Now accepting a limited number of new students for the 2026-2027 school year
Built from experience. Grounded in purpose.
Most admissions consultants live in the application process. Most mentorship programs don't speak the language of college admissions. We built Phronesis to bridge that gap.
The Founding of Phronesis
Phronesis (froh-NEE-siss) is Aristotle's term for "practical wisdom" — the ability to think critically and act effectively across varied contexts. It's the quality we've seen, again and again, in the students who truly stand out — not because they assembled the right credentials, but because they developed genuine clarity about who they are and what they want to build.
Our founders, Dominique Kaeding and Jared Henderson, found their way to this work from very different directions. Dominique through years of working closely with high school students across public education and private admissions consulting. Jared through a broad career spanning management consulting, entrepreneurship, and executive leadership across the public, private, and non-profit sectors.
What makes this model unique is the depth of expertise on both sides. Admissions consultants tend to be deeply rooted in the application process; they know the landscape inside and out but may have limited exposure to the professional world their students are preparing to enter. Professional mentors bring real-world perspective but rarely understand the ever-changing landscape of college admissions.
The Phronesis Collaborative bridges that gap by pairing an admissions strategist who has worked extensively with high school students across educational contexts with a seasoned leader who has delivered results across a wide variety of professional contexts.
The result is something the admissions consulting industry has rarely seen: a unified model that develops the whole student — their self-awareness, their initiative, their ability to act — so that by the time they apply to college, their story is genuinely compelling and authentically theirs.
Practical wisdom is the ultimate competitive advantage, both in college admissions and in a rapidly changing world.
Dominique Kaeding
Co-Founder | Admissions Strategy & Application Execution
About Dominique
Dominique has spent her entire career supporting high school students as they plan for and pursue postsecondary pathways. Over the past 8 years, she has worked closely with high school students — through the highly selective Teach For America program, a national college admissions consulting firm, and her own private admissions consulting practice — helping them craft authentic, compelling narratives centered around their unique purpose and goals.
As a first-generation college graduate and Dartmouth alumna, Dominique knows firsthand what it means to navigate this process without a roadmap. That experience shapes everything about how she works: she is deeply relationship-focused, spending significant time getting to know each student's background, experiences, and aspirations before anything else.
Her insight into elite admissions goes beyond her consulting experience. While at Dartmouth, she worked in the Admissions Office as a guide to prospective families, gaining an early window into what the college values most. After graduating, she served as a Dartmouth alumni interviewer, deepening her understanding of how applicants are actually evaluated.
Every single one of Dominique's former clients have been admitted to at least one "reach" school. Her alumni are enrolled at MIT, Northwestern, Duke, UC Berkeley, Tufts, UCLA, and more highly selective institutions. She holds a Master of Arts in Teaching with a concentration in Special Education and a Certificate for Independent Educational Consultants from the National Association for College Admission Counseling (NACAC).
About Jared
Jared has worked, led, and learned across an extraordinary range of sectors, roles, and institutions including McKinsey & Company, Teach For America, and NASA. His educational background is equally as diverse, with undergraduate degrees in Computer Science and Physics from the University of Arkansas, an MBA from Harvard Business School, and an MPA from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.
He has delivered results as a non-profit executive, management consultant, and private sector entrepreneur. He has directly coached and advised mayors, state cabinet members, Fortune 100 executives, school district superintendents, and physicians in addition to mentoring countless students and young adults.
This background led to the development of The Phronesis Collaborative’s approach to mentorship and our selection of the knowledge, mindsets, and skills that underpin success in almost any endeavor. These include learning critical thinking and problem-solving techniques, fostering resilience and persistence, earning trust and influence, and developing actionable self-awareness. Jared learned these throughout his career and saw other impactful people demonstrate them again and again – not only at work but also in life.
When Jared became a father, this led him to ask: How can these abilities developed more proactively and effectively? And can they be developed far earlier when young people are working through their first major decisions, such as which college to attend?
The Phronesis Collaborative is his answer.
Jared Henderson
Co-Founder | Real-World Coaching & Student Development
What we believe
The principles that shape how we work with students and families.