Your Pathway to Prosperity

It is a supreme pleasure to write this letter to give my highest possible recommendation of my dear mentor and friend, Sheila Coleman-Castells. I met Sheila as a young child in Boy Scouts. She was a Scout Leader and Committee Member for many years who guided me and her son, John-Paul, toward obtaining our Eagle Scout designations, with six Eagle Palms. As a rising senior in high school during the COVID-19 era in 2020, she asked me about my plans for college. I had a 4.6 GPA in high school, was going to graduate with a concurrent Associate's Degree as Valedictorian of the class, and had many accolades, but my family's knowledge of the academic world was very limited. My Mother was the first and only college graduate in both families, and because she went to a state school, our horizons were limited by her accomplishments, thinking that anything else was simply out of reach fantasies. When I told Sheila of my ambivalence and chagrin regarding what I felt were my choices, she surprised me with the fact that I was eligible, due to my academic background alone, to attend some of the best schools in the country and that she could get me there. This news was an incredibly motivating boost during a scary and difficult time facing senior year in the COVID era. Among many applications that year, we applied for a joint Bachelor's program with William & Mary and the University of St Andrews in Scotland (two years at each, one degree from each school). It was one of the best days of my life to be accepted in this program, one of only 30 students selected each year. I never thought, when I first started this journey, that I could study in the United Kingdom, but I completed both programs in 2025 with a degree majoring in Economics and minoring in Classics from William & Mary, and a B.A. (International Honours) from the School of Economics and Finance at St Andrews. As I write this in 2025, I am an Economist at the White House, something that I never dreamed in 2020 that I might be. I have taken the LSAT and obtained a perfect score (180). As of March 2026, I have been accepted into Harvard Law School, Class of 2029! Working with Sheila over these years has given me, a young man from a very small town in the Appalachian mountains of Maryland, a perspective that I could never have had if we hadn't met all those years ago in Boy Scouts. Choose Sheila because you want the best for your child or if you are a young person, you want the best for yourself. Her job is not ONLY to help you find a college and get you in, but to help you find yourself in that college journey and choose the place where you truly BELONG for four years.