Marianna Irizarry is a Senior Counselor at InGenius Prep who is deeply passionate about coaching and mentoring young, talented students. Given her experiences in the admissions office at Stanford, Teach for America, and as a corporate attorney, she is well positioned to help students develop and optimize their strengths.
Over the course of her schooling and career, Marianna has been the recipient of multiple awards and prestigious opportunities, including an internship at the US Department of Education where she served as an MLK Scholar and researched issues pertaining to school accountability and school choice. Marianna was awarded the Arturo Islas Jr. Prize and the Arnaud B. Leavelle Memorial Prize for her outstanding academic achievements during her time at Stanford. While pursuing her M.A. in Education Policy Analysis from the Stanford Graduate School of Education, she served as a Teaching Assistant for the Stanford Hope House Scholars Program. This experience sparked a passion for mentoring students.
Marianna’s most recent experience as a Part-Time Admissions Reader for Stanford greatly informs her work as a Senior Counselor on InGenius’ Former Admissions Officer team. At Stanford, Marianna reviewed and evaluated applicants’ files across various domestic and international territories and she excelled at identifying those aspects of an applicant’s file that potentially set them apart in a competitive pool. She thrives when she is able to make connections between an applicant’s interests and potential needs with university resources, a skill that will serves her well at InGenius.
In the non-profit sector, she has helped organizations identify opportunities for strategic investments in talent development, branding, and resource management. At Teach For America, investing time and resources into coaching and mentoring her teammates paid tremendous dividends— they raised over $22 million during her time there. She also participated in the organization’s admissions process, and spent a significant portion of her time each year reading applications, interviewing candidates at various stages of the selection process, and working with the admissions team to increase recruitment yield.
Marianna owes much of her professional success to her legal training. She graduated from Harvard Law with a desire to help connect others to pathways that could positively impact their life trajectories and has since invested her time and resources in projects making a positive impact in her community.
Listen to Marianna’s recent interview on “Inside the Admissions Office”:
