Eliana has a gift for making students feel like they already have something worth saying — and then helping them prove it on the page.
She came to essay work through a career in theatre and education, earning her B.A. in Theatre Arts from Rutgers and two M.A. degrees in Theatre Education and English Education from NYU. She has taught at the university and K–12 levels — at Kean University, Middlesex County College, and Xavier University — which means she understands how students think, where they get stuck, and exactly what it takes to get them unstuck.
What makes Eliana exceptional isn't just her background. It's how she works. She's calm in the chaos of a blank page, clever about finding the angle a student hasn't seen yet, and genuinely easy to be in a session with. Students who walk in convinced they have nothing interesting to say tend to walk out surprised. That's not an accident — it's what she does.
Her theatre background is a real asset here, though not in the way you might expect. It's less about performance and more about presence: she knows how to help a student find their voice, trust it, and use it. Whether a student is writing about a sport, a family tradition, a scientific obsession, or a formative failure, Eliana helps them bring it to life with clarity and personality.
She is also the founder of Theatre at the J, a program she built from scratch that more than tripled in size under her leadership — which tells you something about how she operates.
Eliana lives in Haifa, Israel, where she directs, teaches, and builds creative programming. She owns over 400 Playbills, will burst into song without much provocation, and does the crossword with her son at the kitchen table.
Best match for: any student who wants to write with more confidence, clarity, and personality — regardless of what they're writing about. A particular strength with students who feel stuck, who tend to underwrite, or who know they have a story but can't quite find the way in. Students interested in the arts will find an obvious home with Eliana, but she's just as effective with the engineer, the athlete, and the kid who swears they're not a writer.