Admissions Officers + Award-Winning Writers
We combine years of experience in law school admissions offices with the editorial talent of professional, published authors.
-
David Busis
Partner
David Busis
Partner
David is a graduate of Yale, where he received a prize for excellence in the English major, and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where he received a teaching fellowship.
His nonfiction has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Atlantic online. His fiction has won two national contests, received notable mention in The Best American Short Stories 2014, and been anthologized by Autumn House Press. He taught English and writing at the School of the New York Times, Phillips Academy Andover, the University of Iowa, and Southern New Hampshire University.
He was admitted to Harvard and Yale Law School before he joined 7Sage.
-
Susan Cersovsky
Consultant
Susan Cersovsky
Consultant
Susan has worked in admissions at Columbia Law School for the last five years, where she served on the Admissions Committee, conducted candidate interviews, reviewed and rendered decisions on thousands of applications each year, oversaw merit-based scholarships, and designed recruiting strategies. She began her law career in New York at Weil, Gotshal & Manges in the reorganization and restructuring department, and worked in-house at New York Life Insurance Company. She also has litigated on a pro bono basis for Sanctuary for Families in Bronx Family Court.
Susan holds a JD from Columbia Law School, where she edited the Human Rights Law Review and the Jailhouse Lawyer’s Manual, and participated in the Harlem Tutorial Program. She received a BA with distinction and MA in English from Emory University. Currently, Susan resides with her family in Harlem and New York’s Hudson Valley. When she is not helping law school applicants gain acceptance to their dream schools, she can be found developing her mediation skills, serving on the New York City Bar Association’s Sex & Law Committee, co-chairing the Columbia Law School Reunion Committee, painting and doing ceramics, or spending time with her family’s dogs.
-
Selene Steelman
Consultant
Selene Steelman
Consultant
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.
-
Gail Dauer
Consultant
Gail Dauer
Consultant
Gail has worked in admissions for seven years, most recently at the University of Michigan Law School, where she was the sole first reader of applications. Before coming to Ann Arbor, Gail advised investment banks on broker-dealer regulatory issues at the New York law firm Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz and conducted enforcement actions as a senior attorney for the Securities and Exchange Commission in Boston. She earned her BA in Psychology from Brandeis University, where she was elected to Phi Beta Kappa, and her JD from the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School, where she served as an editor of the law review.
When she is not helping applicants gain acceptance to their dream schools, Gail can be found painting portraits, walking her cavachon Benji, and savoring local Tex-Mex delicacies.
-
Brigitte Suhr
Consultant
Brigitte Suhr
Consultant
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.
-
Tajira McCoy
Consultant
Tajira McCoy
Consultant
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.
-
RL Goldberg
Consultant
RL Goldberg
Consultant
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.
-
Lei Wang
Consultant
Lei Wang
Consultant
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.
-
Adrienne Raphel
Consultant
Adrienne Raphel
Consultant
Adrienne Raphel is the author of Thinking Inside the Box: Adventures with Crosswords and the Puzzling People Who Can’t Live Without Them (Penguin Press, 2020), which the New York Times Book Review cited as an Editor’s Choice. Her debut collection of poetry, What Was It For (Rescue Press, 2017), won the Black Box Prize for Poetry. Raphel’s essays, poetry, and criticism appear in the New Yorker online, Poetry, the New Republic, the Atlantic, the Paris Review Daily, and Slate, among many other publications. A summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Princeton, Raphel holds an M.F.A. from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where she received a teaching fellowship, and a PhD in English literature from Harvard, where her dissertation won the Helen Choate Bell Prize. Currently, Raphel is a Lecturer in the Princeton Writing Program.
-
Jacob Baska
Consultant
Jacob Baska
Consultant
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.
-
Elizabeth Cavallari
Consultant
Elizabeth Cavallari
Consultant
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.
-
Cynthia Rivera
Consultant
Cynthia Rivera
Consultant
Cynthia obtained her B.A. in History from Cornell University before earning her law degree from the University of Virginia School of Law. While attending Cornell, Cynthia worked as a student recruiter with the undergraduate admissions office and was a Rhodes Scholarship Nominee. At the University of Virginia, she was a student member of the Admissions Task Force.
She later returned to UVA where she worked with the law school admissions office reviewing and assessing applications. In this role, she provided recommendations on numerous applications, including binding early decisions and applications from international students. Before working with the admissions office, Cynthia worked as a financial advisor for a wealth management firm, and with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission Office of Legal Counsel in Washington, D.C.
Throughout her career, Cynthia has mentored, advised, and motivated individuals who are applying to college, searching for a job, or changing careers. She is dedicated to helping students and young professionals discover their strengths and craft a personal narrative that maximizes their potential.
In her spare time, Cynthia serves on the board of a local swimming club, mentors college students, and is an active member of Toastmasters International. Raised in Puerto Rico, Cynthia is fluent in both English and Spanish. When she is not working, Cynthia enjoys visiting local farmers’ markets, cooking for friends, and exploring the Finger Lakes region with her husband and their two sons.
-
Jennifer Kott
Consultant
Jennifer Kott
Consultant
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.
-
Christie Belknap
Consultant
Christie Belknap
Consultant
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.
-
Jenifer Godfrey
Consultant
Jenifer Godfrey
Consultant
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 is now in the dissertation phase of her PhD in Educational Leadership & Research at Louisiana State 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.
-
Aaron Thier
Consultant
Aaron Thier
Consultant
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.
-
Mark Firmani
Consultant
Mark Firmani
Consultant
Mark is a doctoral candidate in the University of Pennsylvania English Department and a JD student (deferred admission until 2019) at Yale Law School. After graduating as valedictorian from Quinnipiac University with BAs (double summa cum laude) in English and History, he spent a year hiking in his home state of New Hampshire before living as a Fulbright scholar in Amman, Jordan, where he taught as the 7th- and 9th-grade English teacher at a UNRWA school for Palestinian boys.
While living in Jordan, he decided to take the LSAT and, two years into his doctoral studies, he applied to law schools, receiving acceptances everywhere he applied: Yale, Harvard, Stanford, Columbia (Hamilton scholarship), NYU (Vanderbilt scholarship), Penn (Levy and Toll Public Interest scholarships), and Duke (Mordecai scholarship).
He currently lives in Philadelphia, PA, where he spends his time reading Arabic-language novels and writing his dissertation. He also teaches Penn undergraduate courses in topics as varied as monstrosity, law and literature, and artificial intelligence, and looks forward to adopting a dog very soon.
-
Amy Bonnaffons
Consultant
Amy Bonnaffons
Consultant
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.
-
Brian Booker
Consultant
Brian Booker
Consultant
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.
-
Sarah Cohen
Consultant
Sarah Cohen
Consultant
Sarah holds a BA in English and Psychology from Washington University in St. Louis (Phi Beta Kappa and summa cum laude), where she was selected as a member of Mortar Board Senior Honor Society and was awarded the Washington University Prize for Undergraduate Fiction. She received an MFA in fiction writing from New York University, where she was awarded the Starworks Fellowship, and instructed undergraduates in the craft of fiction and poetry. She has worked for over four years at a top Manhattan literary agency, editing manuscripts and proposals for award-winning authors, including Russell Shorto, Tara Brach, and Maryanne Wolf. She teaches English and writing enrichment to high school students, and edits manuscripts freelance. She is currently writing a fantasy series for young adults.
-
Daniel Castro
Consultant
Daniel Castro
Consultant
Daniel has worked as a writing consultant for over a decade. He holds a BA in English from Indiana University-Bloomington, where he worked as a tutor at the campus writing center, and is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where he received a Dean’s Graduate Fellowship and taught undergraduate writing. He is a former Fulbright scholar in Spain, and his work has appeared in Tampa Review, Miami Herald, Gambit Weekly, and Salon. He was awarded the Cintas Fellowship in Literature in 2014 and the Faulkner Society’s novel prize in 2015. He was a resident at the MacDowell Colony in 2016. He teaches classes and does manuscript consulting for Sackett Street Writers’ Workshop in Brooklyn, and is a co-founder of the Berlin Writers’ Workshop.
-
Kristen Gleason
Consultant
Kristen Gleason
Consultant
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.
-
Conor Ahern
Consultant
Conor Ahern
Consultant
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.
-
Jocelyn Glantz
Consultant
Jocelyn Glantz
Consultant
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.
-
Caitlin Kindervatter-Clark
Consultant
Caitlin Kindervatter-Clark
Consultant
Caitlin Kindervatter-Clark received her MFA from the University of Virginia, where she taught writing as a Poe-Faulkner fellow. She also taught English for five years at UC-Berkeley Extension, specializing in helping international students write and revise application essays. Students she’s worked with have been accepted to top universities including Stanford, Princeton, and UC-Berkeley. On the other side of the admissions process, she has scored essays for TOEFL and TheDream.US scholarship.
Caitlin is an award-winning writer with work in the Washington Post, Antioch Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, and Prairie Schooner, where she received the Lawrence Foundation Award for the best story published in 2017. Additional honors include a 2017-2018 Steinbeck fellowship from San Jose State University and a Distinguished Story in Best American Short Stories 2018. Outside of writing and editing, she enjoys watching horror films and finding good kids’ books to read with her one-year-old daughter.
-
Meghann Banacki
Consultant
Meghann Banacki
Consultant
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.
-
Jeremy Klemin
Consultant
Jeremy Klemin
Consultant
Jeremy Klemin is a writer and editor based in New York. Born and raised in Long Beach, California, he has also lived in Portugal, Scotland, and Brazil, where he taught at the Universidade Tecnológica Federal do Paraná as a Fulbright Fellow. He received grants from Phi Beta Kappa, Santander Bank, and the University of Edinburgh itself to pursue an MSc in Comparative Literature, and also received a scholarship from the Disquiet International Literary Program to support his creative nonfiction writing. He is a Contributing Editor at Help4Refugees, a Jordan-based humanitarian nonprofit.
His nonfiction is published or forthcoming in publications like The New York Times Book Review, Literary Hub, Redivider, Highsnobiety, Joyland, Post Road, and The Common about countries as diverse as Palestine, Ukraine, Serbia, and Brazil. He speaks Spanish and Portuguese, occasionally writing in the latter, and is currently working on an essay collection about skateboarding and cerebral palsy.
-
Lulu Dewey
Consultant
Lulu Dewey
Consultant
Lulu holds a BS in Society and Environment from the University of California, Berkeley and an MFA in writing from the University of Iowa, where she received fellowships in Rhetoric and Nonfiction as well as the Karl Claus Teaching Award.
She has designed and taught creative writing and composition courses at the Buckley School and the University of Iowa on subjects ranging from the rhetoric of food to humor writing, environmental writing, and writing about fashion. She has also worked as a technical writer in Silicon Valley and was an archivist at the Berkeley Folklore Archive.
Her essays, stories, and journalism have appeared in or are forthcoming from The Los Angeles Review of Books, DIAGRAM, Iowa Public Radio, and others. Her essay “Dams in Distress” was a 2020 finalist for the Pinch Page Prize. She is currently at work on a collection of humorous essays.
-
Nora Miller
Consultant
Nora Miller
Consultant
Nora Claire Miller holds a BA from Hampshire College and an MFA in poetry from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where she received a postgraduate teaching fellowship. At the University of Iowa, Nora taught undergraduate courses in poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, and new media writing, and served as an editorial assistant at The Iowa Review.
Nora is the author of LULL, which won the 2019 Ghost Proposal Chapbook Contest. She was awarded the 2020 Bat City Review Editors’ Prize, was a finalist for the Poetry Society of America’s 2020 Anna Rabinowitz Prize, and was a finalist for the 2019 Omnidawn Open Poetry Book Prize. Her writing has appeared in Hobart, The Brooklyn Review, Apartment, Tagvverk, and other journals. Originally from New York City, Nora currently lives and teaches in Iowa City.
-
Ethan Madore
Consultant
Ethan Madore
Consultant
Ethan Madore received a BA in History from Vassar College and an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Iowa’s Nonfiction Writing Program, where he was the 2017–2018 Provost’s Visiting Writer in Nonfiction. He has taught literature and personal writing courses for over five years, including classes on environmental, political, and travel writing, as well as graduate classes in journalism and cultural studies at the University of Dortmund in Germany. At Iowa, he designed a new series of courses for the Iowa Publishing Track and won an Outstanding Teaching Award. In Germany, he was a guest of honor at the national celebration of Walt Whitman’s 200th birthday.
A former editor of The Essay Review, his writing appears online in The Iowa Review and Guesthouse. He is at work on his first two books of nonfiction, a collection of essays about prehistory and a love song to the year 2011.
-
Susannah Davies
Consultant
Susannah Davies
Consultant
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.
-
Lee Cole
Consultant
Lee Cole
Consultant
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.
-
Ariel Katz
Consultant
Ariel Katz
Consultant
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.
-
Catherine Meeks
Consultant
Catherine Meeks
Consultant
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.
-
Dawn Corrigan
Consultant
Dawn Corrigan
Consultant
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.
-
Jonathan Gharraie
Consultant
Jonathan Gharraie
Consultant
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.
-
Dan Grossman
Consultant
Dan Grossman
Consultant
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.
-
Django Ellenhorn
Consultant
Django Ellenhorn
Consultant
Django Ellenhorn holds an MFA in Fiction from the University of Florida and a BA in English from the Commonwealth Honors College at the University of Massachusetts. At UF, he taught a course on the intersection of politics and literature in the twentieth century as well as multiple workshops in fiction. He also worked as an assistant editor at the literary magazine Subtropics. He is currently at work on his first novel.
-
Nica Franklin
Consultant
Nica Franklin
Consultant
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.
-
Gina Cecchetti
Consultant
Gina Cecchetti
Consultant
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.
-
Will Smiley
Consultant
Will Smiley
Consultant
Through years of university writing center experience, Will developed his skills as a tutor working one-on-one with faculty and students from diverse backgrounds 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. 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 has studied and taught at institutions of higher learning from Utah to New York.
-
Tracy Simmons
Consultant
Tracy Simmons
Consultant
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.
-
EmmaJean Holley
Consultant
EmmaJean Holley
Consultant
EmmaJean (or EJ) holds a BA in English and Nonfiction Writing from Brown University, where she was named a Beinecke Scholar, and an MFA in writing from the University of Iowa, where she was an Iowa Arts Fellow. She has taught literature and creative writing classes—with an emphasis on personal narrative—at the University of Iowa, Alabama State University, and the Buckley School. She has also worked as a news reporter, writing tutor, bird tracker, and goat farmer.
Her writing has appeared in Columbia Journal, River Teeth, Brown Alumni Magazine, and elsewhere. She is currently writing a book about growing up on the island of Martha's Vineyard.
-
Jenny Davis
Consultant
Jenny Davis
Consultant
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.
-
Tony Andrews
Consultant
Tony Andrews
Consultant
Tony holds a BA in Philosophy and Film Studies from Amherst College, where he graduated cum laude and won the Film Studies Award, and 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. He has served as an editorial assistant for The Iowa Review and an assistant editor for the London Review of Books, and has consulted for graduate school applicants in the past, with clients accepted to MIT Sloan, Chicago Booth, Berkeley Haas, and the London Business School, among others. His sports, travel, and culture writing has appeared or is forthcoming in White Horses Magazine, Spiral Journal, The Surfer's Path, 68to05, and The Inertia.
-
Will Carpenter
Consultant
Will Carpenter
Consultant
Will holds 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. He is currently an MFA candidate in poetry at the University of Florida. At UF, Will has 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, which he’ll teach next fall. 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 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.
-
Ren Arcamone
Consultant
Ren Arcamone
Consultant
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.
-
Sarina Redzinski
Consultant
Sarina Redzinski
Consultant
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.
-
Drew Dickerson
Consultant
Drew Dickerson
Consultant
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.
-
Savannah Horton
Consultant
Savannah Horton
Consultant
Savannah Horton is a fiction writer with an MFA from the University of Florida and a BA in English from Bowdoin College. She has five years of teaching experience at the undergraduate, high school, and elementary school levels. She was the 2021-2022 Writer in Residence at St. Albans School and a graduate of the University of Florida’s fiction MFA program, where she received the Porter Fellowship. She has published in The Drift, Subtopics, Raleigh Review, and The Cincinnati Review, where her story was selected as a Distinguished Story for the Best American Short Stories 2020 collection, and she was longlisted for both the 2021 CRAFT First Chapters Contest and the First Pages Prize.
-
Josh Brooks
Consultant
Josh Brooks
Consultant
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.
-
Liz K Emerson
Consultant
Liz K Emerson
Consultant
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
Consultant
Allison Nash
Consultant
Ali has worked in law school admissions since 2009, where, as Director of Admissions and Financial Aid at the University of Arizona College of Law, she evaluated applications, assisted in making merit-based scholarship decisions, and counseled prospective law students. She’s spent the past several years working as a law school admissions consultant, using everything she learned in the admissions office to help students discover then strategically articulate their strengths in law school applications. Prior to her admissions work, Ali obtained her JD, with distinction, from the University of Iowa College of Law, where she was selected as a Journal of Corporation Law writer and a Van Oosterhout-Baskerville Appellate Advocacy competitor. She practiced real estate law at Warner Norcross & Judd LLP(Am Law 200) for several years, where she also helped make hiring decisions and mentored new attorneys. She writes every chance she gets and has authored numerous legal and law school admissions publications. In Ali’s spare time, she volunteers as a CASA, runs a little cookie shop, teaches the occasional yoga class, and tinkers around on her ukulele.
-
Lauren Pena
Consultant
Lauren Pena
Consultant
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.