Meet Our Team
Kelsey Wang
Founder & Essay Consultant
Kelsey Wang is an essay consultant at Essay Cafe with a B.S. in Data Science and a minor in Creative Writing from Stanford University. She approaches essay editing from both a data perspective (applying successful patterns from hundreds of essays read) and a creative perspective (making each individual student stand out) and has personally helped students get into top schools like Princeton, Yale, Brown, UCLA, Duke, Stanford, Columbia and many more.
Over several years of helping students apply to their dream colleges, she's developed the Espresso/Smoothie strategy that utilizes advanced themes for each student to optimize their memorability and uniqueness to admissions officers. She has worked with all different types of students, from science fair winners to aspiring journalists to non-profit founders, and she takes particular pride in helping "well-rounded" students combine their interests and find a way to stand out.
When she's not editing essays, you'll probably find her wandering her local Trader Joe's or playing a racket sport.
Seyi Osundeko
Essay Consultant
Seyi Osundeko is an essay consultant at Essay Cafe with a B.A. in English from the University of Pennsylvania. She is currently a PhD candidate in the English department at Stanford University. She has experience editing essays at a high school, undergraduate, and postgraduate level. She also has a passion for teaching, and has taught students from 16-60 in various courses. "You helped me understand this!" is her favorite compliment, and she excels at breaking down complex ideas and communicating effectively.
From college to academic fellowships to dental school, Seyi specializes in application materials. Her approach to editing is shaped by a desire to help students find the gems in their experiences and show them off through high-quality prose and in-depth storytelling. She focuses on helping students move from documenting experiences to telling compelling stories of how those experiences shaped them.
When she is not editing essays (or otherwise avoiding her dissertation) Seyi can often be found singing show tunes and writing short stories.
Katie Livingston
Essay Consultant
Katie Livingston is currently an English PhD candidate at Stanford University. With a focus on American literature from 1840-1940, Katie researches class mobility in the novel, women's literature, and local color/regionalist fiction.
Katie did her undergrad at Wesleyan University, where she graduated with high honors in English. She has been teaching both creative and critical writing for the past seven years both in a tutoring and classroom setting. She believes in focusing on the process and practice of writing and helping students use writing as a tool for self-discovery and expression. Her own writing has been recognized in awards and fellowships and published in literary journals, and fiction anthologies.
When she isn't immersed in writing or teaching, Katie enjoys exploring the outdoors as a backpacker, hiker, and climber. She also finds joy in baking cakes, indulging in campy horror films, and spending time with her cat, Loaf.
Elaine Fan
Essay Consultant
Elaine Fan received her B.A. in Cognitive Science and Computer Science and a minor in Consumer Psychology from UPenn. She is now pursuing her master's in AI. Inspired by the interdisciplinary nature of cognitive science, she enjoys bridging principles of computing, psychology, and marketing in her editing approach, helping well-rounded students discuss their passions through an unexpected lens — in her own undergrad applications, she discussed dance as a universal language and compared jazz compositions to the lyricism of literature.
She focuses on bringing students' personalities and accomplishments to life through anecdotes of concrete challenges, actions, and results. With her background as an editor-in-chief of her school newspaper and a short story writer, she has developed a keen eye for flow in both structure and prose.
In her free time, she'll either be taking dance classes with friends, reading sci-fi novels (with her pet cat), or working on digital art in the wee hours of the night
Sasha Starovoitov
Essay Consultant
Sasha Starovoitov is a writer, translator, and PhD student in the English department at Stanford University. She holds a B.A. in English, with honors, and a minor in Russian literature from Columbia University, where she was also the editor-in-chief of The Columbia Review.
Sasha has extensive experience as an essay and fiction editor and has been tutoring students in reading and writing for the past five years. She loves working on projects at any stage, from restructuring a “messy” first draft (she deeply believes that first drafts should be messy!) to close-editing a final submission for grammar and sentence clarity. Her editing style generally approaches each piece by looking at the unity between narrative, formal structure, and individual voice.
When she's not editing, Sasha is usually working on creative writing of her own or searching for a pool or ocean to swim in.
Connie McNair
Essay Consultant
Connie McNair is a Visiting Assistant Professor at Haverford College who teaches in the Writing Program. Her interdisciplinary writing seminars explore race and gender in film and literature and she teaches with the aim of helping students critically read the world around them. She engages writing as a process of thinking; through drafting (and revising, and drafting, and revising), we come to better understand what we think and who we are. She earned her BA in Italian Studies from Stanford University and her MA and PhD from Brown University in Comparative Literature.
When she's not editing, Connie enjoys practicing tarot and guitar, and watching reality TV.
Madeline Curtis
Essay Consultant
Madeline Curtis holds a BA in English from Stanford University and an MFA in Fiction from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She has extensive experience as a writing tutor, college English teacher, and editor. She has worked with students from preschool through college and loves helping students hone their voices as writers. A believer in the transformative power of storytelling, her goal as a teacher is to enable her students to build skills to share their perspectives through writing.
Madeline's fiction and comics have appeared in various literary journals. She is currently working on her first novel. When she isn't writing, she's probably taking her dog to the beach.
Dorie Lee
Marketing Intern
Dorie Lee is an intern at Essay Cafe, where she manages the Instagram account, creating daily reels that engage and inform our audience while helping to build a strong online presence for Essay Cafe. She currently attends Homestead High School and brings 3 years of graphic design experience and 2 years of content creation expertise to her role.
When she's not creating content for Essay Cafe, she enjoys listening to music, playing volleyball, and shopping with friends.
Ken Chen
Engineering Intern
Ken is an engineering intern at Essay Cafe, where he brings over 5 years of experience building scalable systems at companies like Samsara and Opal. He's a proud 5x engineer (a 10x engineer who works only half the time) who enjoys designing intuitive interfaces and thinking about the humans using our software. A proud graduate of UC Berkeley, his mission is to help more students gain access to the incredible resources provided by higher education.
He approaches essay editing just as he'd approach writing a blurb about himself — which is to say, he wouldn't. In his free time, he likes to dream about a life in Tokyo, Japan and iterate on his proprietary chili oil recipe.