Focus Collegiate provides innovative, dynamic support to equip college students for success on campus and beyond.
Our outstanding team is composed of professionals who have worked extensively in traditional college environments and are experts in helping students bridge the gap between high school and college, regardless of their learning profile. Most have extensive experience in the collegiate offices of student support, academic advising, accessibility services, residence life, or first-year experience. Many have also guided students toward independence at the secondary education level.
Our students attend their college of choice!
Whether they are getting in-person support in the Boston area, or virtually around the country, our services are robust and unbounded for all students.
Grant Leibersberger
Grant Leibersberger is the founder and principal of Focus Collegiate. He is a staunch advocate of experiential learning. “Learning from experience happens through metaphor,” he says and uses a rock-climbing analogy to explain the isomorphic metaphor (the one-to-one relationships between…
Ann-Marie Stripling
Enrollment and Outreach Director
Ann-Marie is a connector who sees the potential in others. Her superpower is building relationships. In the context of Focus Collegiate, that means connecting students who learn differently and their families to the educational resources they need to flourish. It…
Rich Davino
Rich Davino is our Managing Director. Proud of his twenty-five years in higher education, Rich is a skilled and talented leader with an extremely broad knowledge of how higher ed does (and sometimes doesn’t) work. He is an optimistic pragmatist…
Kate Durham
As a first-generation college student, Kate empathizes with the challenges first-year students face. She recalls learning self-sufficiency and self-advocacy early on in her undergraduate days as she identified and learned to utilize campus resources entirely on her own. In her role at Focus Collegiate, she…
Rachel Dayanim
Collegiate Learning Specialist
Rachel has dedicated her career to education and student support across disciplines and spectrums of need. She strongly believes in the value of every student and their remarkable potential to succeed. She prioritizes building meaningful relationships: “I hold a deep…
Chelsey Cole
Collegiate Learning Specialist
Chelsey Cole is a Collegiate Learning Specialist who delights in helping students realize what they’re capable of. “My specialty is executive function; my talent is organization. I love to take something that is disorganized and chaotic—like an overflowing backpack or…
Emily Conway
Summer Cohort Residential Advisor
Emily Conway loves people. She is passionate about working with students with ADHD, and with those who have no diagnosis, but struggle with executive function. We are very happy to have her as one of our Summer Cohort Residential Advisors.…
Elizabeth Murphy-Lewis
Parent Support Consultant
Elizabeth Murphy-Lewis LCSW, LADC is a clinical social worker in private practice in Portland, Maine. She has been practicing clinical work since receiving her Master’s from the University of Denver in 2005. Prior to establishing her private practice, Elizabeth’s experience…
Abigail Schmidt
Summer Cohort Residential Advisor
Abigail Schmidt is an Academic Support Specialist and one of our our Residential Advisors for our Summer Cohort. As an emerging occupational therapist pursuing her doctorate in Occupational Therapy at Boston University, Abigail is a creative problem solver who knows…
Shawna Graichen
Collegiate Life Specialist
Shawna Graichen is one of our most enthusiastic Collegiate Life Specialists. She is passionate about supporting individuals in becoming self-determined agents of their own lives, as they transition from adolescence into young adult life. She supports each student in the…
Amy Breton
Collegiate Learning Specialist
Amy Breton is one of our Collegiate Learning Specialists. She comes to us after ten years working in accessibility. Most recently at Holy Cross, she was Associate Director of the Office of Accessibility Services where she created the student-directed organization…
Angela Barnes
Collegiate Life Specialist
Angela Barnes has been working in higher education for nearly twenty years developing and delivering programs and curricula tailored to meet student needs in the here and now. Experiential learning is the foundation of her work. “Students want to use…
Brenda Hackett
Collegiate Learning Specialist
Brenda creates opportunities for her students to shine. By focusing on their strengths, students start to realize they are more capable than they have been led to believe. Through this lens, students can envision and reach new goals. She has…
Geoff Anstatt
Summer Cohort Guest Lecturer
Geoff Anstatt is our Summer Cohort Guest Lecturer. Geoff’s twenty-year career supporting students is driven by two primary principles: empathy and excellence. For Geoff, teaching and learning begin with empathy for the whole person and an asset-based understanding of each…
Robin McCatty
Collegiate Life Specialist
Robin has a great talent for making her students feel understood. Her skill is borne of her insatiable curiosity and enhanced by her depth of experience and training. She has worked closely with neurodiverse students for more than a decade.…
Sarah Adorisio
Business Operations Manager
Sarah is the consummate professional. Impeccably organized, driven, and focused, she has great respect for the freedom that adherence to the rules brings. A lover of data and people, Sarah’s human resource expertise goes beyond traditional activities to include easily…
Mary Hickey
Parent Coaching Consultant
Mary Hickey is our Parent Coaching Consultant. She helps parents of new college students be better parents. As a Certified Parent Coach with more than 20 years of experience working in therapeutic and transitional programs for adolescents, young adults, and families, she…
C. Jane Taylor
Jane’s talent is communication. She is a published author who has been working in communications for more than 25 years. Her mission statement is to “further human potential through writing.” And that’s exactly what she does as Media Strategist for…
