Our mission is to make legal education accessible
Law school is the gateway to the legal profession, and thus it is the gateway to key positions in our society. But those who are unable to hire expensive admissions consultants have been at an unfair disadvantage. Until now.
We want to level the playing field. Top-notch, high-quality admissions advice should be affordable, and we have worked hard to do just that. Our affordable course guides you through the admissions process and writing personal statements, so that you can go to law school and become a lawyer.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Tiffany Williams
Consultant
Tiffany spent nearly ten years working in law school admissions, most recently as the Assistant Dean for Admissions and Enrollment Management at George Mason University, Antonin Scalia Law School. At Scalia Law School, she had both admissions and student services roles. She recruited and advised law school candidates and made admission and scholarship decisions on thousands of applications for the JD, LLM, transfer, and visitor programs. Additionally, she advised the law school’s diverse affinity groups and helped to create and facilitate the law school’s Diversity and Inclusion Certificate Program.
Tiffany enjoyed serving the law school admissions and pre-law communities and was appointed to three terms on the LSAC’s Misconduct and Irregularities in the Admission Process Subcommittee. She also presented and ran workshops at various LSAC, Council of Legal Education Opportunity, pre-law advisor, and college and university pre-law conferences and events.
Tiffany received her BA from the University of Virginia and her JD from the University of Kentucky College of Law, where she also served as a student member of the admissions committee.
Currently, Tiffany is an attorney for the United States Department of Veterans Affairs. When she’s not working, you can find her cheering on the Virginia Cavaliers or Kentucky Wildcats, spinning on her at-home spin bike, or spoiling her miniature schnauzer.
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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.
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Nicole Tarrence
Consultant
Nicole spent six years working in law school admissions, most recently as the Assistant Director of Admissions at South Texas College of Law Houston. During her time in the industry, she counseled and advised prospective students on the application process, evaluated files for admissions decisions, and traveled nationally to law school forums and fairs to recruit students.
As a member of the law school admissions community, Nicole was engaged with the Law School Admissions Council (LSAC) and the Minority Network of Law School Admissions Officers. She served as a panelist at two LSAC Forums, where she discussed the application & admission process. She also served as a presenter at the LSAC Annual Meeting & Educational Conference. As a member of the Minority Network, Nicole worked with other admissions colleagues to facilitate diversity within the legal education pipeline.
Nicole received her BA from the University of Louisville and her JD from the University of Kentucky College of Law. Currently, Nicole works in recruiting for an Am Law 100 law firm where she coordinates all non-partner recruiting functions for the Texas region. When she’s not working, Nicole enjoys trying out new restaurants, watching college football, and cooking.
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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.
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Kurt Pitzer
Consultant
Author and journalist Kurt Pitzer has written about many of the world’s most turbulent regions, including the Balkans, the Middle East, Afghanistan and Iraq. He is a recipient of the Lange-Taylor Prize for his documentary work in Bosnia, Serbia and Kosovo. His work has appeared in the Boston Globe, The Sunday Times of London, the Los Angeles Times, BBC Radio, People magazine, Pleiades, the Denver Quarterly and Mother Jones, among others.
In 2003, he helped the former head of Saddam Hussein’s nuclear centrifuge program, Dr. Mahdi Obeidi, escape from Iraq to the United States with his family. Their co-written book, The Bomb in My Garden (John Wiley & Sons), was called “never less than riveting” by The New York Times Book Review. Pitzer’s next, Eating with the Enemy (St. Martin’s Press), a “boisterous, improbable book” (The New York Times), is about the unlikely friendship between mobbed-up New Jersey restaurant owner Robert Egan and a North Korean ambassador. He is the producer of the narrative feature film Runoff, which premiered at the Los Angeles, Hamptons International and Woodstock film festivals in 2014.
Pitzer earned his BA in English at Wesleyan University and an MFA in Creative Writing from New York University. He teaches Advanced Creative Nonfiction at Harvard’s Extension School.
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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.
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Sam Massie
Data Specialist
Sam is a graduate student in statistics at Yale University and holds a BA in economics, also from Yale, together with a certificate from the MIT Advanced Study Program. Prior to joining 7Sage, he worked for six years as a business analyst and product manager in Hong Kong, Boston, and Shanghai. He speaks fluent Mandarin, and his writing about China has appeared in the New York Times. Currently, he is based in Boston, where he also consults for companies on data analytics projects.
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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.
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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.
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Ben Mauk
Consultant
Ben Mauk is a freelance writer based in Berlin. His work has appeared in The New York Times Magazine,Harper’s Magazine, The Guardian, Granta, London Review of Books, Virginia Quarterly Review, Vice Magazine, The New Yorker online, and many other publications. He has received a Fulbright research fellowship and multiple grants from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting. He earned a BA in English literature, philosophy, and cognitive studies from Cornell University (Phi Beta Kappa, distinction in all subjects) and an M.F.A. from the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop. He taught literature and creative writing for several years at the University of Iowa. He is the co-founder and director of the Berlin Writers’ Workshop.
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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.
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Zaina Arafat
Consultant
Zaina Arafat holds an MFA in writing from the University of Iowa, an MA in international affairs from Columbia University, and a BA in philosophy from the University of Virginia. She is the author of the novel, You Exist Too Much, which was selected as a most-anticipated book for June 2020 by O, The Oprah Magazine, Elle, Harper’s Bazaar, The Millions and the American Booksellers Association. Her stories and essays have appeared in publications including The New York Times, Granta, The Believer, Virginia Quarterly Review, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, BuzzFeed, VICE, and NPR. She has taught creative writing, expository writing and journalism at The School of the New York Times, the University of Iowa, the International Writing Program, the Writers Guild Initiative, and Sackett Street Writers’ Workshop. She recently traveled to Egypt and Eritrea as part of a U.S. State Department cultural delegation to teach creative writing. As an editor, she designed and curated a Q & A series with marginalized writers for The Margins and served as the managing editor for VinePair. In recognition of her work as a writer, teacher, and editor, she was awarded the Arab Women/Migrants from the Middle East fellowship at Jack Jones Literary Arts.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Conor Ahern
Consultant
Conor works as a civil rights attorney for the City of New York, and has been moonlighting as an LSAT tutor for two years. Immediately following law school, he worked as a Ford Fellow at the ACLU’s Women’s Rights Project. He enjoys reading fiction and making bad puns. He is a graduate of the University of Virginia and of Harvard Law School.
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Jessie Marshall
Consultant
Jessie Marshall is a writer, teacher, and amateur farmer living in Āhualoa on the Island of Hawai’i. She graduated with highest honors from Oberlin College, earned a Distinction in Modern Literature and Culture from the University of York, and completed the MFA program in Creative Writing at New York University. Her work has been published in The New York Times, ZYZZYVA, Barrelhouse, The Common, The Gettysburg Review, The Mid-American Review, The Emerson Review, New York Press, and Night Train. Jessie’s career as an educator has included teaching writing at NYU and Honolulu Community College, tutoring at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, and being on the English faculty of several private schools in Hawai’i. Her plays have been staged at Oberlin College and The University of Durham and have been featured in the E ‘Ōlelo reading series at the Kahilu Theatre. She has also received fellowships to attend writing residencies at the KHN Center for the Arts, the Gershwin Hotel, and the Millay Colony. Recently Jessie was a finalist for the Wisconsin Institute of Creative Writing’s postgraduate fellowships and she attended the Community of Writers at Squaw Valley as the recipient of the James D. Houston Memorial Scholarship.
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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.
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Shruti Swamy
Consultant
Shruti Swamy is the author of the short story collection A House Is a Body and the novel Utter, both forthcoming from Algonquin Books. Her work has twice been awarded the O. Henry Prize, and been published in The Paris Review, McSweeny’s, Catapult, AGNI, Black Warrior Review, and other journals. She is a Kundiman fiction fellow, a 2017 – 2018 Steinbeck fellow at San Jose State University, and the recipient of grants from the Elizabeth George Foundation, the San Francisco Arts Commission, and Vassar College. Shruti has been awarded residencies at Hedgebrook, Blue Mountain Center, and the Millay Colony for the Arts.
Shruti earned a BA in literature from Vassar College and an MFA from San Francisco State University, where she received the Distinguished Graduate Award. Shruti loves working one-on-one to help people achieve their goals and tell their stories. When she’s not tackling client work or writing, she can be spotted at various San Francisco playgrounds, wrangling her one-year-old.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Clare Jones
Consultant
Clare Jones holds a BA in English from Carleton College, an MFA in Poetry from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and an MPhil in Eighteenth-Century and Romantic Studies from Cambridge University. Her writing has been supported by the Fulbright Program and the Keats Shelley Memorial Association. She has reviewed books for The Cambridge Quarterly and The John Clare Society Journal, and her poetry has appeared in Poetry, PN Review, Sport, and elsewhere. She has worked in the editorial departments of three university presses and has taught creative writing and book arts in the United States and New Zealand.
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Nathan Go
Consultant
Nathan Go holds a BFA in Screenwriting from the University of Southern California. He has two MFAs—one from the University of Michigan, and another from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where he won the Richard Yates short story contest twice. He was the 2017-2018 David TK Wong Fellow at the University of East Anglia. In 2012, Nathan was a PEN America Emerging Voices Fellow and taught creative writing to blind adults at the Braille Institute. He has received scholarships and fellowships at Tin House, Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Sewanee, Atlantic Center for the Arts, and Sozopol Fiction Seminars from the Elizabeth Kostova Foundation.
His fiction has appeared in Ploughshares, American Short Fiction, Ninth Letter, Selected Shorts, the Massachusetts Review, the Bare Life Review and the Des Moines Register, among others. He is at work on his first novel and short story collection.
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Leigh Gallagher
Consultant
Leigh holds a BA in English from San Francisco State University, where she was a Presidential Scholar, and an MFA from the University of Michigan, where she won a Hopwood Award and a postgraduate fellowship. Her stories have appeared in the journals American Short Fiction, Beloit, Cutbank, and Salt Hill, and in a number of collaborations with artists and musicians. She has been awarded fellowships at numerous artists residencies, including the Lighthouse Works on Fishers Island, the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation of New Mexico, and the Vermont Studio Center. Embracing curriculum design and community engagement as an extension of her practice, Leigh has been a writer-in-residence in Detroit public schools and has taught at the Pratt Institute, the City University of New York, the University of Michigan, and the Johns Hopkins Center for Talented Youth. She is currently completing her first novel.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Bryce Thornburg
Consultant
Bryce Thornburg holds a BA in English and linguistics from the University of California, Berkeley, an MA in English literature from Cornell University, and an MFA in poetry from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where he was a Maytag Fellow and taught courses in poetry and fiction.
Bryce’s poetry and book reviews have appeared in The Brooklyn Review, The Berkeley Poetry Review, Rain Taxi, Diagram, Afternoon Visitor, and elsewhere.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Liz Clearman
Consultant
Liz is originally from Houston, Texas, graduating with a B.A. in Political Science from Texas A&M University (Gig 'em, Aggies!) and earning a J.D. from the University of Houston Law Center, where she was the chief managing editor of the Journal of Texas Consumer Law and the founder of the Aggie Law Society. For the past seven and a half years, she has been both an assistant and an associate director of admissions at the University of Houston Law Center, reading over 7,000 applications and traveling around the nation to recruit prospective applicants. As her side hustle, she is a copy editor for a magazine publishing group based out of Louisiana. Prior to her tenure in law school admissions, Liz spent two and a half years in the Career Development Office at the University of Houston Law Center as a career counselor, and before that, she had a brief stint as an assistant city attorney in the Legal Department of the City of Houston. Her passion in law school admissions is to make sure the process is available to and understandable by everyone, not just a select few.
When she's not using her law admissions skills, Liz can be found spending time with her 13-year-old daughter and two cats, pushing herself through high-intensity interval training workouts at boot camp, copy editing magazine articles, helping her best friend grow her business, organizing/minimizing spaces for her friends and family, and watching college football (specifically the Aggies). She also serves on the board of directors of a local YMCA.
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Lorri Olán
Consultant
Lorri Olán (she, her, hers) is the Associate Director of Advising and Pre-Law Advisor of the Office of Career Development for the College and Williams School of Commerce at Washington and Lee University. In this capacity, she delivers programming on writing personal statements, requesting letters of recommendation, financing a legal education, and choosing law schools. She advises and counsels undergraduate students and alumni on all aspects of the application process. A graduate of Oberlin College and Northeastern University School of Law, Lorri clerked for ten years on the Court of Appeals of Virginia and the Massachusetts Superior Court, and served as executive director of a rural domestic violence and sexual assault agency, as a research assistant for the Commission to Study Racial Bias in the Courts, and as a legal assistant in New York City. Before counseling undergraduates, she directed the Office of Career Planning at Washington and Lee’s School of Law where she advised law students and lawyers on career-related issues. Lorri held leadership roles in NALP as Mid-Atlantic Regional Coordinator, Conference Planning Team, and Judicial Clerkship Committee and is a current member of SAPLA’s Diversity Task Force. She has presented at national conferences on law-related topics and has written articles on clerking, public interest and nontraditional legal careers, and working with LGBTQ students. Lorri is committed to helping underrepresented students succeed and to diversifying the legal profession. She is an inactive member of the New York and Virginia State Bar Associations. An avid hiker and dog lover, Lorri is the mother of three sparkling adult children and the owner of a happy but blissfully oblivious Labrador retriever.
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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.
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Justin Williams
Consultant
Justin spent nearly five years reviewing applications, counseling prospective and current law students, and demystifying the law school admissions process at Michigan State University College of Law and then Wayne State University Law School. Justin is a graduate of Eastern Michigan University with a BS in Industrial Distribution and Michigan State University College of Law with a JD and Master's in Jurisprudence.
Justin has served as a panelist for the Law School Admissions Council on multiple occasions, presenting on the law school admissions process and diversity in law school admissions. He has served as primary presenter on over 100 different webinar sessions about the law school admissions process and personal statement workshops. An advocate for diversity in the law school space, Justin has served on institutional diversity committees, held space for diverse students to unpack and process their experiences, and built platforms for diverse students to come together in support of one another.
Between law school admissions roles, he also earned a fellowship with the Detroit Revitalization Fellows program, serving as Inclusive Growth Program and Policy Manager at Capital Impact Partners, a Community Development Financial Institution. In that role he led the Equitable Development Initiative, a program designed to support access to real estate development opportunities for minority real estate developers in Detroit. He currently serves as Chief Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Officer for Girl Scouts of Southeastern Michigan. None of that compares to his most important job—daddy to Taylor and Kendall, twin four-year-old girls. And his little dog too!
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Keshia Ridley
Consultant
Keshia has nine years of experience in law school admissions and recruiting. She has expert knowledge of the admissions process from inception to enrollment and a deep understanding of what top schools are seeking in an ideal candidate. Keshia has counseled thousands of students, offering support, guidance, and structure for them to efficiently complete the application process. She specializes in cultivating conversations that evoke applicants' experiences and confidence to strengthen their application. Keshia is a believer in lifelong learning for personal and professional growth. Her greatest fulfillment is witnessing the maturation of an applicant during the admissions process and helping them reach their full potential.
Keshia has a B.A. in Communications from Howard University and an M.A. in Higher Education Administration from the University of Louisville. Keshia is located just outside of Washington, D.C., and enjoys spending quality time with her core family and friends, preferably outdoors enjoying warm weather, and gathering over a good meal.