When Adrienne was seven years old, she published her first book, "The Pretty Girl Who Was Smart and the Beautiful Girl Who Was Stupid," and she hasn't stopped writing since.  Adrienne attended Princeton, majoring in English and creative writing; she graduated summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa...

Alison grew up in Concord, MA, known for its literary and revolutionary history (Henry David Thoreau inspired the name of her first dog Walden). Alison has always loved reading and writing; at Brown University, she studied Comparative Literature and Italian Studies. While studying abroad for a...

Andrew grew up in the suburbs of Philadelphia, just a few miles from the utopian religious community on which he would eventually focus much of his academic work.  He studied at the University of Pennsylvania and St.  Andrews University before ultimately receiving his bachelor’s degree from the...

Anna is a Harvard-educated linguist and historian and has taught Humanities at Boston College, Brown, Phillips Andover, Harvard, and MIT. She has tutored privately
for many years. While in college, Anna tutored middle-schoolers in remedial English and composition. After entering a graduate...

Audrey was raised in Arlington, VA and graduated from Northeastern University with a major in international affairs and a minor in Arabic. During her time at Northeastern, she studied Arabic in Jordan and conflict resolution in the Balkans. She also spent six months working with a freelance...

Ben graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Harvard with a degree in Literature and a secondary field in Computer Science. After contemplating life as a professional musician, he decided to go into legal research; these days, Ben studies how technologies like artificial intelligence are challenging...

Beth grew up just outside of New York City in Stamford, Connecticut. She followed her passion for languages and literature to Middlebury College in Vermont, where she graduated magna cum laude with a BA in English and American Literatures and Italian. After graduating, she worked in digital...

Bryan grew up in Akron, OH where he cultivated a taste for exploring the wider world and has spent most of his life in Chicago and New York City. Bryan is a Ph.D. candidate in British Atlantic and Early American History at Columbia University. He earned his BA from the City College of New York...

Caroline Dell is a Senior Associate Consultant in Bain & Company’s New York office. She joined Bain full-time in September 2013, after an internship during the summer of 2012.

Caroline graduated from Brown University with a B.A. in Economics and Public Policy. While at Brown, she was...

A Connecticut native, Chelsea spent her first two years of college in California as a Neuroscience major at the University of Southern California before transferring to Yale College during her junior year (a decision that baffled many a sun-deprived Yalie). She graduated from Yale in 2015 Phi...

Chris grew up in Toms River, New Jersey, where he developed an appreciation for the finer things in life, especially the music of Bruce Springsteen, the invaluable service of gas station attendants, and mozzarella cheese (pronounced “mootz-ah-rell,” or simply “muhtz”), though he has since...

Claire was born and grew up in Berkeley, CA where she developed a lifelong love of exploration and science. In 2014, she received her B.S. in Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology from Yale University, with distinction in vector-borne diseases.

Following graduation, Claire...

Courtney is a Ph.D. candidate and Dean’s Fellow in Art History at Columbia University, where she studies twentieth-century art. Since 2013, she has taught in Columbia’s undergraduate curriculum, leading discussion courses in modern and Western art. Each semester, she works with her students to...

After growing up on a farm in Iowa, Danielle moved to Massachusetts, where she studied English with a citation (minor) in Spanish at Harvard University. At Harvard, Danielle was elected to Phi Beta Kappa as a junior and graduated summa cum laude a year later. She spent most of her free time in...

Austin, TX is Devin’s hometown: when he was young, his family moved there from Orlando, FL because they realized they had finally finished seeing every part of Disney World. He got his BA in philosophy at Yale, where he graduated magna cum laude and won 1st prize in the Yale Public Speaking...

Elizabeth was born in the boonies of Appalachia. She attended the University of North Carolina, double-majoring in dramatic art and English and graduating summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa. She was awarded the Joseph Adler Award in Dramatic Art and the Whitfield Award for her work in...

Emma hails from rural Minnesota, where she frequented her local library to the point that her parents were forced to threaten returning her literary spoils as a form of disciplinary leverage. After graduating summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities in 2014...

Eric grew up in Wisconsin, and double majored in history and English literature at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where occasional rumors that the school had a football team (“Badgers?”) reached him while he was getting hooked on the writing of Joyce, Faulkner, Eliot and Woolf. He...

Erin Bartnett received her Masters in modern & contemporary literature from the University of Virginia, a certificate in publishing from NYU, and her Bachelors in English Literature with a concentration in Women's Literature from Rutgers University, summa cum laude, high honors.  She has...

Guy did his undergrad in France at the Université de Limoges where he got a Maîtrise in English Literature, with a Minor in Linguistics. He then did an MA in Classics at Rutgers University in New Jersey, in which he performed “spectacularly” on the General Exams, to use the Chair’s own words....

Helena was born in New York City and then raised in the San Francisco Bay Area. Raised by parents who are both teachers (at the high school she attended, no less), she has been engaged with reading, writing, and education quite literally since she can remember. She studied at Columbia University...

James is a fourth year Ph.D. candidate in classical philosophy in the Harvard Department of the Classics. He graduated from Emory University (B.A.’s in classics and in philosophy) summa cum laude and with a perfect GPA. At Emory, he directed the college’s departmental philosophy club for three...

Jeb grew up on a beautiful, bucolic island near Seattle. Long commutes into the city to attend school gave him ample time to read and write, and he became a lover of books and developed an interest in English grammar and language at an early age. He received his B.A. in international relations...

Jimmy is a J.D./Ph.D. student (Sociology & Social Policy) at Harvard University. Originally from Los Angeles, Jimmy graduated from Harvard College, magna cum laude, in 2014 with a degree in Social Studies and English. Following graduation, he spent a year doing political research for David...

Up until first being introduced to Donne in senior year of high school, John was firmly a science kid. In college, he began splitting his time between premed science and poetry classes at Amherst, and ended up graduating with a double major in Chemistry and English. His research focused on the...

Julia grew up in New York City and attended Princeton University, where she graduated Phi Beta Kappa and summa cum laude in 2008. After college, she worked in Sub-Saharan Africa to improve access to healthcare in rural communities. She went on to Harvard Medical School and is currently...

Born and raised in England, Karen went globe-trotting in her late teens through her early twenties, working at a variety of jobs (chambermaid, waitress, camp site assistant, flight attendant, van driver) in settings as far afield as Wales, Italy, Israel, Spain, Greece, and the United States. ...

When she was ten years old, Katherine’s dad took her to her first poetry reading, where she read a poem about a pine tree and another poem about a bully at school. She has been writing ever since, and she still enjoys giving poetry readings.

Katherine studied English at Macalester College...

Kevin went to high school in a midwestern cornfield far from the nearest SAT administration, but managed to score 800s on his SAT Verbal, SAT Writing, and U.S. History tests, buttressing his self-esteem sufficiently to withstand a 690 SAT Math score. At Stanford University he took a BA with...

Margaret is currently a fourth year student at Harvard Medical School, and will be graduating in 2019. She graduated with distinction in 2013 from Stanford University with a B.A. in Human Biology and Honors in Ethics. She was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa upon graduation and honored with a...

Before becoming a historian, Megan managed contemporary art galleries in New York City. There she was introduced to Soviet history through the eyes of Russian artists. Megan is currently a doctoral candidate in the History Department at Harvard University. She is a specialist in the history of...

Nadia is a mixed product of northern New Jersey, upstate New York, and Moscow, Russia. She graduated magna cum laude from Cornell University, where she double-majored in English and Psychology. She eventually received her PhD in Developmental Psychology, also from Cornell. Her work has received...

From a young age, Nicole has been a lover of history. At Boston College, Nicole studied History and like any good student of a Catholic institution, she also enjoyed many theology courses. After graduating, she worked in Fidelity’s Legal Department as a business analyst. She is now a student at...

Pat grew up on Long Island, New York and dreamed of living in a city. She went to college at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia and majored in biology and English and then worked as a paralegal in Washington, D.C. while she decided whether to go to law school or graduate school in...

Although she hails from North Carolina, Rachel is a dual citizen of the U.S. and Canada. (Ask her about Anne of Green Gables.) Her status as a Commonwealther is her excuse for her lifelong Anglophilia. Rachel studied English literature at Duke, where her senior thesis on judgment in the novels...

Rebecca was raised in the woods of North Carolina, where she learned to love both reading and climbing trees. Rebecca received her A.B. from Harvard, where she designed an independent major in drama and literature and graduated with high honors. Her senior thesis won a Thomas T. Hoopes prize,...

A true Manhattanite from head to toe, Sam attended Horace Mann High School before emigrating, in a fit of wanderlust and questionable judgment, to Ireland to enroll in the English Department of Trinity College Dublin. At Trinity, he earned honors and had his poetry and prose published in a...

Sarah has spent much of her adult life as a professional English teacher both overseas and in Cambridge, Massachusetts, which she considers her home. After completing her BA in liberal arts at St. John's College in Annapolis, she went on to pursue a masters degree in English and Comparative...

Shyam grew up in Los Angeles, and completed his undergraduate degree in Neurobiology at Washington University in St. Louis. While at Wash U, he conducted research on the role of serotonin signaling in early brain development, and served on the university’s Board of Trustees. He graduated magna...

Susan Chambers is from the South, but she now lives in Hackney, London. She went to high school in Florida, earning the I.B. diploma and graduating first in her class.  She then studied English at Rice, in Texas, graduating summa cum laude and picking up the nickname Lady Geddes for winning the...

Terry is from revolutionary Lexington, Massachusetts, where he grew up marching in parades as a minuteman until he was old enough to think better of it. He attended Amherst College, where he graduated summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa with degrees in English and French. His thesis on medieval...

Tess is a true Upper Westsider with no plans to leave. She attended Trinity School and then moved north to attend Columbia University, where she majored in English and fenced for the varsity team. After spending a few years working at the Kinetix Group she has returned to Columbia as an MBA...

Hailing from Chicago, Tova attended the University of Chicago and graduated Phi Beta Kappa with a BA in anthropology. She recently completed her MPhil (with Merit) at the University of Cambridge where she studied Archaeology, with work spanning from theoretical anthropology to archaeobotany....

Before Zoe was in the first grade she lived in five different states and two different countries, and somehow she still likes to travel. Zoe studied English at Davidson College where she graduated Phi Beta Kappa and magna cum laude. She was a John Montgomery Belk Scholar and received a Davidson...