Ready to start building your best college app? 😇

Meet our team.

Our firm is small by design, built around a partnership model. Our partners are experts — former admissions officers and superb writers from schools like Vanderbilt, Stanford, Middlebury, and Harvard. Combined, we've worked in highly selective admissions for more than 30 years and read tens-of-thousands of applications from schools across the US, with a focus on California and the Bay Area, the New England and New Jersey, and Washington State. Everyone on our team has a stake in every application. And we share a common view that our best interests lie in being obsessed with client outcomes.

 

 

Ben Bousquet, MEd

Director of College Consulting

Ben is the former Assistant Director of Admissions at Vanderbilt University, former Admissions Officer at University of Mary Washington, and was a Resident Director of the 2018 Harvard Pre-College Program.

Ben has a deep understanding of elite admissions, having reviewed 20,000+ applications, presented files to the admissions committee, and selected students for top merit scholarships. At Harvard, he facilitates admissions workshops for 500+ high-achieving high school students. Ben understands the critical importance of the written components of an application, which are often the difference between a deny and an admit.

Carolyn Orosz, MFA

Senior Consultant

Carolyn Orosz is a former admission officer at Middlebury College, where she read thousands of applications and served as a voting member of the admissions committee. At Middlebury, Carolyn read applications from athletes, international students, and students at top public and private schools nationwide–including Phillips Exeter, The Lawrenceville School, and those in the San Francisco Bay Area. She understands highly selective admissions and the unique pressures and competitions that students face.

Carolyn holds a BA in English from Middlebury College and an MFA in poetry from the University of Wisconsin-Madison where she taught English and Creative Writing courses. At Sierra, Carolyn leads our school research efforts—focusing on the priorities and programs at the top thirty most popular schools among our clients, with a focus on STEM and business. She combines deep admissions data knowledge with her writing instruction background to help students position their strongest applications. 

Kylie Kistner, MA

Head of Content & Marketing

Kylie is a former admissions officer at Willamette University. She has been a writing coach at three institutions and has worked with thousands of students on their writing. In her role as an academic consultant, Kylie has also supported neurodiverse students through writing, planning, and project management.

A writer herself, Kylie co-created a university-wide writing handbook standardized across 200+ undergraduate writing courses and used to teach writing in several countries. With her experience as an admissions counselor and writing coach, Kylie guides students seamlessly through the writing process, enabling them to craft exceptional essays that stand out.

Irena Smith, PhD

Consulting Partner

Irena founded her college consulting practice 15 years ago, drawing on her experience as an admission officer at Stanford University, where she read and reviewed thousands of applications. Now, she works with Sierra Admissions students to find and celebrate their best stories as they navigate the application process.

Irena has a BA in English from UCLA and a PhD in Comparative Literature, also from UCLA, where she received a Distinguished Teaching Assistant Award and a Dissertation Year Fellowship.

Irena has taught literature and composition at UCLA and Stanford and has nearly 20 years of experience as a writer, editor, and teacher. Her memoir, The Golden Ticket, explores the college application process from the perspectives of a parent, college counselor, and admissions officer. She is a voracious reader, a fervent proponent of the serial comma, and a shameless consumer of Trader Joe’s chocolate-covered espresso beans.

 

Alex M., MA

Founder

Since founding Sierra in 2017, Alex has helped 500+ students get into the best schools in the country by crafting unforgettable applications. He graduated with honors from the University of Puget Sound before pursuing an M.A. at San Francisco State, completing advanced graduate work at UC Berkeley.

Alex writes regularly about admissions, provides essay workshops for high schools in California and Washington, and moderates Reddit's r/ApplyingToCollege community, the largest admissions-focused community in the world. He is an experienced writing coach who believes that a strong essay strategy is at the heart of every successful application.