Meet Mindy

I study how parents behave as their children leave home

For more than twenty years, I’ve watched the college process from nearly every angle: admission offices, counseling offices, school leadership, in the United States and China, and now from inside my own family.

My academic training is in American Studies, which taught me to look for the assumptions underneath how people behave. I’m especially interested in what happens when young people begin making consequential choices for themselves—and the adults around them still know a great deal, care enormously, and increasingly aren’t the ones who get to decide.

I’ve worked in admission at Richmond and Skidmore and in college counseling at Lawrenceville, Peddie, Shanghai American School, and Marin Academy. Today I oversee college counseling strategy across Dipont Education’s partner schools in China.

That work led to Big Idea Breakdown, a framework for making decisions that matter, now used in counselor training at Dipont, UCLA Extension, and across the BASIS network.

My writing has appeared in publications including The New York Times, The Washington Post, and Grown & Flown. I’m finishing a book about the years when children begin making consequential choices—and parents have to figure out what their role becomes.

I live in Saratoga Springs, New York, with my husband, Mark Moody, and my two daughters.

More To Explore