Innovation

CTK College Coach (CTK), founded by Christina Taber-Kewene, is not just a tutoring company. Founded in Maplewood, N.J., CTK provides students—both privileged and underprivileged within the community—the adequate resources that they need to prosper in their journey of preparing and planning for college. These resources include preparation for standardized testing, assistance in narrowing down college selections (which can be overwhelming for many), tutoring for academic subjects, assistance with college essays, advice, and mentoring, as well as long-lasting relationships with experienced individuals who can help put the average worries of a college-seeking student to rest.

CTK recognizes the lack of guidance and mentorship that many students experience while pursuing their college education, and aims to address this prevalent issue. For CTK, there’s no feeling like helping students achieve their educational goals and beyond.

Inspiration

By education and trade, Taber-Kewene is a lawyer and has first-hand experience with the burden of financial debt from graduate school. She realized that the financial barriers to pursuing advanced education are a great deterrent for aspiring students and wanted to find ways to mitigate this issue. Her initiative stems from a need to address educational and academic inequities. She strives to provide students with a comprehensive level of education as well as to hone in on social skills that students may not otherwise have the opportunity to learn.

While in college at Stanford University, she noticed how dangerous Palo Alto, California, was at the time and how many students would live in an unsupportive environment or become involved with gangs. This often contributed to educational disparities and inequities within that community. Christina hopes to bring light to this issue at a more systemic level in the future and potentially target specific populations like students of immigrant families and underserved populations. In addition to addressing this prevalent issue, Christina loves to work with teenagers and to play an active role in their education. Her strong engagement with young academics is central to the overall business goal in that she not only works to curate a broad academic portfolio for her students but also builds a good relationship with them to guarantee their success.

Overall impact

Taber-Kewene originally got involved with tutoring in college, volunteering with local groups throughout the community. After her undergrad career and attending law school, she deepened her involvement in tutoring and mentoring, pivoting to helping students with the LSAT. However, her passion was always with high school students and teens, where she would spend time helping these students with test prep and academics. As she took time away from law, Taber-Kewene began doing college preparation and tutoring within her local Maplewood, N.J. community, where her business started. Test preparation, admissions help, and general tutoring proved to be a booming business, and Taber-Kewene began to build a business model with the help of her network.

College admissions have increased in competitiveness tremendously in the past few years. CTK aims to provide communities the opportunity to thrive in the college application process. Taber-Kewene’s company offers assistance in college essay writing, admissions counseling, general academic tutoring, and SAT/ACT prep. CTK currently impacts primarily paying clients within the community, many of whom are “type A” students and often deal with internal struggles in academics as opposed to the financial burdens that others in the community face. CTK as a company aims in the future to help teenagers who come from places of need, and the business has started to grow horizontally in this way by doing outreach through community programs.

CTK has helped countless students get into quality higher education and fulfills the UN Goal of quality education. Taber-Kewene specifically mentions how she feels like she made the most impact when she “receives thank you notes from parents and students.” Additionally, there are plenty of objective benchmarks of the company’s impact—students improving their test scores, getting into college, or improving their grades—that demonstrate fulfillment of benefiting education and the students in the community. Currently, Taber-Kewene feels as if the company does not address systemic issues of the college admissions process; however, she intends for the business to get there. She recognizes that different families have different needs and tailoring education to address those needs is of great importance.

Business benefit

CTK is not just another tutoring company that narrowly focuses on how much money can be made off of students and their families while trying to provide supplemental teaching. The CTK team, led by Taber-Kewene, is a selective group of smart and motivated women who have a passion for educating and helping others. The team is trained and qualified academically but also values mentorship and the soft relationships created with students. Taber-Kewene explains how “the value added and what makes the company unique is that we love the kids that we work with and truly care about them.” She continues to explain that several high school students need mentors, and through these values, her team is able to help them beyond just achieving a goal of test prep or admissions.

Although in the short term, the majority of CTK’s clients will continue to be paying for test prep, admissions counseling, and academic tutoring, the long term goal of the company will be to focus on helping students at a systemic level. CTK currently provides ad-hoc services, primarily through community outreach programs that identify first generation students and immigrants, which have begun to address academic inequalities in the community.

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Social and environmental benefit

CTK aims to address social inequalities in education that divide academics when reaching higher education. Students’ abilities to go to college are largely determined by their socioeconomic class and the environment that they grow up in. Studies have shown that the more students are able to prepare for standardized tests, the better they do on those tests. However, access to this kind of test preparation is limited and largely reserved for those who are able to pay top dollar for them. This creates a domino effect that eventually results in students of higher income families being at an advantage when applying for higher education, regardless of their abilities in the classroom.

CTK hopes to address these academic inequalities at a systemic level and reach first generation and immigrant students in the community, providing high-level tutoring and mentoring services at more affordable (and often free) prices. In the long run, even providing these volunteer services as just a portion of the sessions, will hopefully help to close the academic gap in the community and help those in need.

Interview

Christina Taber-Kewene, Founder

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