Claire Russell (she/her/they), Founder and President, has spent her 25-year career in education teaching, designing curricula, and administering programs. She has worked at community non-profits, has taught English, ESL, Spanish, and Communications at the high school level, has trained and mentored teachers, and has provided consulting services for many professionals who wanted to improve their presentation, public speaking, and writing skills.  She has worked with high school and college students on their writing for decades. She has been a private, in-home tutor for many years.

Whether working with children or adults, her many and varied teaching experiences have shaped Claire’s educational philosophy: that teaching must originate from a student’s needs, and that a student who tries cannot fail. Claire is excited to help students learn however they learn best, and she believes that if a teacher can unlock the keys to a student’s learning strengths and challenges, they can become an enthusiastic, successful learner! At RTC, she has been thrilled to see this evidenced again and again with our tutors and students.

Claire was motivated to found RTC after tutoring in the test prep industry for several years. She saw all the ways test prep could go wrong when students and tutors are commodified: she had to adapt her teaching for students of varying needs in arbitrary programs with a limited cookie-cutter curriculum.

As a result, Claire was inspired to write an original, customized test prep curriculum for all kinds of students. She wanted to provide personalized tutoring with a smaller, boutique company that invests in students’ futures. RTC is the result of those efforts, and she is immensely proud of the successes our students have had! From the start, Claire knew test prep should address the mental game of test-taking, and our Mindfulness Programs have resulted. 

As the Founder of RTC, Claire personally assesses all test prep students for their strengths and needs in our proprietary assessment process. Claire understands that investing this time in thorough initial assessment and a great tutor match sets every student up for their best success.

Claire’s first love is teaching. She tells her students that the best part of her day is the time she spends with them helping their brains grow. Claire loves teaching both 1-2-1 academic tutoring and test prep for all the ways they can empower students to grow in their college-readiness.

Becoming an SAT and ACT tutor caused Claire to rediscover her passion for math. Claire had to relearn advanced math as an adult to become a test prep tutor, and she has tremendous empathy for kiddos who struggle with math; she loves unlocking its puzzles for students. Claire also loves learning new and creative ways to think about problems with her students and tutors. Math can be so creative! Claire’s math mantra is, “If you can draw it or write it out, you can see it – and if you can see it, you can do it!”

At RTC, Claire has created a unique culture with an exceptional team of teachers. After feeling isolated in the test prep industry, Claire provides these tutors and coaches with a team approach to learning and a collaborative mentoring environment in which they can ensure student success. She and her tutors are test and teaching nerds, and they love the learning laboratory they have created together to nurture their professional growth. Most of Claire’s tutors stay for years, some since the founding of RTC.

In her spare time, Claire eternally suffers being a passionate fan of the Tottenham Hotspurs. She loves reading, cultivating her garden, birding, hiking in National Parks, seeing live shows, making memories with her loved ones, and creating habitat for her furbabies.