Irena's academic and professional background is uniquely suited to provide her students with the highest level of individualized college counseling.
Irena graduated from UCLA summa cum laude with a B.A. in English. She went on to obtain a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature, also at UCLA, where she received a Distinguished Teaching Assistant Award and a Dissertation Year Fellowship.
Irena has taught literature and composition at the undergraduate and graduate level at Stanford University, UCLA, and Notre Dame de Namur University. She worked for four years as an admissions officer at Stanford University where she read and reviewed thousands of undergraduate and transfer applications. She has over ten years of experience as a freelance writer, editor, and translator. Her writing has appeared in The Henry James Review, Pacific Coast Philology, and in the upcoming anthology of essays, Mama Ph.D. Irena currently lives in Palo Alto, California.