Last year, we made a decision to hire a second counselor to join our director, Sara Kratzok, in our Newton, Massachusetts office. We knew that we needed to hire someone experienced and likeable and totally Collegewise, someone who could contribute right away in a part-time capacity and potentially grow into a full-time position. It was a tall order, but thanks to Sara’s formidable recruiting skills, we found the perfect person. Today, I’d like to introduce Meg Mahoney, soon-to-be assistant counselor in Collegewise, Newton.
After studying criminal justice at Northeastern University and earning a master’s degree in human development and psychology at Harvard, Meg began her career as an educator and advocate while teaching at a public alternative high school in South Florida for three years. During her time at HACC (Hallandale Adult Community Center) she not only was named HACC Teacher of the Year in 1999, but also successfully registered hundreds of students to vote as the faculty leader of Broward County’s annual high school voter registration drive. Realizing that she could reach even more students as a high school counselor, Meg earned a master’s in school guidance counseling from UMass Boston and spent four years as the high school counselor at a private school in Panama. She also has a certification in college counseling from UCLA, is a licensed school counselor in the state of Massachusetts, and she served as an application reader for Bentley University before joining Collegewise in March, 2015. Meg went to the Sydney Olympics in 2000. Not as an athlete, mind you—she was working for Reebok at the time. But it was still a cool experience, almost but not quite as memorable as that day during the 87-88 basketball season when Meg received the “Hustle Award” as the point guard of her high school team, thereby proving that what she may have lacked in natural skill she more than made up for with hustle and heart (she still has the trophy to prove it and will proudly show it to anyone who asks). A self-described “over-committing” mother of three girls, Meg simply refuses to make time for hobbies except for that fateful fall in 1999 when she completed the New York City marathon. When she’s not shopping in second-hand stores and rooting for her kids’ teams, Meg enjoys reading the Boston Globe from front to back, dining in cafes (she strongly prefers them to sit-down restaurants) and taking road trips with her family and their faithful black lab, Blaze.
Meg is starting training today and will soon be up-to-Collegewise speed. Yes, we had our occasional doubts that we could find the perfect person for this role. But I believe in business karma, that when a business genuinely tries to do the right thing by its customers, its community, and its employees, good things happen in return. Meg is proof of that for us.