About Eileen

Eileen founded ThinkYes | College Admissions Consulting after moving to Santa Barbara, California from the Washington DC area where she was a management consultant.  Eileen completed UCLA’s College Counseling Certificate, with distinction, and is currently a member of the National Association for College Admission Counseling (NACAC) and the Independent Educational Consultants Association (IECA). Her motivation as an Independent Educational Consultant is to encourage students to “Think Yes” — to expand their expectations of themselves and to trust that they are capable of achieving them. The process is invigorating for Eileen and for the families she serves. Eileen has assisted dozens of students one-on-one from across the US, Europe and China with over applications, conducted workshops for and given presentations to both students and parents, and has visited and met with admissions offices at 110+ unique colleges nationwide in order to provide the best advice possible to students. In 2016, Eileen presented Advising International Students at the IECA Summer Training Institute. Though STEM and business majors are most popular among her students, Eileen has guided students’ acceptances at twenty-nine of the top twenty-five US News & World Report ranked National Universities and National Liberal Arts Colleges across a multitude and breadth of majors.

The background: Eileen, a first generation American, is a Midwesterner who has lived on both US coasts and internationally providing her with a breadth of understanding of cultures and lifestyles.  She earned a BS in biology from Purdue University and an MBA from UCLA. After working in the corporate environment (Ernst & Ernst, Levi Strauss & Co., Converse Inc.), Eileen founded and directed a Washington DC-based management consulting firm for 20+ years that facilitated a strategic thinking process for businesses and organizations. Clients, ranging in size from $2 billion in sales to start-up organizations, were roughly 80% corporate across a breadth of industries and 20% non-profit and governmental organizations. The business was successful, meeting financial and professional goals while providing the flexibility to raise and be involved in the education of her children.  

Eileen and her husband, Jim, have two sons: Matt, a University of Virginia and McIntire School of Commerce class of 2011 graduate worked on Wall Street for 7 years and now does project finance for a global co-working space provider, and AJ, a 2015 Operations Research and Financial Engineering graduate of Princeton University who works in data analytics initially with a technology firm in the San Francisco Bay Area and London and now building a sports analytics company in the Americas.