Meet Karissa!

Karissa Grano, College Counselor

From the time she graduated college in 2013, Karissa has spent her entire career helping students from all backgrounds get where they are trying to go. Beginning with her work as a math teacher for Dayton Public Schools, Karissa then joined the KIPP Texas Public Schools, rising through their ranks, with successful stints as a college counselor, a college counseling manager, and a district director of college counseling for a school district in Austin, Texas. She has personally supported over 100 students throughout the college application process (and trained many counselors to do the same), ultimately placing students at a wide range of colleges including Duke, Boston University, Carleton, Colgate, Emory, Northeastern, Notre Dame, Penn, Washington University in St. Louis, University of Chicago, Wellesley, Haverford, Pomona, and Rice. 

Legendary Caltech physicist Richard Feynman popularized the idea that a command of the complex is best demonstrated by the ability to successfully explain it—in simple terms—to someone else. In that spirit, Karissa has been honing her college admissions expertise since 2017. In her work at KIPP schools, she developed and managed program-wide college planning curriculum for junior and senior college seminars. She delivered monthly professional development workshops for teams of counselors. She led school-wide college access initiatives, managed teams of counselors, and consistently worked to both define and teach excellence in college counseling. This diverse set of experiences as a counselor, a curriculum architect, an instructor, and a manager all come through in her work with Collegewise students. 

Karissa is also a self-described research nerd who loves to “help students find the ideal college that aligns with their academic profile, personal ambitions, values, and personality.” Always embracing the personal over the programmatic, Karissa takes the time to get to know each of her students and is deeply invested in helping them find their own sense of agency during their college planning. 

An educational policy enthusiast who reads the Chronicle of Higher Education cover to cover, Karissa’s former life included a run as a statistical fellow with the National Agricultural Statistical Service, making her the rare college counselor who just might be able to explain why corn production is down while soybean production is increasing.

Education & Experience

University of Texas at Austin. M.Ed.
Southern Methodist University, B.A.
Regional director of college and career counseling, KIPP Forward Austin (1  year)
College counseling manager, KIPP Texas Public Schools (5 years)
Founding math teacher (3 years)