Team
MICHELLE CHO, Founder
Michelle started College Of Your Dreams LLC to extend the privilege of advanced college admissions advice to every student who desires to reach for the college of their dreams. Several years ago, Michelle volunteered with an organization that gave college application assistance to high school students who were the first in their family to apply to college. Through this experience, she saw that many students held misconceptions about college admissions and did not know how to navigate through the admissions process or the financial aid process. The national average for counselor to student ratio is around 1:500, and many students are not getting the guidance they need to successfully accomplish their higher education goals. In response to this need, Michelle founded College Of Your Dreams LLC, and she feels fortunate to have the support of people who share the same passion for education and compassion for students around the world who want to attend college and pursue their dreams.
Michelle graduated from Stanford University with a degree in Economics. She has worked both in real estate as well as in film. She was a managing partner of a Los Angeles-based commercial real estate company and currently works in real estate investments. In 2010, she co-produced a film called Au Revoir Taipei which won the NETPAC award at the 2010 Berlin Film Festival.
Michelle is one of four daughters of immigrant parents from South Korea. Her parents emphasized finding her true passion and getting a great education that will be the springboard to pursuing her dreams.
Michelle’s favorite quote is “Experience is not what happens to a man; it is what a man does with what happens to him.” – Aldous Huxley
WENDELL TULL,M.Ed., Director of Student Outreach
Wendell has over 15 years of experience as an administrator in higher education. He served as a Director, Associate Director and Education Lead at organizations such as Arizona State University, NASA, Cal Tech and the University of California at Berkeley’s Haas School of Business.
In his most recent role at Berkeley, Wendell was the Assistant Director of Admissions for the Full-Time MBA program. In his role as Assistant Director, he was responsible for making complex admissions decisions for the third most selective graduate business program in the country. Wendell has also been responsible for running diversity initiative programs at all of the institutions at which he has worked.
Wendell has a BS in Speech Communications and a Masters in Administration from Northern Arizona University where he was also a scholarship basketball player. Wendell was a 3-time national record holder in age group track and field (800m, 400m), HS Basketball player of the year (New Mexico), Del Norte HS basketball hall of fame member, and Captain of the Northern Arizona University men’s basketball team.
Wendell is a first generation American whose parents emigrated from the island of Trinidad and Tobago in the former British West Indies. Wendell’s favorite saying is “Failing to prepare is preparing to fail. A degree is the key.”
ADVISORY BOARD
ANALILIA SILVA, Director of Global Strategy and International Initiatives, Kelley School of Business – Indiana University
Analilia leads Latin American recruiting, assists MBA international students in the acculturation process and drives international work for the MBA Program. She partners with other programs on new global initiatives across Kelley and helps the MBA program achieve its goal to be a truly international program.
Analilia has over 10 years of corporate experience in a variety of industries, including health care, automotive, industrial, consumer products and consumer electronics. She worked for 3M, J&J and Nokia in diverse areas such as supply chain, sales and marketing.
Analilia holds a BS in Marketing from ITESM Mexico and an MBA from the Kelley School of Business.
Eva M.Graham Ed.D., Director of California Institute of Technology’s (Caltech) Center for Diversity
Eva’s team is responsible for programs and initiatives that support student access, equity and inclusion on the campus. Prior to the start of the Diversity Center, Eva served as the Director for Minority Student Education (MSE). Her team was responsible for supporting recruitment and retention of students from underrepresented underserved minorities on the campus. Eva began her career as a Caltech Summer Undergraduate Research Fellow (SURF) and spent eight years in the Thermal Propulsion and Engineering section at JPL. In 1996 she left the Laboratory and spent three years as a science teacher at Berkeley High School in Berkeley, California and two years as the Director of Outreach, Recruitment and Enrollment at the National Action Council for Minorities in Engineering (NACME) in New York City.
In 2001, Eva returned to JPL as the Manager for Minority Education Initiatives (MEI), a group within the Education Office at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. MEI is responsible for JPL’s response to the Presidential Executive Orders on Historically Black Colleges and Universities, Hispanic Serving Institutions and Tribal Colleges and Universities. The group also serves as a support system for mission based educational outreach programs targeting underrepresented /underserved communities. The group also supported NASA’s overall goal of maintaining a diverse workforce via an education pipeline with a variety of entry points.
Eva holds undergraduate and graduate degrees in chemistry from Xavier University of New Orleans and Tuskegee University respectively and a Doctorate in Education from The University of Southern California. Currently she represents Caltech on the PUSD Partners in Education Board as regional chair elect for the National Association of Multicultural Education Program Administrators (NAMEPA) and Los Angeles Trade Technical College Chemical Technology Alliance. She believes that her greatest accomplishment (and challenge) to date is parenthood!
PRIYA HAJI, co-founder/CEO of World of Good
Priya is a serial social entrepreneur. Most recently she was the co-founder and CEO of World of Good, an innovative hybrid organization which created a US consumer brand bringing to market handmade fair trade products from 55 countries around the world and helping create livelihoods for thousands of artisans around the world. World of Good built the largest on-line marketplace of ethical products in the world and the brand was acquired by eBay in March 2010 as part of their sustainable shopping initiative World of Good also built retail presence in 1,500 stores across the US including Hallmark, Disney and Whole Foods this wholesale division was acquired by Greater Good. The non-profit sister organization World of Good Development Organization has built internationally adopted technologies to help with ensuring fair wages to informal sector workers across the globe. She founded World of Good while completing her MBA at Berkeley along with some of her good friends.
Prior to this, Priya co-founded and was the Executive Director of Free at Last, in East Palo Alto which she was inspired to create while completing her undergraduate at Stanford University. Free at Last was a pioneer in the development of community based substance abuse treatment and HIV/AIDS prevention. The organization invested over $20M in an entire infrastructure of resources from mobile health clinics, street outreach teams, outpatient and residential treatment facilities and affordable housing. The program created best practices for African Americans and Latinos now recognized by the federal Centers for Substance Abuse Treatment and helped inform alternative sentencing law. She co-founded this organization with community leaders from East Palo Alto who continue to build it forward serving over 2,500 people per year.
Her first social enterprise was helping her father to start a free medical clinic in Bryan, Texas while she was in high school.
These days Priya is taking some time to travel, and helping eBay as a Strategic Advisor for their sustainable shopping initiatives. In her next adventure she is focused on exploring the world of Impact Investing and how to get more capital to flow to the kinds of endeavors that can help make the world a more just and equitable place.
ZOLA MASHARIKI, Senior Vice President of Production at Fox Searchlight Pictures
Zola Mashariki is currently Senior Vice President of Production at Fox Searchlight Pictures in Los Angeles. Mashariki began her tenure at Fox Searchlight in May 2000 as a production intern and has been Senior Vice President since 2008. She has worked on a number of feature films, including Mark Romanek’s NEVER LET ME GO, Sanaa Hamri’s JUST WRIGHT, Rick Famuyiwa’s OUR FAMILY WEDDING, George Tillman’s NOTORIOUS, Gina Prince-Bythewood’s THE SECRET LIFE OF BEES, Tamara Jenkins’ THE SAVAGES, Mira Nair’s THE NAMESAKE, Pieter Jan Brugge’s THE CLEARING, Jim Sheridan’s IN AMERICA, James Ivory’s LE DIVORCE and Denzel Washington’s ANTWONE FISHER. Zola is currently in production on John Madden’s THE BEST EXOTIC MARIGOLD HOTEL starring Judi Dench, Maggie Smith, Tom Wilkinson, Bill Nighy and Dev Patel.
Born and raised in Brooklyn, New York, Ms. Mashariki is a graduate of Dartmouth College and Harvard Law School. During her tenure at Harvard, she worked as research assistant to the late Judge A. Leon Higginbotham and was a Teaching Fellow in the Afro-American Studies department with Professor Cornel West.
After law school, Mashariki practiced corporate law at Proskauer Rose LLP in New York and Manatt, Phelps and Phillips LLP in Los Angeles, focusing on mergers and acquisitions and securities transactions. She also represented the late playwright August Wilson, and co-founded with him the African Grove Institute for the Arts (AGIA), the first national black theatre organization.
In 1999, Mashariki moved to Los Angeles to attend the Peter Stark Producing Program at University of Southern California, where she produced her first short film in Cameroon, West Africa. In 2004, she started the American Black Film Festival Filmmaker Workshop 101 sponsored by Fox Searchlight Pictures, a course designed to teach young filmmakers about writing, producing and directing feature films. In 2010, she joined the faculty of the University of Southern California in the Cinematic Arts Department where she teaches part-time to graduate film/MFA students.
Mashariki was featured on the cover of January 2004 issue of BLACK ENTERPRISE magazine and has also been profiled in the Dartmouth Alumni Magazine and SAVOY. In 2006, Mashariki was one of 25 people featured on the cover and in the special issue of The Hollywood Reporter as “Hollywood’s Next Generation”.
CHRISTOPHER BOXE, research scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Christopher completed a B.S. in Chemistry and Minor in Math from Morehouse College in 1999. After graduating Caltech in 2005, he completed a 2-year postdoctoral matriculation as a NASA Postdoctoral Program Fellow at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in its Earth and Space Science Division and a 1-year postdoctoral matriculation as a JPL postdoctoral fellow. Presently, he is a research scientist at JPL. Overall, Boxe’s research interests are interdisciplinary in nature with a central theme focused on planetary evolution.
Broadly, Chris’s research experience and interests focus on comparative planetology – specifically, comparing the evolution of planets, utilizing both modeling and experimental techniques. Specifically, he primarily focuses on constraining remote sensing data from spacecrafts orbiting planetary bodies in our solar system by way of laboratory and modeling techniques to better understand how planets evolve. At Caltech, he completed two M.S. degrees, one in Planetary Science and another in Environmental Science and Engineering (ESE), attained a minor Geology, and completed a Ph.D. in ESE. Boxe’s research and teaching expertise extend to several areas: atmospheric chemistry, water chemistry, acid-base equilibria, physical chemistry, isotope chemistry, chemical kinetics, electrochemistry, photochemistry, ice (and soil) microphysics, and 0-D, 1-D, and 3-D, and inverse modeling, and a suite of spectroscopic laboratory techniques. His research has included collaborations at Georgia Tech, University of California San Diego, Cal Berkeley, Johns Hopkins, Harvard, and extend globally to Canada and Europe.
Beyond research, Chris’s commitment to mentoring and teaching has been an important constant, as evidenced by his involvement in a number of programs: 1) as a research mentor that resulted in a publication for the student; 2) as a physics instructor in Caltech’s Young Engineering and Science Scholars (YESS) program for highly talented underrepresented high school students; 3) as a graduate student recruiter; 4) as a program associate for Caltech’s MURF program, which is a summer research program for underrepresented college students; 5) a recruiter for Caltech and JPL; 6) a participant in the Arctica Research Project for Urban youth; 7) a Caltech consulting club volunteer; 8 ) a volunteer for JPL’s speaker’s bureau; and 9) a member of JPL’s African American Resource Team.
TERRENCE THOMAS
Terrence has the rare combination of boot strap entrepreneurism and marketing management experience at Fortune 500 companies. Terrence held senior marketing roles in the financial services industry at Citibank and Chase. At Citi, he oversaw the unit that tripled its online acquisitions in just two years, surpassing direct mail as the biggest customer acquisition channel. In 1998, he co-founded GIBillExpress.com, an online service to connect active duty personnel and veterans with post-secondary educational institutions. In 2000, the company was sold to Military.com (a Monster.com company). Subsequent to the acquisition, Terrence was successful in creating both the largest veteran job board on the web and the education channel became the leading source for schools recruiting veterans to attend college.
Terrence is a former Naval Officer, having served at sea as a Main Propulsion Division Officer, and on shore as a Naval ROTC Instructor at Prairie View A&M University. He holds a B.A. in Economics from California State University, Sacramento and an MBA from the W. P. Carey School of Business at Arizona State University.
