About Brett

I’m Brett Simpson, a Master’s student at U.C. Berkeley in the Graduate School of Journalism.

I graduated with honors from Princeton University in 2016 with a B.A. in English. Upon graduating, I was awarded Princeton’s Class of 1870 Old English Prize. I also won the Final Comprehensive Exam Prize, awarded to the graduating English major with the top score on the rigorous three-day final exam.

On campus, I was student representative of the undergraduate Journalism Program. In my three years with the Program, I was nominated for the annual Ferris Prize for Exceptional Journalism three times, and won twice.

I rowed for fours years on Varsity Crew, and won the Ivy League Championship in the Varsity Eight at the end of my senior season. This earned us a spot to race at the Henley Royal Regatta in Henley, England – where my boat made history by beating the Great Britain boat for the Women’s Henley title.

In my work as a Student Athlete Wellness Leader, I advocated for academic resourcing for fellow athletes on campus. I also joined a faculty panel for the Student Writing Selection Committee to select the year's best student writing.

In the three years since I graduated, I’ve been building microlearning content as a multimedia writer and producer at an educational technology startup in New York City.

My Tutoring Philosophy 

My tutoring philosophy is that the best learning shouldn’t feel complicated. It’s the task of the teacher to distill concepts to their most essential components and create memorable and repeatable schema. Effective knowledge transfer simplifies and clarifies, unleashing a student's natural abilities.

I also believe that the right mentorship equips students to thrive as independent thinkers. I strive to channel all students’ natural intellectual curiosity into repeatable problem-solving and critical thinking systems. The right set of tools, practiced early and often, will build toward a lifetime of confronting obstacles and finding success.

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