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, Yale, 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.
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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. As a teacher, she led both writing workshops and 1:1 mentoring sessions with students to help them build personal narratives and develop an authentic voice. Her own writing has been widely published in literary journals and has received support from the Bread Loaf Writer’s Conference, Vermont Studio Center, and MacDowell. She is excited to combine her love of teaching and writing with her knowledge of the current admissions landscape to help guide students through the college application process.
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Jewel Dixon, MA
Younger Student Consultant
Jewel holds an undergraduate degree from Yale, an MA in American History from Vanderbilt, and has a wealth of experience coaching high-achieving students towards successful college admissions. At Yale, Jewel served as Head of College Aid at Trumbull College, worked as a First-Year Counselor, and led an academic enrichment program for gifted middle school students. Jewel’s work with the Leadership Enterprise for a Diverse America (LEDA), hosted at Brown and Princeton University, saw her mentoring sophomores and juniors, leading career planning meetings, conducting mock admissions interviews, and advising on financial aid and college visits. Jewel has also guided 100+ students as an advisor at a top college prep high school, providing tailored support in executive functioning, extracurricular planning, and passion project development.
Her approach is warm, strategic, and personalized—and her knowledge of the admissions process at selective institutions makes her an invaluable resource for families who want to set a strong foundation early.
Kylie Kistner, MA
Head of Content & Marketing
Kylie is a former admissions counselor 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.
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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.
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Elyse Fenton, MFA
Consulting Editor
Elyse Fenton is the author of the poetry collections, Clamor, winner of the 2010 Dylan Thomas Prize, and Sweet Insurgent, winner of the Alice Fay di Castagnola Prize. Her work has been published in The New York Times, Best New Poets, and American Poetry Review, and has been featured on NPR’s All Things Considered and PRI’s The World. She holds a BA from Reed College and an MFA from the University of Oregon.
An editor with Irena Smith Consulting for the past ten years, she has also taught high school and college creative writing, argumentation, and literature. She lives with her family and small chicken flock in Portland, Oregon. When not writing or fixating unduly on diction choices, she spends her time climbing, attempting to grow things, and exploring the Pacific Northwest with her husband and kid. (The chickens, for better or worse, stay home.)
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Laurie Filipelli, MFA
Consulting Editor
Laurie Filipelli is a poet, editor, and educator who specializes in guiding students toward authentic and well-crafted college application essays. She holds an MA in English from the University of Cincinnati and an MFA from Indiana University. She has authored two collections of poems, Elseplace (Brooklyn Arts Press, 2013) and the 2019 Writers’ League of Texas Discovery Prize winner, Girl Paper Stone (Black Lawrence Press, 2018) as well as the Mighty Writing College Application Essay Guide, in collaboration with Irena Smith.
Laurie lives in Austin where she teaches college writing classes, runs tween poetry workshops, blogs about personal essay writing, and experiences the joy of vicarious travel with family games of Geoguessr.