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Faculty & STAFF
Alessandra Farach
Director & Head Counselor
Alessandra graduated from Wellesley College with a major in Economics. She began managing Wings during her sophomore year of college, and throughout the next three years, she spent the larger part of her time holding online meetings with students, parents, and teachers. She returned to Wellesley to share her student-entrepreneur experiences, and then organized and funded the university’s first Start-up Competition. As a certified MBTI practitioner, she derives joy from helping students identify and showcase their unique strengths and personalities through their essays and applications. She also loves applying her entrepreneurial mindset as she helps students come up with creative ideas for independent projects.
Yuanzhen Pan
Program Director for Asia
Yuanzhen was born in China, but earned a Singapore Ministry of Education scholarship to complete high school in Singapore. She graduated with a perfect score of 45 on her IB and then pursued a double major in Economics and Media Arts & Sciences at Wellesley College, finishing a semester early. In short order, she became an Albright Fellow, an MIT Design Lab researcher, and an intern at a Tokyo hedge fund and a Hong Kongese Morgan Stanley. In recent years, her work has focused on tech consulting. Thus, through online-platform management, she initiated our Asia Program and has been an academic and personal mentor to students from China and Singapore.
Challen Willemsen
Chief Essay Editor
Challen is a Bates College graduate who, on the merits of a full scholarship, obtained a B.A. in Environmental Studies with a concentration in Ecology. While at Bates, he spent a semester in the Brazilian Amazon studying natural resource management and human ecology, won a fellowship to study Quechua ethnobotany in the Peruvian Andes, and traveled to China to learn about environmental conservation. After graduating, he worked as a research assistant at Harvard University before returning to Guatemala to pursue his passion for conservation (and continue caring for his collection of 3000+ orchids!). Though a Wings alum, he has further been involved for over a decade—as teacher, academic coordinator and essay editor. He also makes time to work as an ecologist at a local reserve and teach Spanish to foreign students online.
Debbie Adams
Academic Coordinator
Debbie was born and raised in Ohio, and later moved to Guatemala. She was a tutor for several years and later worked at an alternative education center at the University of Lincoln Nebraska, teaching students from seventh grade to high school on a wide variety of subjects. With her extensive range of interests, she’s taken courses in everything from Creative Writing and UX design to Public Economics and TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages). In addition to SAT preparation, she tutors AP US History and AP World History. Moreover, Debbie has vast experience in the corporate world, having worked for four years in logistics, six years in management, and two years in spoken interpretation for lawyers. Her favorite game is Trivial Pursuit, and she’s an accomplished cook: she does catering for her family and friends during the holidays.
Cristina "Tini" de Ramazzini
Assistant Counselor
Tini majored in Marketing & Management at Lehigh University, where she received the Lehigh Campus Impact award and inducted many first-year students as Orientation Leader and Coordinator. In a Leadership Counselor role, she coordinated team-building and mediation efforts among campus club and student organization leaders, and by 2016, she spoke at College of William & Mary’s NODA Conference on the matter of emotional intelligence. She’s continued to complete several leadership courses and apply them in class to push for a student’s best. In her free time, she loves cooking and baking.
Lisel Bond
English/Verbal Teacher
Lisel graduated from Amherst College with a B.A. in English. During her third year, she went to Japan for a semester, where she wrote, edited and co-translated for a magazine of Doshisha University. Prior to Wings, she taught English for many years, both in the K-12 setting and as college preparatory work. She’s also assisted as a medical translator and as a volunteer for animal-care causes. Lisel is very active in creative writing, focused on the online publication of small fiction pieces. Within that realm, she enjoys the digital art world as well—anything to do with animation, video editing, and pixel art. She travels whenever she can, intent upon seeing much of the world.
Frank Quinn
Math/Quantitative Teacher
Frank grew up in and around Washington D.C, first employed over 20 years as a member of the U.S. investment industry. He’s spent the past 10 years tutoring students, primarily in SAT Math, GRE Quant, and GMAT Quant and Integrated Reasoning. He’s an expert on the SAT, having taught since the format change in 2015. He also works as an English professor and curriculum development consultant at Universidad Francisco Marroquín. He’s an avid reader of political science and philosophy texts, and in his free time, he enjoys ultimate frisbee and gardening. He’s also the proud parent of a daughter who is attending Swarthmore College.
Cindy Willemsen
English Teacher & Essay Editor
Cindy holds a degree in Clinical Psychology, having practiced as early as college in various public and private hospitals. However, in time, she realized that her true passion lay in education. Throughout her life, she’s tutored students on a wide range of subjects, from English literature to environmental science. Her degree in psychology and her multidisciplinary nature have worked in tandem to allow for her to easily connect with students and understand their individual interests and perspectives. Furthermore, she’s directly helped many students prep for their AP Psychology exams as a result as well. And during her free time, she enjoys trying out new dessert recipes and reading sci-fi.
Isabella Corletto
Essay Editor
Isa is an editor, translator, and writer. For the past few years, she’s been working both at Wings and a literary agency based in New York City. She’s a Wesleyan University graduate, also having spent a semester at the University of Bologna, with degrees in English and Italian Studies. After graduating, she completed the Columbia Publishing Course and interned at several publishing houses and literary agencies, including a literary scouting agency. In 2019, Isa spoke at Wesleyan’s Power of Language Conference, participating in an Alumni Panel about the professional value to a diverse linguistic base. Her translation of Amalia Andrade’s “Things You Think About When You Bite Your Nails” was published in 2020. In general, she has translated for international magazines, and has also ghostwritten books and articles. She enjoys traveling and learning new languages—she speaks English, Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese.
Jose de la Vega
Math/Quantitative Teacher
Jose has been teaching for about 8 years. He’s been a freelance one-on-one tutor, taught at English Academies in Guatemala, and taught English at Elementary schools in Taiwan. He lived in Taiwan for 5 years and studied Math at both Soochow University and Cheng Kung University. He’s a strategic game and game theory enthusiast, familiarized with board games, card games (e.g. poker, black jack), chess and the more creative, though still challenging playing field of “Magic the Gathering.” He’s currently about to finish his degree in Data Science.
Zucely Figueroa
Administrative Assistant
Zucely Figueroa has been at Wings for almost 5 years, and during that time she’s enjoyed getting to know students and learning how to best help them. She previously worked at the administrative department of a music agency, overseeing installations and music production. What she loves the most is spending time with her family, as they all share a love for music and learning.
Robert Gleason
English Teacher
Robert has been teaching in Guatemala since 2013. For many of those years he worked in private highschools where he taught a number of subjects from World History, Language Arts, to English as a second language. Robert is also a practicing writer of fiction in different genres with the bulk of his work being in Science Fiction. Outside of work, Robert is a father of two, enjoys reading history and fiction, and often travels abroad. Currently he is a SAT Prep teacher and a teacher in the Early Bird Program here at Wings where he teaches reading and writing, both academic and creative writing, and reading comprehension.
Peer Tutors
Romina Quinn
Math
Romina Quinn will be attending Swarthmore College to study Political Science. As part of a Civic Action Gap Semester she did with Tufts University, she worked with the organization “Feeding Texas” last year, helping with US voter outreach and registration. Her main interest lies in Public Policy, but she greatly enjoys math and has been working as a math peer tutor for several years now. She prefers to envision many of the world’s troubles as failed math exams that are, in essence, opportunities for problem-solving and improvement. She also loves art, especially drawing and painting.