About Us
IvyZen is an exclusive mentorship community led by a team of 15 professionals with 85+ years of combined experience, dedicated to guiding a select group of high-potential students toward becoming future leaders. Through highly personalized support and world-class admissions strategy, we help students stand out and succeed at the most competitive US universities.
Ability is everywhere. Access is not.
Every year, talented and hardworking students are out-competed in college admissions — not because they lack ability, but because they lack something money can quietly buy: expert guidance through one of the most opaque and consequential processes of their lives. Families with means hire that expertise. Families without it are left to navigate alone.
The IvyZen Access Fellowship exists to close that gap.
We provide high-achieving students from lower-income backgrounds the same world-class mentorship that has guided students into the most selective universities in the country — fully pro bono, at no cost to any family, ever. The student’s talent is never the missing piece. Access is. We remove it.
Built on more than two decades of expertise
The Fellowship is the mission-driven heart of IvyZen, a college mentoring practice founded in 2001. Over more than twenty five years, our mentors have guided over 1,000 students into the top US colleges. Our leadership team has worked together for over two decades, and our 40+ mentors around the world hold every student to the same standard of care.
This is not volunteer guidance assembled on the side. Fellows receive the identical mentorship — the same mentors, the same methodology, the same individual attention — that other families pay for. We simply remove the price.
✦ Staff
Board of Advisors
Kimberly Morton
Counselor
Jefferson County Board of Education
Dr. Delecia Threatt
Counselor
Minor High School
✦ Staff
People Serving at IvyZen Access Fellowship
Mark I. Lee
Managing Director
IvyZen Access Fellowship / Founder, IvyZen
David Doherty
Academic Director
IvyZen Access Fellowship
Ju Yeon Sohn
Associate Director
IvyZen Access Fellowship
✦ Our Process
How we mentor
We don’t believe in a scattered set of tips and last-minute strategies. Over years of practice we’ve developed a comprehensive, continually refined approach we call a theme: a way of unifying a student’s passions, talents, and accomplishments into one clear and compelling story.
Working one-on-one, mentor and student build that theme together — whether it takes shape through founding an organization, leading original research, competing academically, or publishing creative work. Everything centers on two poles: leadership and scholarship. The result is an application that reflects a genuine person doing real, ambitious work — not a profile assembled to impress.
✦ Our Belief
What we believe
We believe a student’s potential should never be capped by their family’s resources.
We believe rigor is a form of respect. The most caring thing we can do for an ambitious young person is to take their ambition seriously and prepare them completely — with high standards, honest feedback, and unwavering support at every step.
And we believe that when the barrier of access is removed, talent does the rest. That conviction is the reason the Fellowship exists, and the measure against which we hold our work.