Built for advisors who care about knowing their students, not just managing them.
Every advisor we spoke with described the same frustration. They went into this work to help students grow: to understand who they are, what drives them, and how to guide them toward a college experience that truly fits. But the process gets in the way. Manual notes, meeting prep, follow-ups, and administrative work consume the time it would take to do that deeper work. Most advisors end up focused on college fit and admissions outcomes, not because they don't care about student development, but because there isn't enough time for both. Elevated Environments exists because that gap — between what advisors are capable of and what the process allows — was too important to leave unsolved.
The people behind the portrait.
Tom spent years studying what makes people effective leaders and communicators — and how understanding someone deeply changes what you can do for them. When his sister Frances, a veteran independent college advisor, described how long it took to truly know a student well enough to guide them effectively, he recognized the same gap. Elevated Environments is his answer to it: applying the frameworks of relational intelligence to college advising, so advisors can do in weeks what used to take months.
Alan and Tom have worked together before on people development initiatives, where Alan’s focus was always on making complex ideas accessible and the experience of using them exceptional. That same instinct drives his approach at Elevated: the product should feel effortless, with the benefit front and center. His wife’s work in educational consulting gives him a personal window into the world advisors navigate every day and a clear sense of what they actually need from a tool like this.
Eric has spent 25 years as an entrepreneur and technology leader, founding and scaling his own software firm and building systems that hold up under real-world conditions across enterprise and SaaS environments. He brings a builder’s instinct to Elevated: a focus on architecture that’s solid, scalable, and designed to do exactly what it promises. What draws him to this problem is what draws him to every hard one — the challenge of turning something genuinely complex into something that works simply and reliably.
Buzz has spent his career in environments where the experience has to work right — building logic design software for emergency dispatch systems, where there’s no margin for confusion, and leading customer success teams for one of the country’s largest retailers. He also codes, which means when something isn’t working for an advisor, he can often solve it directly rather than manage it from a distance. At Elevated, his job is to make sure every advisor gets to value quickly and has the confidence and support to keep building on it.
Guided by the advisors we build for.
Our industry advisors ensure that everything we build reflects how independent college advisors actually work.
Frances is a veteran educator and independent college advisor who helps students build the specific habits and skills that matter for college and beyond. She guides students through the full college planning and application process and keeps parents aligned and informed through clear, transparent touch points. Over the last two decades, she has worked with thousands of students. At Elevated Environments, Frances serves as an industry advisor, ensuring our services and tools reflect how independent college advisors actually work.
Cyndy McDonald is an innovator and trend setter in business and college counseling. She’s the founder of the professional organization HECA and is an active member of several other professional organizations. Cyndy has created online courses for UCLA’s College Counseling Certificate program and has taught hundreds of college advisors enrolled in the program. She’s started several businesses related to education and technology, and currently offers business coaching on both a group and individual basis.