TESTIMONIALS
REAL RESULTS
Real Results, Real Stories
Every story shared comes from real people who’ve seen real change not just in numbers, but in their lives. These aren’t scripted testimonials they’re authentic journeys, showing what’s possible when the right solution meets the right person.
Parent Testimonials
Mary Ann Dutton, Ph.D
Professor and Vice-Chair for Research, Department of Psychiatry, Georgetown University Medical Center (Former Client Parent)
Jared, who clearly leads by example, has helped our son to deal more effectively with his executive functioning issues by organizing and completing his work in a way that he could not without Jared's help. Jared applies his understanding of how kids learn to craft an effective and engaging learning environment. He succeeds in relating all that our son is learning TO his life. Importantly, Jared is flexible and caring. He makes a palpable impact. He breaks the writing process down effectively and removes any mystery about the process. His genuine interest and investment in our son's welfare made a big difference to his successes. I give him the strongest recommendation without any reservation.
Peter Mallios
Senior At Walt Whitman High School, Swimmer
Jared really turned things around for our now 18 year old son. Our bright, social, and athletic son had been diagnosed with ADHD early on in his life and managed it until AP classes, daily swim practices, and the demands of navigating college became overwhelming.
Jared came in and immediately recommended a well- organized and supportive environment to help our son navigate his every day. He worked with our son on organization and planning, which in turn helped him develop skills and different strategies to stay on task.
Jared’s ability to immediately hone in and connect with teens is truly unique. This seems to play a big role in his proven success coaching them. He is authentic, affable and quick-witted – attributes that immediately enabled him to break through and communicate with our hard to reach teen or anyone in their twenties. Jared was also a phenomenal communicator with my wife and I, which made navigating the process so much easier.
Bruce Hawkins
Healthcare Policy and Communications Professional
Jared helped my son through a very difficult time with supportive but brutally honest coaching. I would recommend him to anyone looking for a life coach to keep you accountable and honest with yourself about goals and behaviors. It certainly worked for our son and for our family.
Madeleine Weinberg
George Washington University
Jared Kallen brings multiple skills and talents as an academic/executive function coach. He is thorough, knowledgeable and insightful in his strident efforts to transform our 23-year-old son’s attitude so that he will be able to finally graduate from The George Washington University in 2019. We are inspired by his positive energy and commitment for success. Jared’s empathy enabled him to understand our son’s emotional and intellectual needs. He taught our son to advocate for himself at the university. Jared’s resourcefulness and generosity to locate a tutor in Statistics helped him from going from an F to a B. Jared is a strategic thinker and offers a clear vision into what makes a successful coach by providing a psychologically safe environment. He pushes our son to excel in a measured and supportive way. In addition, he has been very strong in the coaching of writing for our son. Importantly, he is genuine and passionate about developing our son to be a mature and self-sufficient adult. It has been a terrific experience, and I give Jared a heartfelt, unequivocal, and sincere recommendation for potential clients and programs!
Glen Sutcliffe
CRS, GRI, ABR, SRES- Long and Foster Real Estate (Client Parent)
In fact, he cares more than most. It's notable that he is always working to suggest new strategies to improve academics for the child. Highly recommend him.
John B.
Client Parent
When we sent our son, John, who attends Sandy Spring Friends School, to Jared, he could not think through his school work agenda nor could he organize his thoughts efficiently or easily. He refused to use outlines. Jared cajoled John by talking through the considerable confusion - and got him to hone in and really take some pride in his work - instead of just rushing through it and then checking it off his list. We couldn't be more pleased with John's progress.
Satisfied Client
Edmund Burke School
Without Jared’s help, our son wouldn’t have graduated last weekend! G had been a solid B student in high school, but the pandemic took a HUGE toll. Jared's services were recommended to help with communication, accountability, with the primary goal of getting his homework done.
Jared’s impact was IMMEDIATE. Jared’s daily communication engaged G, and he started completing his assignments on time. Because of Jared’s coaching, G made the conscious decision to graduate with his class and was able to focus on his schoolwork. Jared helped with his writing skills and as his grades improved, his confidence grew.
Jared sent us summaries of their weekly meetings. Jared shared his enthusiasm about G’s talents and skills and gave us valuable advice. Because of Jared’s encouragement and motivation, G earned A’s and B’s. We can’t thank him enough for his partnership.
M. Brown
Parent of 12th Grade Georgetown Day School Student
Jared gets teenagers, and in particular kids with learning and processing challenges. There are lots of tutors out there- BUT Jared is different and a CUT ABOVE. Jared is an ally, coach, mentor and friend.
He can help with high level academic issues but also maintains the ability to help with study skills on a granular level.
Jared was able to help my child become the best version of himself -- both academically and socially. He was tough when needed but also provided a sympathetic ear and warm and helpful support in times of challenge. And there were a lot of challenges..........
Jared speaks kids’ language and teaches them how to better communicate and self advocate. This is critical....................
We’re grateful to him for the incredible personal and academic growth he helped nurture in our child.
Satisfied Parent
Our experience with Jared was nothing short of wonderful. Our son had struggled with attention issues as well as executive functioning skills and planning. He was not quite achieving the results in school which we knew he was capable of early in his sophomore year-- and he was shocked to receive the ADHD diagnosis, as were we. But once Jared started working with him, his note-taking, planning, study skills methodology, and overall motivation improved dramatically. Not only does Jared work with the kids to give them the tools for better planning and studying and self-advocating, but he does his research with the parents to see what topics will help best relate to the student as well as develop motivating factors and encouragement. Our son is a huge athlete (high performing in Basketball and Lacrosse)-- and so Jared used those passions to increase his "buy-in." Highly recommend Jared!
Darren G
Client Parent
Our 10th-grade son, who attends The Potomac School and has severe ADHD and executive functioning issues, has really profited from getting to know Jared. Jared was able to enlist John onto his "team," gain his trust, and formulate a plan and a strategy to address our son's weaknesses and render them less glaring. His patient and careful prompting and cueing have increased John's written output - and output in general. Jared is highly skilled at describing and modeling context. Because he holds himself very accountable, it was very easy for Jared to hold John accountable: our son could not make excuses or hide. We recommend Jared extremely highly - and we have had a long list of tutors!
Mother of son
James Madison University, Communications Major
My son is a senior in college and has ADHD. From the beginning, he was very unmotivated and could not get organized and multi task. He started falling behind. As parents, we felt that it was counter-productive for us to be “on him” constantly -- especially since we lived in different states.
My sister is a social worker who works with adolescents and said he may need an ADHD/Academic coach.
She referred Jared to us because one of her patients hired him and said he was fantastic. They WERE NOT wrong. We hired Jared and he has really helped our son.
He keeps him on task and holds him accountable -- but not in an ordering sort of way. They built a relationship on honesty and trust and they are more like a team that is trying to get across the finish line together. I can see significant improvement since Jared took over.
The past few weeks have been especially stressful and my son has needed extra assistance from Jared. He has been on the phone with him several times a day for the past week and Jared is seeing him through this very hard situation.
I would highly recommend Jared to anyone. He is knowledgeable, organized, funny and most of all he really cares about my son. My son could not have gotten this far without him.
Mother of son attending Montgomery College
Attempting to Complete his Undergraduate Degree
Jared has been coaching my son to complete his college degree after a several year hiatus. He has helped my son to manage his workload, and is always there to coach, offer suggestions, review writing prompts and edit his work. Completely non-judgmental, Jared has helped my son to look at the tasks at hand and has helped him to continue on even when the assignments were challenging.
I am so impressed with Jared's dedication to his work. Last term, he was editing my son's final paper after 11pm. That really surpassed all of our expectations. I would highly recommend Jared. I so appreciate all that he does.
Sue B.
Current Client Parent
Jared has our son dig a lot deeper than he is accustomed to. In employing inspiration and other software programs and strategies, which were clearly modeled by Jared, our son has been able to brainstorm more effectively, "OWN" his ideas more readily, and create written work that contains much-increased coherence - and depth. Our son is more prone, now, to think through his claim more clearly, to find the best quotes, and to demonstrate greater critical thinking skills.
Francisco Montero
Managing Partner at Fletcher, Heald & Hildreth, PLC (Former Client Parent)
Jared is very highly skilled, extremely hard-working, and extraordinarily intuitive. He is fully INVESTED in the process and he does TONS of research. He never loses sight of his chief goal: to help young learners to become more confident and effective and to take ownership of the process. I have gotten to know Jared, his highly engaging personality, and his battle-tested strategies. I would not hesitate to recommend Jared for anyone in need of educational assistance, mentorship or career support.
Heather L.
Client Parent
Jared has done a tremendous job with our sixth grader, Steven, over the last few months. Steven attends Cabin John Middle School. After teaming up with Jared over several months, Steven went from an unorganized, uninterested, diffident student getting C's and D's in English and History, to someone who looks forward to learning the "ins and outs" of written expression. Jared really cares about his students and he always tries to communicate on their level. He has no patience for kids who blame teachers or parents and encourages a great degree of self-advocacy. It has been heartwarming to watch the growth process unfold!
Michelle Jacoby
CEO, DC Matchmaking
I highly recommend Jared if your teen is having trouble in school and needs to get BACK on track.
I hired Jared to work with my 15-year-old son. I felt comfortable hiring him because I have friends who know Jared from his days teaching at the Field School, and they said he was AMAZING. Jared did a great job working with my son and helped him turn things around in a positive way.
Mother of son
Our son had major executive functioning GAPS -- things he just did NOT know to do.
We first enlisted the services of the school -- but, even with those -- we needed much more support and guidance -- and accountability.
Jared provided this in spades -- attacking blind spots, instilling concrete action plans for our son, holding him accountable, keeping him focused (not an easy task!) -- and the results were palpable!
Now, after Jared's terrific modeling, our son knows how to self-advocate, how to read a prompt much more carefully, how to produce "quality work," and when to "let things go."
The result has been tremendous- our son feels better about himself, has improved his grades, is much better organized on a short and long term basis, and is, and this is an understatement for sure, in a much better "spot."
Satisfied Parent
Jared has been a fantastic resource for our family. He started coaching our oldest son who was going back to college after some time off. One of Jared's obvious strengths is that he coaches the "whole" kid, not just the academic kid. In addition to helping our son assess his workload, organize his time and review his work, he encouraged him to get regular exercise, spend time with friends, improve his sleeping habits/hygiene, and play music. What started out as a part-time return to college is now full-time with great grades to show for it. Jared recently has also been coaching our middle son who just started college, to get him off to a good start and is also working with our youngest son on college essays and applications. All three genuinely enjoy their time with Jared and the fact they are accountable to him keeps them on track and relieves us from having to nag! And we hate being in the reminding and nagging business! We, as parents, feel relieved to know that they are learning the skills to be able to be successful in college and beyond. We highly recommend Jared as someone who genuinely cares and executes -- all with a smile on his face and his unparalleled energy.
Miguel Gutierrez
Jared has been a God-send for our 8th grader who has some learning differences. He is always ready to roll and maintains a very fast pace, but one that is appropriate for our son. At first, our son did NOT want to meet with Jared, but Jared has a very entertaining and engaging way about him and that brings students into his world very quickly. The two of them have formed a team where they work on organization (not only pertaining to school), frequent reminders, how to self-advocate with teachers, how to remain accountable, now to write better and more cogently, and, importantly, how to push oneself to do one’s best – no matter what. Just two weeks into their relationship, Jared showed up unannounced at one of his football games and we were thrilled. Recently, Jared prepped our son in depth for his upcoming interview to gain admission to his top choice for high school. When our son gets distracted, Jared pulls him right back into the moment and that dynamic has increased output – actual stuff that gets done. On top of that, he is super quick to respond to any concern we may have and he is extremely well-versed on how to coach us, his parents, on how/when to react as difficult situations arise. We recommend Jared and his many services extremely highly and without reservation!
Jarret S. Cummings
Parent
Here's a recommendation from my son, Zane, who Jared has been guiding, educating, and supporting for over 2 yearS:
Jared is one of the best coaches because he is very descriptive when talking about writing and he is always making jokes to put the student at ease. First, whenever Jared talks about writing or organization, he always goes into great detail so the student can understand him fully.
He then asks, frequently, "you got me?" If I do not understand, this gives me the freedom to ask anything at all........what a relief!
Additionally, Jared is constantly “keeping things light” to make the student feel welcome and unstressed. The result is that I often produce finer work and I also feel better about myself.
-- 10th grade student who hates writing.....................
Parent of Andres
Bethesda Chevy Chase High School
The following is a recommendation from my son, Andres, who has been working with Jared for almost four years. My son went from not liking English classes to becoming a straight A student in the subject. I ALSO highly recommend Jared!
I recommend Jared because he puts his maximum effort into coaching and he is very enthusiastic and engaging. He is always on top of things and looks for any way that he can help. To his credit, he constantly has a smile on his face and exhibits a positive attitude. Every time he comes to the house or is on a video call, he is eager to help me with new tasks. He loves a challenge. Thanks to him, I have improved my writing and my time management skills.
It used to be that I would avoid writing like the plague!! However, after Jared introduced me to the ACE writing method, I was able to enhance my abilities to write overtime. To be honest, I used to be a “minimalist.” But Jared has taught me that pushing myself consistently is the only way that I can maximize my potential. He is a terrific communicator – “Are you with me?” – and never forgets to check in with me.
In particular, Jared was tasked to help me with my college essay. He was a tremendous help because he really was able to unlock potential that I never saw in myself. Coming from a broken past, he was able to advise me on how I could write “my story” and be able to tell it to others in an engaging and informative manner. He assessed the weaknesses that I once had and showed me how I had actually turned them into strengths. I was able to tell my story of resilience, adjustment, and subsequent hard work in the way that I wanted.
Jared is not only a great mentor, but he is also someone who I can call my friend. To sum it up, I came to Jared lacking some motivation and skill gaps and I am now headed to College armed with a powerful toolkit at my disposal. It has been a terrific journey!
Stan Shulman
DDS
Our experience with Jared has been overwhelmingly positive. Our 21-year old sophomore requires help whenever he receives a writing assignment. So, Jared comes to our house and attacks it with him, anything from analyzing the prompts to brainstorming, to collecting the very best evidence, to structuring the essay. Most importantly, Jared never leaves the house without providing our son with very concrete instructions - everything is clear. Then, he stays in touch with our son regularly, in order to prevent procrastination. Also key is that Jared is "up for anything" -- he can handle all sorts of different assignments -- with tremendous energy AND focus. We will continue to use Jared and give him our highest recommendation!
Ashley C.
Client Parent
When Alyssa came to Jared, she was unorganized and uninterested in learning how to become a stronger writer at Sidwell Friends School. She lacked discipline. Jared got her to want to become a more effective communicator and to take more pride in her written word. She enjoyed her time with him and no longer dreads English class. Since then, we have sent our son, Jim, who attends St. Albans School, to Jared: same great results!
Mother of son
Walt Whitman High School
After coming out of the pandemic and starting back to school in person, my son was REALLY struggling. He had decided that he was a failure at school and had stopped even trying. His therapist recommended Jared and they worked together to improve his self-esteem and outlook on school. However, a lot of things HAD to change………….
Jared taught him how to approach his schoolwork, how to stay organized, and how to step up to the plate and be proactive about keeping up on his assignments AND communicating clearly with his teachers.
My son is now happy and earning As and Bs with zero intervention from me because of the skills he learned from Jared. I am so incredibly grateful for Jared’s help in turning my son’s life around and helping him reach his full potential.
M. Legget
Parent of Walt Whitman 10th grader
After coming out of the pandemic and starting back to school in person, my son was REALLY struggling. He had decided that he was a failure at school and had stopped even trying. His therapist recommended Jared and they worked together to improve his self-esteem and outlook on school. However, a lot of things HAD to change………….
Jared taught him how to approach his schoolwork, how to stay organized, and how to step up to the plate and be proactive about keeping up on his assignments AND communicating clearly with his teachers.
My son is now happy and earning As and Bs with zero intervention from me because of the skills he learned from Jared. I am so incredibly grateful for Jared’s help in turning my son’s life around and helping him reach his full potential.
Satisfied Parent
Jared Kallen brings multiple skills and talents as an academic, executive function , and Life Coach. He is thorough, knowledgeable and insightful and transformed our 23-year-old son’s attitude so that he could graduate from The George Washington University in 2019. We are inspired by his positive energy and commitment for success. Jared’s empathy enabled him to understand our son’s emotional and intellectual needs. He taught our son to advocate for himself at the university. Jared’s resourcefulness and generosity to locate a tutor in statistics helped him from failing to a B. Jared is a strategic thinker and offers clear vision into what makes a successful coach by providing a psychologically safe environment. He pushes our son to excel in a measured and supportive way. He is genuine and passionate about developing our son to be mature and progress on his own. It has been a terrific experience, and I give him a heartfelt and sincere recommendation for potential clients, programs, and school systems! Highly recommend -- without any reservations!
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