About Personify
Personify pairs students in grades 6–12 with expert mentors to build standout extracurricular projects — published books, filed patents, research papers, and founded nonprofits. We believe every student has the potential to create something extraordinary, and the right mentorship makes all the difference.
Leadership
Meghan
Former Harvard Admissions Officer — 6+ years on the voting committee
Meghan has read thousands of applications — and she remembers the ones that made the committee stop and pay attention. They were never the longest résumés; they were the real ones. That's the lens she brings to every Personify curriculum: does this project show who this kid actually is? (6+ years on Harvard's admissions voting committee.)
Samarth Tewari
Program Director
Samarth oversees Personify's operations, mentor matching, and program development. He works closely with families to ensure every student is matched with the right mentor and set up for success.
Our Mentors
Kevin Gong
Science Fair Mentor — ISEF Grand Award Winner
Kevin remembers the nerves of his own first science fair — which is why his students walk into judging feeling ready, not rehearsed. He's been exactly where they are, just a few steps ahead: ~70% of the students he's coached have gone on to competitive science-fair success. (ISEF Grand Award Winner, researcher at Johns Hopkins.)
Daniel Ige
Book Publishing Mentor
Daniel is the mentor behind Aiden's book — the one that started as a family argument about a phone and ended up on TV news. He listens for the idea a student actually cares about, then coaches them through every draft until it's a real, published book with their name on the cover. (Columbia University.)
Moriah
Invention & Patent Mentor
Moriah believes every kid has an inventor in them — they just need someone who takes their ideas seriously. She's guided middle and high schoolers all the way from sketch to working prototype to filed provisional patent. (MIT.)
Agastya Sarmah
Science Fair Mentor — ISEF Grand Award Winner & Regeneron STS Scholar
Agastya knows the exact moment a judge's eyes glaze over — because he's stood on that stage himself. He teaches students to tell the story behind their science, tailoring every pitch to every judge, the way he did on his way to an ISEF Grand Award. His students say his coaching is what made the difference. (Regeneron STS Top 300 Scholar, UC Berkeley.)
Dr. Gayatri Sanku
Research Mentor — PhD, MPH · Physician-Scientist in Training
Dr. Sanku believes every student deserves a seat at the research table — especially the ones who don't see themselves there yet. She gives close, patient, iterative feedback until her mentees realize they can actually do this. Then she holds them to the same standards she holds herself. (PhD in Microbiology & Immunology, Georgetown–NIH; first-author in Frontiers in Immunology.)
Tiffany Kim
Book & Nonprofit Specialist
A parent once sat in on one of Tiffany's sessions with her daughter — and referred her sister's kid before dinner. That's Tiffany: twice-weekly meetings, follow-up emails, and a social-work background that means she truly hears what a student needs before pushing where they can go. (Columbia University.)
Matthew Do
Debate Coach
Matthew was a high schooler losing rounds not long ago — then he became the #1 ranked speaker in the country. He remembers exactly which drills got him there, and he's close enough in age that students actually take his notes as advice from a friend, not criticism from an adult. Several of his students have reached national finals. (UCLA, Yale Invitational finalist.)
Cedric He
Extracurricular Development Specialist — Stanford Pre-Law
Cedric was a teenager with 'impossible' ideas — and he shipped four of them: nonprofits, a published book, a nationwide youth publication. He's living proof of what he coaches, and kids feel it: he's not telling them what worked in theory, he's showing them what worked for him three years ago. (Stanford; admitted to Princeton too.)
Simon Yan
Tech & AI Mentor — Data Science / Quant ML
Simon once built a startup out of a dorm-room problem — finding housing — and took it to a 2nd-place finish at a business competition. That's how he mentors: find the problem you actually care about, then bring real engineering to it. His day job is applying machine learning to financial markets. (Cornell, graduate-level data science.)
Anastasiia Uvarova
Tech & AI Mentor — LLMs, NLP & Computer Vision (MIT)
Ana spends her days at one of the world's top AI labs asking a very kid-friendly question: how do we learn to communicate? She brings that same curiosity to mentoring — meeting students where they are, then walking them into real AI research one experiment at a time. (MEng Computer Science, MIT; 3 years at MIT CSAIL.)
Samiul
Tech Mentor — iOS / SwiftUI & Full-Stack (Carnegie Mellon)
Samiul remembers the thrill of his first app actually running on a real phone — and that's the moment he chases with every student. He guides kids from 'I have an idea' all the way to a real app on the App Store, teaching them how professional engineers actually work along the way. (Carnegie Mellon; production engineering at fintech startups.)
Daniel Ige
Tech & AI Mentor — Software Engineering & ML (MIT)
In high school, Daniel founded the first Black Student Union in his school's 116-year history — he knows what it means to build something where nothing existed. Now at MIT with a perfect 5.0, he's presented to Jack Dorsey, out-traded every intern at Jane Street, and mentors students with the same energy: start where you are, build what matters. (MIT; Block, Microsoft, Nasdaq, Jane Street.)
Dr. Joy Li
Research Mentor — Applied Physics & Engineering (PhD, Duke)
Dr. Li has spent nine years at a lab bench, which means she's seen a thousand experiments fail before they worked — and that's exactly what she teaches students to expect and embrace. Kids leave her mentorship unafraid of the messy middle of real science. (PhD Biomedical Engineering, Duke; BS Cornell, Magna Cum Laude.)
Dr. Joshua Lader
Research Mentor — Public Policy & Health Systems (PhD, FACHE)
Dr. Lader spent years in rooms where policy actually gets made — including on Senator John McCain's team — and what struck him most was how few young people ever learn how those rooms work. He mentors students who want to change systems, showing them how ideas become policy and policy becomes real life. (PhD, Public Policy; 15+ years in healthcare leadership.)
Jacob
Science Fair Mentor — Regeneron STS Top 300 Scholar (UPenn)
Jacob's first big science fair project didn't place. He kept going — and ended up nationally recognized at both ISEF and Regeneron STS. That early stumble is his superpower as a mentor: he knows the difference between a good project and an elite one because he's lived both. (UPenn CRISPR researcher.)
Daniela
College Counselor — Former UPenn & Johns Hopkins Admissions
Daniela was a first-generation college student who figured out admissions the hard way — then spent four years on the other side of the desk, reading 3,500+ applications at UPenn and Johns Hopkins. She coaches students with both maps in hand: what it feels like to apply, and exactly what the readers are looking for. (Rated applicants for Wharton, Penn CAS, Engineering & Nursing.)
Ashley Chang
College Counselor — UC Berkeley (Honors), 4+ Years
Ashley's favorite student story: a kid with an idea and no roadmap, who — with her weekly step-by-step coaching — built a 200-member organization and got into Berkeley EECS, a program that admits fewer than 5%. She meets every week, every student, because momentum is built one check-in at a time. (UC Berkeley, honors.)
Samarth
College Counselor & Extracurricular Specialist (Georgia Tech)
As a teenager during COVID, Samarth didn't wait for permission — he organized 15,000+ meals for people who needed them and built a tutoring nonprofit reaching kids across two continents. He mentors students the same way: your age is not a limitation, it's your story. (Georgia Tech CS, 4.0 GPA.)
Paola Romero
Research Mentor — Mechanical Engineering (MIT)
Paola runs a makerspace at MIT, which means her favorite sentence is 'let's just try it.' She teaches students to 3D print, laser cut, and prototype their way to confidence — because nothing convinces a kid they're an engineer like holding something they built. (MIT Mechanical Engineering; medical-device intern at Lexington Medical.)
Caden Tan
Research Mentor — Biomedical Engineering (Johns Hopkins)
Caden spent four years in a hands-on engineering program as a teenager — soldering, laser cutting, leading project teams — so he remembers exactly what it's like to learn by building. Now a researcher at Johns Hopkins, he mentors students the way he wishes someone had mentored him: side by side, tools out. (JHU Biomedical Engineering.)