Lisa Dube, LICSW (she/her)

Lisa Dube, LICSW has been a licensed clinical social worker since 1995. Prior to opening her private practice, Lisa worked for the U.S. District Court for more than twenty years, as a treatment specialist. 

In 2018, she established a private practice focused on the needs of families and individuals navigating gender identity exploration and transition. Over the last few years, Lisa has become passionate about the intersectionality of gender and neurodivergence, and has received extensive training in the neurodiversity affirming paradigm. She is World Professional Association of Transgender Health (WPATH) certified, and has also completed a year-long intensive in working with families.

More recently, Lisa has completed Internal Family Systems (IFS) Level 1 & 2 training and has brought this lens into her practice.  She currently facilitates several groups for parents and for young adults, many of whom are navigating the college journey. Lisa is licensed to provide clinical services in Massachusetts, Maine, Connecticut and New Hampshire.

Carolyn Caplan, IEC (she/her)

Carolyn Caplan (she/her) is an independent educational consultant.  She has more than 35 years of experience as a classroom teacher, 33 years of experience as a mother of three mostly flown and grown young adults (including her amazing and magical trans daughter), and seven years of experience as a college admissions consultant. She's also known as "AdmissionsMom" on the subreddit r/ApplyingToCollege, where there are over a million community members.

Carolyn's focus is on creating opportunities for teens and parents to embrace the amazing opportunities the transitional transformation of college admissions offers parents and their children, and finding joy and connection in the journey while processing and understanding the stress that accompanies it. Carolyn especially enjoys working with transgender students in helping them reach their full potential while they discover colleges where they can be safe and supported as they learn more about themselves and grow into the adult humans they are meant to be. 

Sara Caplan (she/her)

Sara is a writer and performer who loves helping her students embrace their creativity and enjoy the process of writing. She believes that the key to a good essay is authenticity, and that the job of an essay coach is to help her student figure out what feels most true to them. She is a trans woman, so she knows how difficult things are right now for queer people and especially trans youth. That said, she also knows first-hand the joy and importance of living as your authentic self, and she always works to foster an accepting and safe environment for students to explore and express themselves.

Sara grew up in Houston, TX before graduating from Harvard in 2015 with a degree in Philosophy. Since then, she’s worked a number of different jobs, from teaching sculptural welding classes to building sets for game shows on Dropout. She also attended Berkeley School of Law. Throughout it all, she worked as a freelance essay writing tutor and further honed her essay skills as a writing coach with College Essay Guy.   

When Sara started college, she thought she would be a Classics professor. She had no idea that her first job after graduating would be with a new media art collective in Shanghai, or that a few years later, she would be teaching welding classes in Los Angeles or making up songs in front of packed crowds. Life can be a wonderfully surprising journey, if you let it.

Sara knows there's a lot of pressure on students to feel like they've got everything all figured out, but the truth is that you don't have to, and there's value in learning how to go with the flow. In the improv world, it’s called "following the fun."  Sara loves working with students who have too many interests or who have no idea what they want to be when they grow up, because that's who she was and will probably continue to be for the rest of her life.

When she’s not working with students, Sara’s probably cooking with her girlfriend, working on her puppet musical, Monster Like Me, a trans allegory, or performing musical improv somewhere in Los Angeles.