Each of our instructors is an expert in the subjects he or she teaches and has a minimum of five years experience in education; most have ten or more.  More importantly, each tutor has demonstrated an exceptional gift for working individually with students at all academic levels.

Collectively, our faculty has worked with thousands of high school and middle school students who have subsequently gone on to study at some of the nation's best colleges and universities, including Amherst, Bard, Berkeley, Brown, UCLA, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Duke, Georgetown, Harvard, MIT, Michigan, NYU, Northwestern, Oberlin, University of Pennsylvania, Pepperdine, Princeton, USC, Stanford, Tufts, Wellesley, Yale, and many more.

DREW BRODY, M.A., PRESIDENT

For over thirteen years, Drew has been working with students to improve their higher level thinking skills and academic performance. His experience includes tutoring hundreds of students for standardized tests such as the SAT, the SAT Subject Tests, the ACT, the SSAT, the ISEE, and the GRE, and in a wide variety of academic subjects: algebra, geometry, trigonometry, pre-calculus, French language, essay writing, world literature, world cultures, mythology, political science, physics and chemistry. He has also taught courses in mathematics and playwriting at a range of grade levels from middle school through college and adult education, including a teacher-training program for middle school math teachers in New York City. As a co-founder of the MBA Centre in Paris, Drew was instrumental in developing an educational institution dedicated to helping French students prepare for and apply to North American universities and graduate schools.

In Los Angeles, Drew created new SAT programs for Crossroads School and Brentwood School and developed and co-founded the Visions Scholastic Academy, a WASC-accredited high school program at the Visions Adolescent Outpatient Counseling Center in Brentwood, where he served as Director of Education until 2005.

Drew earned a Bachelor of Arts from Cornell University, a Master of Arts with Distinction from The University of Birmingham, England and completed a post-graduate program at the Sorbonne Nouvelle in Paris.

DEBORAH PUETTE, VICE PRESIDENT

Deborah has been tutoring writing, reading, and standardized test preparation, specializing in SAT prep, for over six years. Since moving to Los Angeles several years ago, Deborah has taught a college essay writing workshop at Brentwood School in Los Angeles and SAT prep classes at Crossroads School in Santa Monica. She has had the pleasure of watching her students raise both their test-taking and analytical skills to levels that not only increase their scores dramatically but also give her students the confidence to face the continued challenges of high school, college, graduate school and life beyond academia.

A National Merit Scholar, Deborah attended Boston College and the American University in Paris on full academic scholarship. Her international studies included French, Photography and International Law, and she graduated from Boston College's Carroll School of Business with a Bachelor of Science.

VALERIE WEISS, PH.D.

Valerie has been helping students to excel on standardized tests and in the classroom for over sixteen years. In Los Angeles, Valerie has taught at the Marlborough School and the Prep Center. Privately, she has worked with students from the third grade through adulthood, improving work habits, test scores and self-confidence. Valerie has been particularly successful at increasing girls' confidence in approaching the areas of math and science. Dr. Weiss was recently invited by L'Oreal to participate on their 2007
For Women in Science Awards Panel: Shaping A New Image to discuss the role of the media in portraying Women in Science. Her students’ success stories include increasing SAT scores by more than 400 points and helping a student get a full-paid scholarship to UCLA.

A graduate of Princeton University, Valerie majored in Molecular Biology and minored in Theatre and Dance. Post-graduate degrees include a Master of Medical Sciences from the Lucille Markey Scholar Program at Harvard Medical School and a Ph.D. in Biochemistry and Biophysics from Harvard University.

ROB JOHNSON, J.D.

Rob has been tutoring for more than nine years. He excels at simplifying and clarifying the learning process. Rob enables his students to become independent, analytical thinkers, and confident, methodical test takers. In addition to his tutoring experience, Rob worked as an Associate at a top-25 law firm and an Equity Research Analyst on Wall Street.

Rob holds an Artium Baccalaureus in Psychology from Princeton University and a Juris Doctor from Harvard Law School; he is also a member of Phi Beta Kappa.

KEVIN KREIGER, M.A., M.F.A.

Kevin has been teaching and tutoring since 1984. Institutional positions have ranged from the Université de Dijon, France to Phillips Andover Academy to The University of California, San Diego. His SAT odyssey began in New Jersey in 1989 with a then-small startup company called The Princeton Review. Since then, he has set up and run SAT prep courses at several Los Angeles high schools, while maintaining a vibrant tutoring practice.

Kevin works with all things reading and writing in both English and French, from the basics of language to persuasive composition to focused literary analysis. He also specializes in College Guidance and the fine art of College Application Essays.

He graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Amherst College with a Bachelor of Arts magna cum laude in English and French. Subsequently, he obtained a Masters in English Renaissance Drama from the University of Oxford, and a Masters of Fine Arts in Theatre/Playwriting from The University of California, San Diego.

Kevin is proud to be a part of The Scholar Group, with its uniquely holistic approach to one-on-one education. Watching scores and grades rise has been a lovely perk of his work over the years; but watching students evolve and mature is what makes the job most gratifying.

JEREMY RABB, M.F.A.

Jeremy has tutored for over sixteen years. Before joining The Scholar Group, he taught independently, as well as for Drew Brody Tutoring, Stanley Kaplan and The Princeton Review. At TPR, he also developed and wrote teaching materials before winning the award for Best Teacher in New York City.

He received his Bachelor of Arts in English from Princeton University, and his Master of Fine Arts from The Institute for Advanced Theater Training at Harvard University.

ROBERT ROTH, M.A.

Robert has been a professional teacher for the past nine years, and has been teaching, tutoring, and assisting individuals with disabilities for the past fifteen. Currently employed as an Educational Specialist with Los Angeles Unified School District at Mar Vista School, Robert works primarily with elementary school students who have a variety of learning disabilities and developmental delays. Through this work, as well as in his previous position as a special education teacher in a NYC middle school, he has become adept at building on each child’s individual skill sets to ensure access to the general education curriculum.

Robert holds Master Degrees from Bank Street College of Education and Columbia University School of Social Work.

MARIANNE EISMANN, M.A.

Marianne has eleven years of experience as a university instructor, high-school teacher and private tutor. Her favorite subjects to teach include several that students often find particularly challenging: composition and grammar, Shakespeare, lyric and epic poetry, and very long novels. Her experience as a newspaper reporter and editor informs her approach to teaching writing. She has developed an array of practical methods to help students improve quickly as they as learn to recognize, produce, and master content, structure, and revision, the key ingredients of a successful essay. While completing coursework for a Ph.D. at Chicago, she taught extensively in the Humanities Common Core and the undergraduate writing program. Other university-teaching experiences include two years at Wake Forest University and several semesters at the University of Maryland, College Park. In 2004, Marianne was one of 25 teachers in the nation awarded a National Endowment for the Humanities fellowship to participate in the Folger Shakespeare Library’s Teaching Shakespeare Institute in Washington, D.C.

Marianne holds an Artium Baccalaureus with high honors in English from Princeton University and a Master of Arts with honors in English and American literature from the University of Chicago.

DEREK RETHWISCH

Derek has been teaching and tutoring for over eleven years. Prior to joining The Scholar Group, he worked for The Princeton Review where he helped develop several classes, wrote manuals and trained incoming teachers. In addition, Derek has tutored privately and created an after-school program for underprivileged children in Philadelphia.

Derek received an engineering degree from the University of Pennsylvania as well as a business degree from the Wharton School of Business and is currently finishing post-graduate work at the University of Southern California.

JIM GATEWOOD, M.A.

As a tutor and university instructor, Jim has been helping students develop their critical-thinking skills for over ten years. At the university level, he has taught at UCLA, Brown, UC Santa Cruz, and CSU Northridge. He has also designed and taught composition courses for ninth- and tenth-grade students that have successfully enabled them to write with greater clarity and confidence. More recently, Jim has been tutoring high school students in the Los Angeles area on the verbal sections of the SAT, AP Subject Tests, and the SAT II Subject Tests. He has helped dozens of students improve their SAT verbal scores, with many of his students scoring in the high 700s; one of his students earned a perfect score of 800.

A graduate of UCLA, Jim earned a Bachelor of Arts and a Master of Arts in Asian American Studies, and co-edited, with Professor Min Zhou, Contemporary Asian America: A Multidisciplinary Reader which was recently published as a second edition by NYU Press. He entered the Ph.D. program in American Studies at Brown University as a Mellon Fellow in the Humanities in 2000 and is currently finishing his dissertation, a cultural history of the City Lights Bookstore.

GLORIA JONES ELLIS, M.A.

Gloria Ellis provides assessment and intensive intervention for children and adults with learning and language difficulties. She specializes in working with students who experience challenges in the areas of reading fluency, reading comprehension, mathematics, language processing, communication, attention, behavior, and social development. She has over eight years of experience and success implementing the highly acclaimed Lindamood-Bell programs with students of all ages. In addition, she uses current research in educational psychology to design intervention programs and materials and to adapt existing curriculum materials to meet the needs of struggling learners.

Gloria holds a Bachelors Degree in Psychology from Vassar college and a Masters Degree in Clinical Practices from the University of Hartford. She is currently in her fifth year of Doctoral Study in Clinical Psychology. Her dissertation (in progress) is titled “Appropriate intervention for struggling readers: Facilitating phonetic, orthographic and semantic processing.”

DAVID SCHONBERGER, M.A.

Before joining The Scholar Group, David taught and tutored mathematics for over eleven years at the university, community college, and high school levels. He taught at the University of California at Davis, University of Nevada at Reno, and University of Kansas, as well as community colleges and high schools in Davis, Sacramento, Reno, and Dodge City. His expertise includes subjects ranging from basic Algebra through first year university Calculus, as well as Probability, Statistics, and Discrete Math for computer science majors. In addition to his teaching experience, David also spent three years working as a product development actuary in the life insurance industry.

David earned a Bachelor of Science and a Master of Arts in Teaching in Mathematics from UC Davis. He is currently finishing a Master of Science in Computer Science at the University of Kansas.

AARON AUERBACH

Aaron is a certificated Spanish teacher in both California and Connecticut. He taught high school Spanish fulltime in Watertown, CT before moving to Los Angeles to pursue graduate studies. He has been tutoring Spanish for the last five years in Santa Clarita and Los Angeles. Aaron prefers a holistic approach to teaching, recognizing that the ultimate success of a tutor is the ability to instill within a student an appreciation for the process of learning itself. If we can empower students to think critically and to make connections, then our teaching goes far beyond the hours we spend together.

Aaron received his Bachelor of Arts in Comparative Literature from Brown University. His Honors Thesis was a translation of a novel from Argentina (La ciudad ausente). He spent a semester studying at the University of Buenos Aires. After graduating from Brown, he backpacked around South America for fourteen months. He is currently pursuing a Master of Fine Arts degree at California Institute of the Arts, and editing the film that he shot in India.

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