The Team
Our Counselors
Kate Givens has extensive experience working with teenagers in academic and extracurricular settings to discover their unique interests and achieve their goals. Kate has a B.A. in English from The George Washington University and a Masters in English Education from The University of Virginia and spent over a decade working with high school students teaching professional skills such as correspondence, resume development, and public speaking. Kate also held writing workshops for the Young Writers Organization to assist students in developing their writing skills. She has worked with hundreds of students to develop college plans and work on their application materials.
Lori has her B.A. in English Language and Literature and her Master of Teaching in English Education from the University of Virginia. She is a licensed high school English teacher with 9 years of experience across multiple grade levels. She taught Creative Writing and sponsored an award-winning literary magazine, The Shaman, at Gar-Field High School in Woodbridge, Virginia. Lori also established a new AP Literature program as a founding member of Charles J. Colgan Senior High School, a performing arts school in Manassas, Virginia. She has comprehensive knowledge of numerous aspects of the college application process from essay writing to SAT and ACT administration. Lori excels at relationship building and uses her sense of humor and candor to help students craft their unique story.
Our Creativity: Writing Advisors
In our many years of advising, Fahey Associates has observed that the majority of students are lacking the skills to elaborate a compelling narrative about their own person. With an average of 30 personal statements to write, students entering the application process must quickly learn how to tell a compelling story about themselves. To handle this challenge we’ve enrolled talented, creative writers to guide the delicate process of combining story-telling and self-reflective essay writing.
Megan Levad is the author of Why We Live in the Dark Ages and What Have I to Say to You. A MacDowell Fellow, her poems have appeared in Tin House, San Francisco Chronicle, Poem-a-Day, Granta, Fence, and the Everyman’s Library anthology Killer Verse. Megan also writes lyrics and libretti; When There Are Nine, a song cycle about Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg composed by Kristin Kuster, recently debuted at the Cabrillo Festival in the Summer of 2019, where Megan was the Writer-in-Residence.
Maddie Orenstein (she/they) graduated with a B.S. in Social Policy from Northwestern University and an M.A. from Stanford University in Education Policy, Organization, and Leadership Studies. Maddie is a passionate advocate for youth voice. She has over 12 years of college counseling experience in several types of high schools and in summer leadership programs. She was also an Honors Thesis English Instructor for seniors for three years. Additionally, she supported high school student leaders and wrote research on the importance of youth leadership as a Fulbright Scholar living in Santiago, Chile. She brings her vast experience and love for the beauty of writing as a tool to help students share what’s important to them.
Susanna earned her BA in English and Anthropology from Columbia University. Her MFA in creative writing comes from the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop. She is the author of two widely published, award-winning novels, Stiltsville and Sea Creatures with HarperCollins. She has placed numerous essays and stories in literary magazines such as Slate and Newsweek. She is the co-owner of the Madison Writers’ Workshop where she coaches writers toward greater meaning, sense, and clarity.
Vivienne has been a professional writer and actress for twenty years. She has worked in television, film and the theatre, touring through Asia, Europe and the U.S. A graduate of the highly regarded acting school, Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts, she now lives in Los Angeles. Her latest play, This is Where We Live, won The Griffin Theatre Award and had a full season at the Griffin Theatre, Hothouse Theatre, South Australian Theatre Company and has since been performed in Toronto, New York and at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. As a television writer, she has worked with Hulu, Stan (Australia) and Disney+. She is represented by Creative Artists Agency (CAA).
