About Us

Joanne M. Carris, PhD has almost 30 years of experience helping families address educational transitions and challenges confidently, efficiently, and compassionately. Joanne is the founder of Premier Tutors, where her team offers tutoring, homeschooling services, and college application support to students throughout the East Coast and California. Premier Tutors partners with parents, teachers, psychologists, and neuropsychologists to find the right support for each child. 

As a parent, Joanne understands how daily parenting challenges intersect with big picture educational questions. Combining her personal experience with professional expertise, she identifies clear next steps for you and helps you put them into action.

Prior to founding Premier Tutors and Map the Path, Joanne was a college consultant, private tutor, in-school learning specialist, and director of professional development programs for teachers. Joanne received her PhD in Education from the City University of New York (CUNY) Graduate Center, her MA in Bilingual Special Education from the Bank Street College of Education, and her MA in Philosophy of Education from the CUNY Graduate Center. Her book The Ghosts of No Child Left Behind won a Choice Outstanding Academic Title Award. Joanne received her BA from the University of Michigan and attended The Town School and Trinity School in New York.

Kiran H. Rikhye, MA has been helping families approach learning and education with greater ease and less anxiety for over two decades. She supports families through moments that can feel overwhelming or uncharted, including the college selection and application process, the transition between schools or into and out of homeschooling, and the emergence of learning challenges due to social or emotional changes at home or at school.

Kiran has extensive experience as a college consultant for students attending independent schools throughout New York City and as a college counselor for homeschooled students. She spent many years as a tutor, providing support in academic subject matter, executive function skills, and SAT and AP test preparation. While helping students meet their immediate goals, she collaborated with teachers, school administrators, parents, and therapists to help each child develop the tools they needed to thrive both in and out of school.

Kiran teaches English courses to homeschooled students of all ages, creates interdisciplinary homeschool curriculum and Individualized Home Instruction Plans (IHIPs) across all subjects, and helps families navigate the academic and administrative demands of homeschooling, whether it is being undertaken for professional, medical, or personal reasons. In her own K-12 years, Kiran attended The Dalton School in Manhattan. She received her BA from Swarthmore College and her MA in English & Comparative Literature from Columbia University.

We look broadly at the large and small factors that shape your child’s experience of school and/or learning. As the parent of a multiracial child and the child of a biracial family, respectively, we know those factors can include—but are by no means limited to—ethnic and racial identity, as well as sexual orientation, and gender identity and expression. We strive always to be attentive to each family’s experience and to each child’s emerging sense of identity.