Irena Smith, Founder
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 helps school students 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.
Elyse Fenton, Senior Essay 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.)
Laurie Filipelli, Senior Essay 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.
