and has served as international editor of Washington Square Review. She has also helped many students hone their personal statements to gain admission to college, law school and business school.
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Daniel Castro
Writer
Daniel Castro
Writer
Daniel's law school admissions clients have been accepted to every T-14 program, many with significant scholarships, including to Yale, Stanford, and Harvard. He holds an MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop, where he was a Dean's Graduate Fellow and taught writing and literature. He is a former Fulbright scholar in Spain, and his work has appeared in Harper's, Bleacher Report, Tampa Review, and Salon. He was awarded the Cintas Fellowship in Literature, was a resident at the MacDowell Colony, and is a co-founder of the Berlin Writers’ Workshop.
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Micky Hill
Writer
Micky Hill
Writer
Micky Hill graduated with honors from Wesleyan University and holds an MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop. While in Iowa, Micky taught several undergraduate creative writing courses and facilitated independent adult poetry workshops. They were awarded the Truman Capote Fellowship in 2018 and served as the postgraduate Provost Writing Fellow during the 2019–2020 school year. Their work has been published by The Rumpus and the Academy of American Poets.
Currently, Micky teaches African American and Latinx Literature, as well as other courses, at an honors high school in Springfield, MA.
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Jocelyn Glantz
Admissions Officer
Jocelyn Glantz
Admissions Officer
Jocelyn Glantz is a graduate of George Washington University and Brooklyn Law School. After practicing law, she returned to BLS to serve as the Assistant Director of Admissions.
To give herself more flexibility while raising her three girls, Jocelyn began consulting for a test prep company. She provided guidance to prospective undergraduate and law students, conducted essay and admissions workshops, and moderated law forums with panels of career and admissions professionals. Twenty years and hundreds of clients later, her individualized approach ensures that her clients present an application that highlights their achievements along with their personal and professional goals.
To balance her life, Jocelyn works as the Associate Director and Staffing Director of an all-girls sleepaway camp, which enables her to enjoy the outdoors during the summer while mentoring campers and staff. As the fall application season begins and she switches from an iced tea to a chai latte, you can find her immersed in law school admissions, working diligently for her clients.
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Alicia C. Miles
Admissions Officer
Alicia C. Miles
Admissions Officer
Alicia has been working in law school admissions since 2016, most recently as Assistant Dean of Admissions at the University of Oregon School of Law. She has had leadership and responsibility for all aspects of the process including annual enrollment forecasting, implementing scholarship and pricing strategies, creating and implementing enrollment marketing material and strategies, national and international recruiting, and the evaluation of all applications to the J.D. program. During her time in law admissions, she served as the Minority Network Facilitator for the Law School Admissions Council.
Prior to law school admissions work, Alicia received her Bachelor of Science degree in Criminal Justice from Guilford College, and then her Juris Doctor from Valparaiso University Law School. She also served for six years in the United States Navy Reserve as an Electronics Technician. She received the AALS 2023 Section on Pre-Law Education and Admission to Law School Up-and-Comer Award.
Alicia is currently living in Louisiana where she can typically be found zydeco dancing, spending time with her family and dog Beauxmont, listening to true crime podcasts, or reading a book from her ever-increasing TBR pile.
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Meghann Banacki
Admissions Officer
Meghann Banacki
Admissions Officer
Meghann spent nearly a decade as an admissions officer at Cardozo School of Law. As the Associate Director of Admissions, she was involved in every aspect of the admissions process, including oversight of transfer admission. She has reviewed thousands of JD applications, interviewed hundreds of applicants, and counseled countless prospective students on the law school application process and the law school experience. Meghann also served two terms on the Law School Admission Council’s Misconduct and Irregularities in the Admission Process Subcommittee.
Before transitioning to a career in admissions, Meghann was a litigation associate at Weil, Gotshal & Manges in New York City.
She received a BA, with honors, from Lehigh University, and a JD from Boston University. At BU, Meghann wrote on to the Law Review and later served on the editorial board as a Note Development Editor, guiding 2L students through the lengthy note-writing process.
Meghann is a life-long reader and a mother of three young children. She loves exploring the beautiful parks and beaches of Monmouth County, New Jersey with them.
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Bette Bradley
Admissions Officer
Bette Bradley
Admissions Officer
Bette is a seasoned legal education professional with extensive experience in law school admissions, teaching, and student development, underpinned by a strong background in health care law. As the Assistant Dean for Admissions and Scholarships at the University of Mississippi School of Law (Ole Miss Law), Bette served as first reader on the Admissions Committee, evaluated thousands of law school applications, exercised sole discretion on scholarship awards, and developed strategic recruitment initiatives.
Bette’s expertise in admissions is complemented by her hands-on experience in legal education. She has taught Legal Research and Writing to both law and undergraduate students and instructed a Law School Prep Seminar.
Before transitioning to legal education, Bette practiced health care law with the prestigious firm of Maynard Nexsen in Birmingham, Alabama. Her practice focused on assisting a diverse range of health care providers and suppliers, including hospitals, physician groups, and pharmacies, with complex regulatory matters that shaped their daily operations and inter-provider relationships. This comprehensive understanding of health care law and regulations provides Bette with unique insights into the practical applications of legal education in a specialized field.
Bette holds a Juris Doctor from the University of Mississippi School of Law, where she served as an executive editor for the Mississippi Law Journal and worked as a student attorney for the Mississippi Innocence Project. She earned her bachelor’s degree from the University of Mississippi and a master’s degree in social work from the University of Tennessee. Bette’s professional background also includes working as a therapist in community mental health, bringing a compassionate approach to her legal and educational pursuits.
When she’s not guiding aspiring law students through the admissions process, Bette can often be found reading, teaching yoga classes at her local studio, shuttling her children to various activities, and walking her dog.
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Conor Ahern
Writer
Conor Ahern
Writer
Based out of Washington, D.C., Conor is a graduate of Harvard Law School and the University of Virginia. Conor has been a law school admissions consultant for six years and has worked with dozens of prospective law students to achieve and exceed their admissions goals. In addition to his law school consulting work, Conor tutors the LSAT and works as a civil rights litigator in the employment space, with a focus on race, gender, and disability discrimination. He enjoys reading fiction, cooking, and making bad puns.
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Susannah Davies
Writer
Susannah Davies
Writer
Susannah attended Barnard College, where she studied English and visual arts, and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where she received a teaching fellowship to study fiction. At Iowa, she taught literature and creative writing courses. In 2016, Susannah was a finalist for the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing Fellowship. She is currently based in New Orleans and is at work on a collection of short stories.
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Lee Cole
Writer
Lee Cole
Writer
Lee Cole holds an MFA from the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop and a BA in English and Philosophy from the University of Louisville. He’s a 2020 Aspen Words Emerging Writer Fellow. His work has appeared in the Cimarron Review, where it was nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and he’s earned an honorable mention in Oxford American’s debut fiction contest. For the last two years, he’s taught creative writing at the University of Iowa.
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Ariel Katz
Writer
Ariel Katz
Writer
Ariel Katz holds a BA in English from Yale and an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where she won the Richard Yates short story contest. As a student there, she taught undergraduate English and creative writing courses, and upon graduation was awarded a Meta & George Rosenberg screenwriting fellowship. She’s published essays and interviews on the Ploughshares blog and at Bookforum, and is at work on a novel.
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Catherine Meeks
Writer
Catherine Meeks
Writer
Catherine holds an MFA in fiction from Warren Wilson College—where she was the Rona Jaffe Fellow—an MS in environmental studies from the University of Montana, and a BA in English (summa cum laude, Phi Kappa Phi, Presidential Scholar) from Berry College. She has taught expository writing, creative writing, environmental writing, scientific writing, and literature at the college level for fifteen years, as well as for Duke University’s Talent Identification Program field study at Ghost Ranch, New Mexico. She is currently a lecturer at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, and has twice been recognized as the lecturer of the year.
Catherine has received an Artist’s Grant from the Vermont Studio Center and the Emerging Writers Award from the Southern Women Writers Conference, and was invited in 2016 to be writer-in-residence at Randolph College in Lynchburg, Virginia. Her fiction and nonfiction have appeared in Ecotone, Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment, and other publications. In addition, Catherine is the co-founder of the Fall Line South Field Institute—an outdoor education school based in the Southeastern US—and a certified yoga instructor, most recently teaching at state and federal women’s prisons.
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Dawn Corrigan
Writer
Dawn Corrigan
Writer
Dawn holds a BA in Liberal Arts from Sarah Lawrence College and an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Florida, where she served as President of the English Graduate Organization and as a writing tutor for the Athletic Department. She taught academic and creative writing at UF and at the University of Utah, where she was on the masthead at Western Humanities Review. She’s done copy editing for an array of clients including the University of Utah’s Tanner Trust and Free World Associates, a human rights organization. She was a researcher and strategist at IMS Consulting, a legal services provider for Am Law 100 firms. Currently she works in the affordable housing industry, with expertise in Fair Housing, VAWA, and the HUD-VASH program for homeless veterans. Her debut novel, Mitigating Circumstances, an environmental mystery about Florida wetlands, was published by Five Star/Cengage, and her shorter prose and poetry have appeared widely in print and online journals including The Good Men Project, Hobart, New England Review, New World Writing, The Paris Review, Poetry, and storySouth.
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Nica Franklin
Writer
Nica Franklin
Writer
Nica Franklin received an MFA in Poetry from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where he taught literature and creative writing, and a BA in Philosophy from Harvard University, where he was awarded the Edward Eager Memorial Prize in English and an Artist Development Fellowship. His writing and poetry have appeared in places like Colorado Review, Religious Studies Review, and Leavings.
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Gina Cecchetti
Admissions Officer
Gina Cecchetti
Admissions Officer
Gina worked in law school admissions for eight years, most recently as the Director of Admissions at Duquesne University School of Law. At Duquesne, her responsibilities included evaluating applicants for admission and managing the scholarship process—including the reconsideration process.
During her time in law school admissions, Gina served on admission panels with the Law School Admissions Council when they hosted law school forums. Gina also built relationships with pre-law advisors by hosting workshops, speaking on panels, and planning pre-law advisor conferences at both Case Western Reserve University School of Law and Duquesne Law.
Currently, Gina is an Associate Director of Admissions at a nationally ranked top MBA program. Gina holds a bachelor of arts degree in political science from Westminster College and a master of arts degree in higher education management from the University of Pittsburgh. Gina was a competitive figure skater at the Senior Ladies level, the highest competitive level, and you can find her at the ice rink coaching her figure skaters and hockey players.
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Will Smiley
Writer
Will Smiley
Writer
Will developed his editorial skills as a university writing center tutor. He has worked one-on-one with hundreds of faculty and student clients to improve their writing. He received his BA with Honors from the University of Chicago, studied medieval English literature at University College London, and completed an MFA in poetry at the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where he was a postgraduate Provost Writing Fellow, and a Ph.D. in English at the University of Utah, where he was a Vice Presidential Fellow. Along the way, he has been a supervisor at Boston University’s Pappas Law Library and a cultural resource intern with the National Park Service in Anchorage, Alaska. He enjoys helping people become better writers. (His cat, Cathy, occasionally makes a cameo on Zoom calls.)
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Patrick Liu
Writer
Patrick Liu
Writer
Patrick (he/him) is a recent JD graduate of Yale Law School and received his BA in Economics from the University of Chicago (Phi Beta Kappa). He was accepted to the top law schools in the country and was offered several full-ride awards, including the Root-Tilden-Kern and Hamilton scholarships. While at Yale Law, Patrick worked in the Admissions Office as an Admissions Representative, where he counseled prospective and admitted applicants, served on admissions panels, and worked extensively with the team to welcome incoming classes. He also served as Political Action Chair for the Asian Pacific American Law Students Association and as a coordinator with the National Lawyers Guild. Patrick was designated a 2020–21 Connecticut Bar Foundation Fellow for his commitment to public interest work.
Patrick started his legal career as a trial attorney at the Public Defender Services for the District of Columbia, representing juvenile clients facing felony charges. Before law school, Patrick worked with expert scholars at the Brookings Institution, researching issues related to employment, poverty, and education. His interests center around harm reduction, restorative justice, and abolition.
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Sarina Redzinski
Writer
Sarina Redzinski
Writer
Sarina Redzinski holds a BA in English and Writing Seminars from Johns Hopkins University and an MFA from the University of Florida. In undergrad, she was on the inaugural board of the Johns Hopkins Undergraduate Law Review, led a number of writing workshops, and received the Jacob H. Hollander prize upon graduation. She also interned with the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty and the Court Appointed Special Advocates (CASA) of New Jersey program. While in Florida, she taught classes in expository writing, argumentative writing, fiction, and poetry. This past summer, she received a scholarship to the New York State Summer Writers Institute. Her writing credits include criticism for Full Stop magazine and poems forthcoming in Salmagundi magazine.
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Will Carpenter
Writer
Will Carpenter
Writer
Will holds an MFA in poetry from the University of Florida (Alpha Epsilon Lambda), as well as BAs in Philosophy and Political Science from Penn State (Phi Beta Kappa and magna cum laude), where he received awards in philosophy, poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction. At UF, Will taught classes in expository and argumentative writing, rhetoric and academic research, creative writing, and other areas, and designed a “Special Topics” course in American literature. Will won an English Department Teaching Award for the 2021–2022 academic year, during which time he also served as an Editorial Assistant for Subtropics, a Style Editor for ImageTexT, and a panelist at several conferences. He currently serves as a Staff Contributor for New Square, the literary magazine of the Sancho Panza Literary Society. Will has received a scholarship from the New York State Summer Writers Institute, and his criticism has appeared in the Denver Quarterly Review. You can find his poetry if you look hard enough, or gain access to the “Notes” app on his phone.
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Tony Andrews
Writer
Tony Andrews
Writer
Tony's law school admissions clients have been accepted to every T-14 program, often with significant aid, including Yale, Harvard, Stanford, and UChicago. He holds an MFA in Nonfiction Writing from the University of Iowa, where he designed and taught courses in literature and creative writing and won the Carl Klaus Teaching Award, and BA in Philosophy and Film Studies from Amherst College, where he graduated with honors and won the Film Studies Award. His writing is represented by Creative Artists Agency (CAA).
Tony's approach to admissions consulting is student-centered, helping each student package and articulate their unique perspective across their essays. He has worked with clients from a broad range of backgrounds, from Zen Buddhists to first-gen graduates to trauma survivors, helping them craft the most authentic possible essays from their stories.
In the past, he has served as an editorial assistant for The Iowa Review and an assistant editor for the London Review of Books, and has also consulted for business school applicants, with clients having been admitted to MIT Sloan, Chicago Booth, Berkeley Haas, and the London Business School, among others. Tony is a regular contributor to The Surfer's Journal, a literary magazine about the art and culture of surfing. He is working on a book about surfing and life.
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Jenny Davis
Writer
Jenny Davis
Writer
Jenny holds a BA in English from Wesleyan and is an MFA candidate in nonfiction writing at the University of Iowa, where she was an Iowa Arts Fellow. Her essays have been published in Los Angeles Review of Books, Washington Square Review, and Speculative Nonfiction. She is the author of the novel Everything Must Go and has two more novels forthcoming from Henry Holt.
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Drew Dickerson
Writer
Drew Dickerson
Writer
Drew Dickerson holds an MFA in Fiction from the University of Florida as well as a BA from Brown University, where he graduated magna cum laude. He is a former Writing Fellow and current Features Writer for The Onion. He was the recipient of a 2017-2018 Fulbright fellowship to Germany, and his work has appeared or is forthcoming at n+1, ClickHole, and The Point.
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Tracy Simmons
Admissions Officer
Tracy Simmons
Admissions Officer
Tracy Simmons is the Assistant Dean, Admissions, Diversity Initiatives and Financial Aid at University of San Diego School of Law. She received her JD from Golden Gate University School of Law and her MA in Education with an emphasis in Multi-Cultural Counseling from San Diego State University.
Tracy has worked in law school admissions, financial aid, and diversity initiatives for more than 22 years. She has reviewed thousands of applications, counseled hundreds of prospective law students, awarded millions of dollars in scholarships, and served on panels with admissions professionals from a significant number of ABA law schools. Prior to attending law school and working in law school administration, Tracy worked as a social worker for FamiliesFirst, Inc. in Northern California.
Tracy has been active with the Law School Admission Council on a variety of committees. She is currently the Chair for the Annual Meeting of Law School Professionals. She has served on the Board of Trustees. Past committee work includes serving on the Services and Programs Committee twice, the Forum Review Work Group, the Chief Diversity Officer Search Committee, the Diversity Initiatives Committee, the Finance and Legal Affairs Committee twice, and the Annual Planning Work Group, and serving as Chair of the New Admission Personnel and Faculty Members Workshop Planning Group.
Previously, she served as the Law Chair for the Access Group Advisory Board and the Access Group Advisory Committee. She recently served on the ACCESS LEX LexCon ’21 Planning Committee.
Additionally, Tracy has served as a consultant for the Council on Legal Education Opportunity (CLEO) Achieving Success in the Application Process program for over 12 years. She is a member of the Association of American Law Schools (AALS), serving as the Chair of the Pre-Legal Education and Admissions to Law School Section twice, and as the Chair for the Part-Time Section. Tracy has also served on the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators (NASFAA) Consumer Information and Law Student Information Task Force. Tracy has served on an ABA site inspection team and will serve on another site team next spring.
Tracy has served on the Board of Directors for the Sacramento Court Appointed Special Advocates (CASA) since March 2014, is immediate past Board President, and is current Chair of the Program Committee. Most recently, Tracy has joined the Sacramento State University Division of Criminal Justice Community Advisory Committee and the California System Involved Bar Association Advisory Board.
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Ara Hagopian
Writer
Ara Hagopian
Writer
Ara Hagopian is a writer. He holds a BA from Cornell University as well as an MFA from the University of Florida. As a grad student he taught Beginning Fiction Writing, Intermediate Fiction Writing, Expository and Argumentative Writing, Rhetoric and Academic Research, and Writing for Engineers. He’s done editing work for several journals including Subtropics, New Square, and Let’s Stab Caesar. He enjoys meditation and Irish folk music. He’s working on a novel.
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Lauren Pena
Admissions Officer
Lauren Pena
Admissions Officer
Lauren earned her Bachelor of Science degree in Business Administration and Political Science from Indiana Wesleyan in 2010 and completed her J.D. at Indiana University Robert H. McKinney School of Law in 2013. She spent over 7 years in law school admissions as the Associate Director of Student Recruitment for Indiana University Robert H. McKinney School of Law. In her position, she recruited and advised prospective law candidates on how to create the best application and made admissions and scholarship decisions as a member of the review committee. Lauren has a strong passion for helping law students achieve their goals and spent her spare time advising current law students as well. Her passion for advising and mentoring students led her to present at recruitment conferences and serve on panels.
She has returned to practice and is now serving as an estate planning attorney for Stevens and Associates, PC. Still motivated by her love for law students, Lauren is excited to share her knowledge, insight, and encouragement. In her free time, Lauren enjoys spending time with family and friends, and getting involved in her continued work with disability advocacy.
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Chris Schlegel
Writer
Chris Schlegel
Writer
Chris Schlegel is the author of two books of poetry: ryman (2022) and Honest James (2015). He holds a PhD in English from Harvard, where he wrote on 20th-century American poetry; an MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop; and a BA from Princeton. He studied in Berlin on a Fulbright grant, taught a summer ESL course in rural China, and served as a dorm counselor for young writers in Iowa City. He now teaches English and Creative Writing at Pierrepont School, a K-12 institution in Westport, CT, and lives in New Haven.
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Daniel Hwa-Sung Ryu
Writer
Daniel Hwa-Sung Ryu
Writer
Daniel was admitted to the law schools of Yale, Harvard, Stanford, UChicago, and more. He has direct experience with every step of the process, including interviewing and writing personal/diversity statements, school-specific prompts, and addenda.
He is a first-generation immigrant from Korea and a first-generation professional. Daniel holds a BA in Philosophy from Richmond College where he received a music scholarship and an MSt in Ancient Philosophy from Oxford. He then worked in national public service as an AmeriCorps member and cohort leader. In his spare time, he is fascinated by journalism, fiction, and nature documentaries. Daniel is finishing a novel provisionally titled Shell Game (thankfully, unrelated to the LSAT). He is also trying to pick up the violin again to awaken dormant brain parts, and at any given time, he and his family care for over a dozen cats.
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Sam Allingham
Writer
Sam Allingham
Writer
Sam Allingham's writing has appeared in The New Yorker and n+1, along with many other magazines, and he is the author of the short story collection The Great American Songbook. He has professional experience as a speechwriter for C-suite clients and as a copywriter for educational and non-profit institutions. He has more than ten years' experience teaching writing at both the undergraduate and graduate level.
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Alicia Wright
Writer
Alicia Wright
Writer
Alicia is a PhD candidate in English & Literary Arts at the University of Denver, where she served as the 2020–2021 Denver Quarterly Editorial Fellow. For the University of Denver she worked as a writing center consultant for the Shopneck Writing Center and studied with leaders in the field of writing center pedagogy and consulting. She received fellowships from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop (MFA, 2016) and holds a BA from Middlebury College, where she studied English & American Literatures (BA, 2011.5). She received her Master’s Certificate in Book and Magazine Publishing from the Columbia Publishing Course (2012). She most recently worked as a Visiting Assistant Professor of English at the University of Iowa, where she taught creative writing.
She is the founding editor of Annulet, a literary journal, and Annulet Editions, a small press. Her poetry appears in The Paris Review, The Kenyon Review, Ecotone, and jubilat, among other outlets; her fiction appears in DIAGRAM; and her literary criticism appears in the Los Angeles Review of Books, Full Stop, and the Ploughshares blog. Her scholarship is forthcoming in an essay collection with the University of Michigan Press, and her debut collection of poetry, You’re Called by the Same Sound, is forthcoming from Third Hand Books (2025).
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Rebecca Rukeyser
Writer
Rebecca Rukeyser
Writer
Rebecca Rukeyser has worked as a writing advisor and instructor for fifteen years at universities including the University of Iowa (USA) and Heinrich Heine University (Germany). She currently teaches writing at Bard College Berlin.
Rebecca holds an MFA in Fiction from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where she received a Teaching-Writing Fellowship. She is the author of an acclaimed novel (The Seaplane on Final Approach, Doubleday USA; Granta Books UK), which was awarded a Berlin Senate endowment for literature, and her shorter work has appeared in The Best American Nonrequired Reading, The Believer, Granta, and The Guardian, among others.
A co-founder of the Berlin Writers’ Workshop and returning writing instructor at the Prague Summer Program, an affiliate of Western Michigan University, Rebecca has appeared as a guest lecturer at the University of California, Santa Cruz and Northwestern University.
Originally from Davis, California, Rebecca has lived and worked in South Korea, Japan, Turkey, and China.
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Rebecca Spiegel
Writer
Rebecca Spiegel
Writer
Rebecca is a seasoned educator with over 15 years of experience supporting writers formally—in university writing centers and classrooms—and informally—providing feedback on everything from personal statements to full-length novel manuscripts. She holds a BA in sociology from Colorado College and an MFA in creative nonfiction from UNC-Wilmington; her debut memoir Without Her was published by Milkweed Editions in 2024.
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Gabriela Claymore
Writer
Gabriela Claymore
Writer
Gabriela Claymore is a writer and editor from San Francisco. She holds an MFA in nonfiction writing from the University of Iowa and a BA from New York University.
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Willie Fitzgerald
Writer
Willie Fitzgerald
Writer
Willie Fitzgerald is a writer and editor living in Brooklyn. He is an editor at the boutique agency Heidi Pitlor Editorial, where he helps writers of all levels craft stories, novels, and memoirs, and a senior editor at American Short Fiction, one of the country’s leading magazines of short fiction. His own short stories have been published in Joyland, Boulevard, StoryQuarterly, and elsewhere. He was a finalist for The Best American Short Stories in 2023, holds an MFA from the Michener Center for Writers at UT - Austin, and was a Writing Fellow at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown. He enjoys working closely with people to help craft their stories and hone their writing skills.
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Jordan Hamel
Writer
Jordan Hamel
Writer
Jordan Hamel is a writer from Aotearoa, New Zealand, currently based in the US. He is a Fulbright Scholar and recently received his MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Michigan. His debut poetry collection Everyone is Everyone Except You was published in New Zealand by Dead Bird Books in 2022 and in the UK by Broken Sleep Books in 2024. He is an editor, mentor, and former New Zealand Poetry Slam Champion. In a former life, he was a lawyer and constitutional policy advisor. He would really like to get a dog.
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Janice Whang
Writer
Janice Whang
Writer
Janice earned her AB from Harvard College and her MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Florida, where she won a teaching award and served as an associate editor for Subtropics. She enjoys running, cooking, and translating Korean literature. Her translation of a Korean short story, published in The Denver Quarterly, was nominated for the Best Literary Translations Anthology. Her own short stories can be found in The /tƐmz/ Review, Oxford Magazine, and the forthcoming Reunion: The Dallas Review.
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RL Goldberg
Writer
RL Goldberg
Writer
RL Goldberg is a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Society of Fellows at Dartmouth College. They earned an AB from Harvard College, an MFA in fiction from the University of Florida, and a PhD from Princeton. RL's first book, I Changed My Sex! Pedagogy and Trans Narrative, is forthcoming from Columbia University Press. RL has taught in prisons in Massachusetts and New Jersey for the last decade.
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Brian Booker
Writer
Brian Booker
Writer
Brian received a PhD in English and American Literature from NYU, and an MFA in Fiction from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where he was an Iowa Arts Fellow and, in his third year, a Schulze Fellow. He has been the Grace Paley Fiction Fellow at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, and the James C. McCreight Fiction Fellow at the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing.
Brian’s fiction has been published in Conjunctions, One Story, New England Review, Tin House, Vice, and other magazines; his stories have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and the National Magazine Award. His debut short story collection, ARE YOU HERE FOR WHAT I’M HERE FOR?, was published in 2016 by Bellevue Literary Press.
Brian has ten years of experience teaching expository writing and literature courses at NYU; he has also taught creative writing workshops at the University of Iowa and the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Most recently, he has been a Lecturer in the Program in Creative Writing at the University of Chicago, designing and teaching workshops for both undergraduate and graduate students on topics such as Literary Horror.
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Lei Wang
Writer
Lei Wang
Writer
Lei has at various times been a science journalist in Hong Kong, a happiness researcher in Florida, a private investigator in San Francisco, and a life coach and translator in Shanghai, where she was born (though she grew up in a tiny immigrant town in New Jersey). She holds a BA in Environmental Studies from Yale and an MFA in Creative Nonfiction from the University of Iowa, where she designed and taught classes to undergraduates that combined creative writing, literature, philosophy, and life lessons.
Her work has been recognized by the Vermont Studio Center, the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, the Iowa Arts Fellowship, and the Marcus Bach Graduate Fellowship for writing that “fosters intercultural communication and the understanding of diverse philosophies and religious perspectives.” She is currently writing a book about consciousness hacking, a work of creative nonfiction/literary self-help that explores the possibility of a reality in which everything is perfectly okay, right now.
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Liz K Emerson
Admissions Officer
Liz K Emerson
Admissions Officer
Liz K. Emerson has advised law school applicants for over 10 years. She currently works as an Associate Director of Career Services at Emory University School of Law where she counsels 1L and 2L JD students and provides workshops for foreign-trained attorneys in the LLM program, MCLs, and International JDs. Liz has been a member of the Southern Association of Pre-Law Advisors and the Pre-Law Advisors National Council. Liz’s coaching strategy goes beyond the numbers—she works with applicants on a holistic process that focuses on strengthening each aspect of the application. Over the years, she has served applicants from a wide variety of backgrounds, including first-generation applicants, traditional and non-traditional students, students of color, veterans, students with disabilities, and international students. Liz holds an MS in Higher Education from Miami University of Ohio and a BA in Communications from Heidelberg University. She enjoys spending time with her husband, her son, and her 13-year-old tabby, Kobe. -
Allison Nash
Admissions Officer
Allison Nash
Admissions Officer
Ali has been helping students reach their law school goals for more than a decade. She draws upon her admissions experience to help clients craft unique admission strategies to develop successful applications and maximize their scholarship potential. Her law school admissions clients have been accepted to every T-14 program, often with significant financial aid.
Ali's approach to admissions consulting is to focus on her clients’ individual backgrounds, characteristics, and interests. She enjoys guiding her clients in identifying and highlighting those attributes that make a positive difference to their admission outcomes. “Many students don’t recognize how truly remarkable they are, and that characteristics they may consider ‘ordinary,’ when framed effectively in an application, often make for an ‘extraordinary’ candidate.” She enjoys working with clients from a broad array of backgrounds and loves exploring the best options for clients’ varied interests and goals.
Ali started her admissions career at the University of Arizona College of Law, where she led the admissions office in evaluating applications, making merit-based scholarship decisions, and counseling prospective law students. She continued her law admissions career as director of law admissions at a consulting firm. Prior to her admissions work, Ali obtained her JD, with distinction, from the University of Iowa College of Law, where she was selected for the Journal of Corporation Law and the Van Oosterhout-Baskerville Appellate Advocacy program. She practiced corporate and real estate law at Warner Norcross & Judd LLP for several years, where she also sat on the recruiting committee making hiring decisions and mentoring new attorneys.
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Adria Kimbrough
Admissions Officer
Adria Kimbrough
Admissions Officer
Adria Kimbrough has advised law school applicants for more than 10 years. In 2013, she pioneered the Dillard University Pre-Law Program, which received the 2018 American Bar Association Diversity Leadership Award for its success in helping diverse law school applicants develop winning strategies. In 2018, she founded LEAD, a diversity pipeline program that helps students from three of Louisiana’s historically Black universities gain admission to law school. She is also committed to helping students pursue careers as civil rights attorneys through her work at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund’s Marshall-Motley Scholars Program, where she has reviewed almost 1,000 applications.
Adria began her professional career at Cornell University as an Assistant Dean of Students. She later practiced employment law throughout the South for 15 years, having successfully passed the bar examinations in Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, and Louisiana .
When she’s not working, you might find Adria walking her two French bulldogs, cooking a HelloFresh meal, on the AAU basketball circuit with her son, or debating world events and pop culture with her daughter and husband.
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Ziva Cohen
Admissions Officer
Ziva Cohen
Admissions Officer
Ziva has been the Associate Director of Admissions and Director of Admissions Communications at Cardozo School of Law for almost two decades. She was an Assistant Adjunct Professor of Legal Writing at the law school, holding grammar workshops and providing individual academic support, among other roles. In her Admissions role, Ziva read thousands of JD and transfer applications, conducted almost as many interviews with prospective students, and counseled and recruited prospective applicants across the country. Ziva is regularly invited to participate on admissions panels in local universities and national forums. She also served two terms on the Law School Admission Council’s Subcommittee on Misconduct and Irregularities in the Admission Process.
Prior to entering law school admissions, Ziva practiced commercial litigation in a midtown Manhattan law firm for three years. Before pursuing law, she enjoyed a career in journalism for ten years, holding positions in print, television, and radio, as a news writer, field producer, and reporter. She worked for major news organizations including CNN, ABC, and NBC, while based in Jerusalem, Moscow, and New York City.
Ziva received a JD from Cardozo School of Law and a BA from New York University in English Literature and Creative Writing. She enjoys exploring New York City cultural sites with her daughter, and they both love to attend theatre and dance performances.
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Sherolyn Hurst
Admissions Officer
Sherolyn Hurst
Admissions Officer
Over the course of twenty-three years in law school admissions, Sherolyn Hurst has served at Southern Methodist University Dedman School of Law and the University of St. Thomas School of Law focused on outreach and recruiting responsibilities, and has served at Golden Gate University School of Law as the Director of Admissions and Scholarships. She has also served at Texas Wesleyan University School of Law (now Texas A&M Law) and the University of North Texas Dallas College of Law as the Assistant Dean for Admissions and Scholarships. Additionally, she previously owned a consulting business targeted toward law admissions professionals and their day-to-day operations.
In the various law admissions roles she has held, Sherolyn’s duties have included recruiting, advising prospective students and applicants about the admissions and application process, performing deny reviews, planning and hosting prospective and admitted student events, managing the waitlist, and developing policy for, awarding, and administering millions of dollars in entering and continuing student scholarships. Notably, she has read and evaluated thousands of applications over the span of her work with law schools. Sherolyn has also presented on numerous law school admissions panels, in person and virtually, with colleagues and for undergraduate programs; she has also served on LSAC (Law School Admissions Council) forum panels and the LSAC Newcomer’s Committee training new law admissions professionals.
Sherolyn received her JD from Southern Methodist University School of Law and her BA in Finance Law from Portland State University. She is licensed to practice law in Texas and worked for a Dallas law firm after graduation. Prior to attending law school, Sherolyn proudly served in the US Army, stationed at Fort Bragg (now Fort Liberty). In her downtime, she enjoys spending time with her pets, maintaining her yard, and trying to recover her old batting swing.
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Shamala Gallagher
Writing Consultant
Shamala Gallagher
Writing Consultant
Shamala Gallagher (she/they) has taught writing for over a decade in a variety of settings inside and outside of universities. She delights in getting to know applicants, hearing their visions and experiences, and crafting great application stories together. She holds a BA from Stanford University, where she received the Louis Sudler Prize for Excellence in the Arts; an MFA from the Michener Center for Writers at the University of Texas-Austin; and a PhD from the University of Georgia. She is the author of a poetry collection, Late Morning When the World Burns, and her essays and poems appear in many print and online venues, including Poetry, The Academy of American Poets Poem-a-Day, The Missouri Review, Shenandoah, The Rumpus, Gulf Coast, and multiple anthologies. Outside of work and writing, she can be found in Athens, Georgia, performing mad science experiments with her kids or waking at 5 a.m. to run.
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Chad Nelson
Writing Consultant
Chad Nelson
Writing Consultant
Chad is currently pursuing his Juris Doctor at the University of Chicago. In addition to being a law student, Chad is a US Air Force veteran with six years of active duty and over twelve years total time in service. Chad holds a BA in English from San Francisco State University and an MSc in International Relations Theory from the London School of Economics.
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Pauline Syrnik
Writing Consultant
Pauline Syrnik
Writing Consultant
Pauline graduated from Yale Law School and has supported students in various aspects of their law school applications, including personal and diversity statements, as well as tutoring and interview preparation. A first-generation college graduate and professional, Pauline has worked as a professor, appellate public defender, and legislative attorney, driven by a passion for creating concrete change through advocacy. Outside of her career, she’s an avid reader of nonfiction and a fan of lifestyle vlogs, and shares her home with multiple beloved pets. Recently, she’s also taken up art, embracing the joy of learning something new, even if she considers herself a beginner.
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Caitlyn Jordan
Writing Consultant
Caitlyn Jordan
Writing Consultant
Caitlyn is a student at Yale Law School and a graduate of UC Berkeley, where she received her BA in English with highest distinction. While at Berkeley, Caitlyn double-minored in creative writing and human rights and earned the English Department’s sole Departmental Citation in recognition of academic achievement.
Caitlyn is passionate about working with students and clients to hone their writing skills. Prior to law school, she worked as a speechwriter in Washington, D.C., helping politicians, Fortune 500 CEOs, and nonprofit leaders shape their stories. Her writing has been published under various bylines in The Washington Post, The Hill, and the Financial Times. She has also guided applicants through the undergraduate admissions process and tutored over a hundred students at UC Berkeley’s Writing Center. A California native, Caitlyn spends her time exploring new coffee shops in Connecticut and reminiscing about 65-degree winters.