Kelly Alves’ entry into the world of Admissions came in a somewhat unorthodox manner.

After years of working jobs that were not the typical 9-5, Alves was asked to work as a temp in the admissions office at Woodstock Academy.

After eight weeks, when her time as a temp was almost over, the Chief Financial Officer offered her a position working in the International Admissions Department. At the time, the department did not exist at Woodstock Academy, but Woodstock Academy was creating one so they could begin recruiting international students.

Alves accepted the offer and began working as the Assistant Director of Admissions with most of her time spent working mostly with international students. She held the position for seven years before taking a job as the Director of Admissions for another school. Alves eventually resigned the position as the Director of Admissions and about two months later Global Education & Sports Partners Founder and Owner Matt Kokoszka, who she had met while working at Woodstock Academy, offered her a job. Without hearing any more about it, Alves accepted. The experience in admissions and processing the necessary paperwork for the international students was a significant asset. In addition, Alves also interviewed the students and would help walk them and their families through the application and financial aid processes.

With her connections to Woodstock Academy, Alves was also instrumental in helping facilitate the partnership between the school and GESP, which has become GESP’s flagship school.

Today, Alves is responsible for recruiting international students from Iceland, Denmark, the Netherlands and the Dominican Republic. She is also responsible for planning and organizing the company’s yearly conference held each September. Work to set up the conference begins in January with Alves making a variety of arrangements to pull the conference together, which requires coordinating not only with the GESP team, but all of its partners and the schools.

However, at the end of the day, Alves said the aspect of the job that she has always found most rewarding has been working with the students and families.

“What’s really rewarding is when I work with students and then I still am in contact with them years later even after they’ve gone to high school and college,” Alves said. “I have kids that I used to work with at Woodstock 10 to 12 years ago who I still talk to today. When they’re in the area, we’ll go and have breakfast together. I feel like that is the most rewarding because now I’ve seen them not only go through the process with admissions, with us, but I’ve seen them after doing their thing which is kind of exciting.”