Testimonials

Regarding my application for educational funding to a Trust body in the UK, Jeff helped me enormously in crafting my proposal to them. He helped me especially to 'think big' and to recognise my own worth and dreams and not to 'self-select' myself out of the process, as I am wont to do. In particular I benefitted hugely from the way he helped me to recognise all the threads of my life and to weave them together and describe them in a way which felt authentic and true to me, but which also found equally authentic bridges to the Trust itself and instilled the confidence that my funding request was relevant and appropriate. Needless to say I was awarded the full grant. I was thrilled with Jeff's help an dedication and particularly awed by the way that creating this proposal changed the way I was looking at myself quite fundamentally. I now feel more confidence in my chosen life path.

~ Georgina Myles, writer and educator based in India and the UK October 2021

After many years of working in the financial industry for a terrific employer, I decided to pivot my career. That meant leaving a position where I was doing very well and re-entering the world of academia to build a new career path. It is during this transition from corporate finance team member to graduate studies applicant, that I came to understand the benefit of having a mentor to help guide me through what seemed to be an opaque process.

I was fortunate enough to learn how best to approach this transition from Jeff. Jeff was instrumental in guiding me through the application process for graduate studies. This included meditations on the entire process, inside and out. Which in turn helped me to think from the perspective of the Selection Committee, a Hiring Committee of professionals that I would be working with and not just an HR department. It became clear to me through working with Jeff that academia thinks in slightly different ways than in the corporate world, while being similar in some respects, in terms of what their final questions are to evaluate one’s fitness for their program.

Jeff helped me search out the core of what I had extracted from my experiences in life, volunteering, and work, and take what was written on my Resume (a business-oriented, financial industry-directed, CV) from my former career of nearly 10 years as a Senior Risk Manager and Senior Process Manager for a top Fortune 500 financial company that was specifically related to my targeted graduate study spot.

Then, Jeff worked with me through virtual meetings during which we word-smithed and carefully reworded every bullet point, and every subheading, manicuring it like a bonsai tree, over the course of three sessions, in order to ensure that the reader can easily and enjoyably digest quickly, what’s written. Now I walk away with a document that shows, with razor-like precision, an honest and concise reflection of who I am and who I would be to them (how they imagine I will perform) if the members of the selection committee were to give me an interview to learn more about how I’ll fit into their graduate program.

I highly recommend Jeff’s M2S program for anyone looking to gain the same benefits that I did through his mentorship. What I have learned is invaluable. I feel confident and well prepared as I embark on the next chapter of my career journey.

~ Ana Talavera, Risk and Process Management Specialist (Fortune 500 Company), transitioned to a Graduate Program in Non-Profit Philanthropy Management.

Jeff next worked with me to completely revamp my resume giving it a new professional tone and structure. My cousin, an HR professional, told me that the resume is top shelf.

Jeff then helped me to prepare for a job interview. I felt very confident going in. The lead decision-maker on the panel told me secretly afterwards that it was the best interview they had seen.

Jeff's mentoring approach is highly collaborative. He challenged me by asking tough questions. When you work with him, it is a “team effort."

~ Chris S., Assistant Principal, promoted in 3 months to Vice Principal and Principal, Catholic School Board, Vancouver

Jeff's "Mind-Mapping Makeover" exercise was excellent in building a much stronger understanding of what is at the core of my professional goals. My Mind-Map is an incredibly useful tool that I still revisit even months after the initial activity was completed!
* Jeff next worked with me to completely revamp my resume giving it a new professional tone and structure. My cousin, an HR professional, told me that the resume is top shelf.
* Jeff then helped me to prepare for a job interview. I felt very confident going in. The lead decision-maker on the panel told me secretly afterwards that it was the best interview they had seen.
* Jeff's mentoring approach is highly collaborative. He challenged me by asking tough questions. When you work with him, it is a “team effort."

“I had an unexpected job offer come to me after volunteering my time at a conference where I connected with many people in my field. The offer was for a job that fit my skill set perfectly. My first instinct was to jump at the offer, but I connected with Jeff first to see what he thought. We talked the situation through, considering many angles of my skills and experience, and most importantly, what I felt I could ask for in terms of salary.

I was prepared when the offer came to advocate for myself in a respectful way. The result of a productive conversation with my potential boss was a salary double of what I was receiving in my previous job. The success was not only about money, however. I entered the new job feeling confident and valued from day one. This has helped me excel in my new workplace and feel grounded and fulfilled around livelihood. Jeff’s insight and enthusiasm to my specific situation was so important to my process.”

~ Monica E., project manager for an educational non-profit, Denver

“Jeff helped me unlock, in only a few sessions of empathetic collaboration, my ability to advocate for myself—a skill I’ve been struggling with developing for most of my adult life. Through his insightful, direct approach, Jeff helped me see clearly that I already have the confidence to ask for what I need. With his skilful support, I crafted a narrative that I began to use in every session with doctors and healers to explain what my illness experience was. Changing this health narrative from defeated to empowered raised my confidence beyond what I imagined was possible after feeling so trapped. Jeff’s committed, compassionate, and intuitive approach helped me change my thinking and grow out of frozen resistance and fear and into vibrant, grounded living again. I’m now on the road to health and mobility!"

~ Stacy J., freelance writer and editor, New York City

"Dr. Jeffrey Cupchik has great insight and knowledge about how to assist people in presenting themselves in the best possible light. He asks the right questions and helps you discover yourself in the process. This is an essential step in deciding how best to present oneself in the marketplace of whatever field or profession you are in. You can expect honest, thoughtful feedback and constructive criticism, along with the specific steps to move forward and get things done.

Jeff evaluated all of my materials including my Biography, State of Teaching Philosophy, Curriculum Vitae and helped me recognize that I was omitting important information which I previously thought would be irrelevant for the positions I was seeking. Even though my previous resume/cv was written and designed with the assistance of a professional resume writing company, Jeff made me aware of the re-formatting necessary for the types of positions to which I was applying in a very customized, personal approach.

I highly recommend his mentoring2success program to anyone who wishes to prepare to move to the next level in their professional career or personal lives. I am very grateful for the assistance and guidance offered to me."

~ Susan G., Yale DMA graduate in piano performance with private studio transitioning to academic career, New Westminster, NY

“I greatly appreciate Jeff who, through one mentoring session, helped reshape my thinking about my next career. I write this recommendation as a professional shifting career after spending more than 10 years working in an environment that became toxic and unbearable. Jeff showed me how to write about my transferable skills and experience in my application for a new professional program, and I was given early acceptance! It was an insightful process, which opened my eyes to new ways of seeing my next career. I am excited about it. I am amazed at Jeff's wide range of knowledge and skills which enabled me to regain confidence in making my application to take the first step in my new career. I'm grateful for the help and will be recommending Jeff's M2S system to anyone. I wish I met him earlier."

~ Donna T., transitioning into a new career, Melbourne, Australia from Professor of History to IP Lawyer

I wish to express my immense gratitude to Prof. Jeffrey Cupchik for the time, assistance, and wise advice he offered me for my recent grant applications towards dissertation fieldwork in India. When I asked him to read over my proposal essay, to see if it was on the right track, little could I have imagined the care and detail with which he would respond in “markup,” critiquing, virtually sentence by sentence, the draft that I had made.

He knew the nature of the process intimately, from his own previous experience in a similar field, and thus was able to advise me on the tone required by this particular institution -- stressing the delicate balance of making the explanation accessible to a general audience while including enough detail to convey the unique import of my project.

He was willing to re-envision my proposal before I could, identifying what he thought were the most powerful sentences (somewhere on the second or third page), and asking me to bring them up to the first paragraph, which completely re-ordered the arc of my essay, and actually enabled me to cut a good deal of the introductory philosophical reflections which I now realized were not necessary in this context.

Further, Prof. Cupchik asked me some tough questions, which forced me to address the aspects of my itinerary I was not yet sure about. In the course of a long phone conversation which followed his written edits, Prof. Cupchik pushed me to make personal connections with several important people (whom I would not otherwise have had the courage to contact this early in the planning process), in order that I could begin obtaining permission and entrée for the actual learning institutions at which I hoped to stay. He knew that I needed to be able to provide concrete and readily achievable plans within the proposal, or else my project would look tentative and risky.

After a few intense weeks of creative envisioning, long-distance contacts with new advisors in India and Canada, and thorough rewrites, I received Prof. Cupchik’s encouraging approval of a second draft. After working on yet another, longer, proposal for a different fellowship competition over a month later, I was able to return to the original proposal with yet a fresher eye, and made further revisions, constantly trying to incorporate Prof. Cupchik’s insistence on active voice, simple clarity, and confident writing grounded in facts and personal experience.

I am pleased to report that I was selected to receive the dissertation research grant I had been applying for, which I am told is a very competitive fellowship. I am certain that the mentorship which Prof. Cupchik offered at the very beginning of my creative process was crucial to the eventual success of the proposal. He has a keen eye, a good heart, and a tremendous talent for being able to identify the key point of what someone wants to say, along with the ability to advise the person how to express it right. I do hope that many students, at both the undergraduate and graduate levels, will be able to benefit from his unique experience and superlative skills.

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