Oya Christie-Miller
founder and director
Since 2008, Oya has helped high school and university students from around the globe get into universities and graduate programs where they can thrive and be challenged. Oya loves to work closely with students to help them discover and build upon their strengths in preparation for the admissions process. She also greatly enjoys developing a sound application strategy, and guiding students and parents through every step of the process. Oya’s students have consistently received acceptances from their top choices, including Ivy League universities, Oxford and Cambridge, and the most competitive undergraduate and graduate programs in their fields.
Oya has a BA from Yale University, an MA from Boğaziçi University in Istanbul, Turkey, and is currently a PhD Candidate at UC Berkeley. She brings to the admissions process her insights as a previous Yale alumna interviewer and a graduate student instructor at UC Berkeley. As an instructor, she received pedagogical training and taught four semesters of the required Reading and Composition course to undergraduates. In 2016, she won an Outstanding Graduate Student Instructor award for her successful track record and stellar reviews. Having taught writing at the university level, Oya has developed her own methodology for tackling the college application essay process.
Prior to entering the field of education, Oya worked as an IT specialist on Wall Street, at Citigroup and Fidessa. Since 2008, in addition to being the Director of Christie Miller Consulting, Oya has worked as an independent educational counselor, including at Virginia Bush and Associates (Singapore), Ivy Education (UK), and William Clarence Education (UK).
Alexander Christie-Miller
Admissions consultant
Alexander has been helping run Christie Miller Consulting since 2017. Alexander holds a first class honours degree in Literature and Theatre Studies from Trinity College Dublin, and a UK National Qualification in Journalism as a senior reporter. For the past fifteen years he has worked as a print journalist, principally in Turkey, where he served as correspondent for the Times of London. His long form reporting has also been published in Newsweek, the Atlantic, Der Spiegel and The White Review among others, and he produced and reported an award-winning documentary on the Syrian civil war for Vice. He is currently writing his first full-length book, about Istanbul's Byzantine city walls, which is due to be published in the UK by William Collins.
Alexander especially enjoys helping students discover their passions, and narrow down their career options. He also cherishes interviewing them at the beginning of their essay writing process and guiding them through finding their own stories.
Leyla Levi
Admissions consultant
Born and raised in Istanbul, Leyla went abroad upon graduating from Robert College. She holds a BA in Architecture from Yale University and an MFA in Directing from the Yale School of Drama. She lives in the US, and in addition to being a university admissions consultant at Christie Miller Consulting, works as a theatre director and teaching artist. Her most recent directing credits include Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare and Marys Seacole by Jackie Sibblies Drury at the Yale School of Drama.
For many years, Leyla served as the artistic director of Gakko, an international summer programme for high school students. She directed programmes in Japan, France, Romania, Indonesia and the US, training teams of multidisciplinary counsellors and mentoring hundreds of students from around the world. As an educator, she takes great pleasure in helping young people dream big, pursue their interests and gain confidence in themselves.
Zeynep Erekli
Admissions consultant
Zeynep is an admissions consultant based in Istanbul, Turkey. Zeynep has worked previously as a writer, editor, and translator. Her experience includes content creating, consultancy, project development and execution, research and planning, leadership, and management.
She has held a variety of positions at Time Out Istanbul, where she finally served as Editor-in-Chief. In that role, she designed and ran a six-week program, Time Out Istanbul Writer’s Seminar: Cultural Journalism. She has also worked as an editor-at-large for the Time Inc. Group’s New York-based travel monthly Travel + Leisure’s Turkey edition. In addition to travel magazines such as Travel + Leisure, Condé Nast Traveller and Afar, her freelance writing has regularly appeared in dozens of newspapers and magazines, including Hurriyet, Gazete Oksijen, The Art Newspaper, Art Unlimited, Vogue Turkey, GQ Turkey. Zeynep enjoys mentoring students and helping them make sound educational decisions based on thorough research.
Dr Mashuq Kurt
Admissions consultant
Mashuq is a highly experienced educator, researcher, and an associate professor at Royal Holloway, University of London, with a strong track record of supporting students to reach their full academic and personal potential. His career spans leading international institutions, having taught and conducted research at Yale University, Stanford University, the London School of Economics, and SciencesPo Paris. At Stanford University, Mashuq was awarded the prestigious Christopher Family International Fellowship at the Stanford Humanities Center, in recognition of his globally relevant work in education and social thought. Across all these settings, he has worked closely with students from a wide range of backgrounds, developing tailored, supportive, and ambitious learning environments.
His academic expertise lies in critical pedagogy, an educational approach that fosters independent thinking, curiosity, and confidence in learners. Mashuq has written extensively on these themes, exploring how education can empower students to engage thoughtfully and succeed academically. In addition to his university teaching and writing, Mashuq is also an award-winning filmmaker. His documentary The Seven Doors, which follows students building innovative and collaborative approaches to learning, received the Jean Rouch Award, one of the most prestigious international honours in visual anthropology, awarded by the American Anthropological Association.
Warm, student-focused, and academically rigorous, Mashuq brings international experience, critical insight, and personal care to his education consultancy work. He offers families expert, individualised support to help every student thrive, not just in exams, but in their broader academic journey.
Dr Olivia Heal
Essay consultant
Olivia has extensive experience as an essay consultant with students in the UK, in addition to international students from a variety of backgrounds. Within the application essay process, she is particularly focussed on supporting high school students’ development as writers. She believes that students often already have the tools with which to write in their toolbox, but they might not yet be aware of them, nor know how to use them and she seeks therefore to help them to develop their intellectual autonomy as well as to discover and hone their voices.
Olivia currently lectures in English Literature and Creative Writing at Anglia Ruskin University, in Cambridge, UK. She holds a PhD in Creative and Critical Writing from the University of East Anglia. Prior to that she received an MRes in French Literature and Critical Theory from Université Paris VIII and an honours degree in French and Spanish from Trinity College Dublin. She was awarded the 2025 Contemporary Women’s Writing Essay Prize for her research on maternity in contemporary literature.
Olivia has worked as a translator from both French and Spanish. Her translation of La Symphonie du loup (extract) appeared in Best European Fiction 2016 (Dalkey Archive Press). Her short stories have been published widely, including most recently in the Los Angeles Review of Books.
Annabel Howard
Essay consultant
Annabel brings fifteen years’ experience of both teaching and writing to your application. She has taught in many different contexts—high school, museums, universities, and board rooms—in Europe, the UK, and Canada. Experience has proved to her time and time again that with focus, engagement, and some careful guidance, every student can not only write, but learn also to enjoy writing.
Annabel has a first class undergraduate degree from Oxford University, as well as masters degrees from the University of East Anglia and the University of Victoria, British Columbia. She has published three books, as well as numerous essays.
Dr Dave Wilson
Essay consultant
Since 2012, Dave has taught creative writing at universities on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean, to students from a wide range of backgrounds and skill sets. He focusses on the twin pillars of revision and re-envisioning, guiding students in the difficult process of turning abstract ideas into concrete details. His students have regularly received funded places at graduate schools in Canada, America, and abroad.
He holds a PhD from the University of East Anglia, and is the award-winning author of Once You Break a Knuckle, a collection of short stories, and Ballistics, a novel. His fiction and essays have appeared in lit mags across the globe, and in 2011 he won the BBC National Short Story Prize for "The Dead Roads." Since then he has been shortlisted for numerous fiction prizes, and has won the CBC Canada Writes short story prize and the Manchester Fiction Prize. He is in the process of completing two more works of fiction, once he has revised and re-envisioned them.
Dr Bethan Davies
Essay consultant
Born and raised in London, Bethan completed her undergraduate studies in English Literature at the University of Bristol, before completing her MPhil and teaching degree at the University of Cambridge. Bethan holds a PhD in English Literature from Roehampton University, London.
Bethan currently lectures in English Literature at Anglia Ruskin University, in Cambridge. She has lectured at universities in both the US and the UK, and has taught in high schools and museum spaces. She received the Lowman Prize from the University of Cambridge for her teaching performance. She has brought her expertise in Renaissance Literature to global organisations including Quarto Publications and the BBC, working as a research consultant and writing specialist. Most recently, she was awarded the Meyer Prize by The Sixteenth Century Society for outstanding research in the field of Renaissance studies. Bethan has published book reviews, theatre reviews, and research articles in the fields of English Literature and Education.
Calm, student-focused, and meticulous, Bethan enjoys mentoring students, supporting them to become ambitious, confident, and articulate writers.