About Us

What sets Inspirica apart?

For over forty years, Inspirica experts have been dedicated to providing an elite roster of tutors with expertise in a broad range of academic subjects and standardized tests. Our team has a collective experience from schools such as Yale, Princeton, Columbia, Stanford, MIT, and NYU, to name a few.

Inspirica continually seeks out the best tutors and provides them with the resources and support to empower students to identify and utilize their strengths and interests. Our counseling, test prep, and academic services are seamlessly integrated to give students the most comprehensive support available.

Incredible Tutors

Inspirica’s elite tutors offer decades of expertise in a wide array of academic subjects and standardized tests. While we hire anyone who’s proven they can inspire greatness, our tutors tend to have been educated at world-class schools at every level, like Yale, Princeton, Columbia, Stanford, MIT, Cambridge, Berkeley, Exeter, Dalton, and Brearley.

We don’t just take smart rookies out of college and train them. Instead, we source the best tutors out there, those who have built their own followings through years of great results and ecstatic families. We look for tutors who transform lives and are remembered decades later. Then we bring them together, empower them to choose what’s best for their students, let them share their ideas with one another, and watch the magic happen.

Efficiency

Here’s where our experience means the most to you. At Inspirica, we believe that working smart is at least as important as working hard. Our clients expect the best from our tutors, so our tutors do expect their students to work hard; that doesn’t mean we drop a mountain of work on their desk and hope they devote most of their waking hours to drills and practice tests. We understand that our highly ambitious clients live lives filled with sports, arts, friends, family, studies, and work. So we craft customized programs that get maximum results, with targeted efforts that are the key to opening up precious time to pursue greatness in more than just scores or grades.

History

Noodle Tutors

Noodle Tutors began in 2010 when edtech entrepreneur John Katzman invited a select group of his favorite New York tutors to start a new and better tutoring company. All were longtime colleagues at The Princeton Review, which Katzman founded in 1981 and ran for decades. With an amazing core of all-star tutors, Noodle established a stellar reputation in New York as the go-to group for the best test prep. By 2014, we had expanded globally, and provided a complete range of tutoring for our clients, across nearly all ages, subjects, and tests. From preschool through graduate school and beyond, students and families seeking excellence knew that Noodle tutors were the Pros.

Inspirica

In 1983, Lisa Jacobson founded Inspirica as the nation’s first one-on-one test preparation company. Since then, our world-class tutors have helped guide over 40,000 students through the testing process, and Lisa has been interviewed on nearly all of the nation’s top news outlets including The Today Show, Good Morning America, NBC News, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and Time and Newsweek magazines.

In 2021, Inspirica and Noodle Pros joined forces and merged our tutoring divisions into Inspirica, which combines our veteran tutors into one organization teaching nearly every standardized test and academic subject, through customized programs both online and at home.

Meet Our Team

John Katzman

CEO

John Katzman is a cofounder of Inspirica, and the CEO of Noodle, which helps 65 elite universities use technology to improve learning and enrollment. Before that, he founded and ran The Princeton Review, working with over half the students headed to US colleges and graduate schools through its tutoring, courses, books, and software. He also founded and ran 2U, which is also involved in online learning. Katzman is the co-author of five books, and has served as a director of several for- and non-profits, including Carnegie Learning, Renaissance Learning, the National Association of Independent Schools, the Institute for Citizens & Scholars, and the National Alliance of Public Charter Schools.

Ryan Neill

General Manager of Sales and Operations

Bringing fifteen years of varied experience in the education sector to his role as General Manager of Sales and Operations, Ryan has navigated a rich career path, including operational roles at Achievement First and a leading-edge EdTech company focused on personalized math programming. Ryan’s hands-on experience in these diverse educational environments equips him with an in-depth understanding of industry dynamics, crucial for effective sales and operational leadership. Ryan’s professional drive is rooted in a practical belief in education’s role in forging a fairer world, a perspective sharpened by an MS in Urban Policy Analysis and Management with a focus on education policy. This blend of practical experience and academic insight is pivotal in his approach to shaping sales strategies and operational efficiencies that align with educational equity and innovation.

Brendan Mernin

GM, Services and Quality

Inspirica General Manager Brendan Mernin has been a leader in test prep and admissions since 1989. He has tutored, taught, and advised thousands of students and families worldwide; trained hundreds of teachers and tutors; and developed leading instructional content. He has appeared in The New York Times, New York Magazine, New York Post, and Slate, and on WNBC-TV. He was formerly LSAT and ACT R&D Director for The Princeton Review and a Founding Tutor and Senior Director with Noodle Pros. Brendan was Co-Founder and Founding Director of Math4Science, Inc, a nonprofit improving American math education, and served on the Board at Saint Joseph High School in Brooklyn. He is now a leader of the Alumni Council at Buckingham, Browne & Nichols School in Cambridge, MA.

Yianni Papadimos

Program Coordinator

As Program Coordinator at Inspirica Pros, Yianni Papadimos dedicates his days to engaging with parents and students in order to understand their unique tutoring requirements. He holds a Bachelor’s degree in Drama and Literature from New York University. Beyond his professional endeavors, Yianni is an avid theatre enthusiast, an adventurous traveler, and an amateur rugby player.

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