Irena Smith

Irena Smith is the author of the award-winning memoir The Golden Ticket: A Life in College Admissions Essays and creator of the popular Substack, Personal Statements. She has been featured in Forbes, Mutha Magazine, Parents Magazine, Grown & Flown, KQED, San Jose Mercury News, The San Francisco Chronicle, TEDx Palo Alto, and The Atlantic. Born in Soviet Russia and raised in the United States, she weaves her experiences of migration, generational expectations, motherhood, and memory into her writing. Irena lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her husband, a rotating cast of children, and two cats who are working on resolving their differences.