Joy Tutoring

Meet the boss!

Benji is the executive director and founder of Joy Tutoring and has been enthusiastically tutoring since 2006. He grew up in Albany, CA, and attended Marin Elementary School, Albany Middle School, and Albany High School. He graduated from Dartmouth College in 2013 with honors with a degree in Biology. After college he taught at Tilden Preparatory School in Albany until he started his PhD in UC Berkeley's department of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management. Benji received his PhD in 2020 and wrote his dissertation on the behavioral ecology of spiders.

Benji uses innovative and adaptive teaching methods to help his students thrive and excel far past their expectations. He specializes in tutoring high school math, and has tutored many other subjects including biology, environmental science, chemistry, physics (all including AP), computer programming, and Spanish. Benji has ADHD and Tourette's Syndrome, and he loves to work with students with learning disabilities. He believes that these conditions form an important part of who he is, and that - in addition to the difficulties they pose - have ultimately made his life better.

Meet our awesome team!

Masami is the Director of Operations at Joy Tutoring and follows her mission to empower others through education. She works at Edwards Lifesciences where she helps bring medical devices to critical care patients. She studied biology and nutritional science at UC Berkeley and received a Masters in Business and Science at Keck Graduate Institute of the Claremont Colleges.
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Masami is in Orange County, California where she loves to sing a ca****la with her music group for senior citizens. In her free time, she enjoys playing tennis, discovering new recipes, and reading all types of books!

Meet our awesome team!

Hi! My name is Kendall. I grew up in Tracy, CA but have since moved to Oakland for school. I'm a PhD student studying wildlife ecology at UC Berkeley. In my free time, I love being outside, cooking, and playing video games! I'm a huge marvel comics fan (Spider-Man's my fave!). I also love traveling - so far I've made it to England, Chile, New Zealand, Mozambique, and a bunch of different states here in the US. My goal is to one day get to visit all 7 continents!

Want to work with Kendall? Check us out at joytutoring.com or contact us here.

Meet our awesome team!

After graduating from the University of Georgia in 2010 with a Bachelor's degree in Journalism and a double minor in Spanish and Political Science, Blakeney moved to Jackson, Wyoming, for 8 years where she taught Pre-K and eventually became the director of the preschool. In 2019, she decided to pursue a career as a Speech-Language Pathologist.

Blakeney is currently a Master's student in the Communication Sciences and Disorders program as well as enrolled in a graduate certificate program for Dyslexia and other learning disabilities at the University of Georgia in Athens, GA. She has additional specialized training in reading instruction through Orton-Gillingham.

Want to work with Blakeney? Check us out at joytutoring.com or contact us here.

Meet our awesome team!

Milo is currently a PhD student at Harvard studying how yeast evolve in the lab! He grew up in Durango, CO, before going to college at Dartmouth, where he became friends with Benji. He graduated in 2013 with a degree in Biology, spent a year helping students and professors in the art and film departments with digital art programs, and then applied to graduate school.

Milo specializes in tutoring programming, basic web development, or digital art programs. He has mentored several college students and taught classes involving programming, and deeply believes that computer science is more fundamental, important, and useful than math (maybe he and Benji can argue on this point)!

Want to work with Milo? Check us out at joytutoring.com or contact us here.

Meet our awesome team!

Maddie Lesser is a PhD candidate in English at UC Berkeley. She grew up in south Florida, and attended Dartmouth College before moving out to the Bay Area. She has taught classes to Berkeley undergraduates on a wide range of subjects, from Milton to the graphic novel, and developed a writing curriculum for the Berkeley Sociology department. She has a true passion for sentence level clarity! In her free time, Maddie loves to run, bake, and read aloud with her husband and dog.

Want to work with Maddie? Check us out at joytutoring.com or contact us here.

Meet our awesome team!

Trinity is a 3rd-year PhD Candidate at UC Berkeley studying how arachnids’ prior experiences influence their mating choices and communication. She grew up in Raleigh, North Carolina and attended Washington University in St. Louis Missouri before heading to the University of Cincinnati Ohio for her master’s.

She taught undergraduate biology labs while in Ohio and Insect Behavior here at Berkeley. Trinity is particularly passionate about spiders and has been studying them all throughout her life. When she is not out searching for her eight-legged friends, she can be found dancing to latin music, hiking or singing.

Want to work with Trinity? Check us out at joytutoring.com or contact us here.

Meet our awesome team!



Frances is a PhD candidate at Stanford studying climate change. She loves learning about the Earth and using physics to try to understand the world around her. She grew up in Richmond, VA and graduated with a degree in environmental engineering from Dartmouth College in 2013. In her free time, she enjoys being outside, building things, and hanging out with her friends.
Frances specializes in teaching physics, math and programming. She has experience working with students of all ages. Her teaching philosophy centers around the idea that all students learn differently, and one of her goals is to help students identify the learning tools that work best for them.

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Want to work with Frances? Check us out at joytutoring.com or contact us here.

Meet our awesome team!

Cassandra loves serving as a mentor and strongly believes in the power of education as a tool for empowerment as well as a crucial pathway to making change in and for our communities. Her commitment to lifelong learning fosters a deep passion for travel, learning from people around the world, and interrogating the systems that cause harm to our communities. She is a Returned Peace Corps Volunteer who served in Botswana. She has a master’s degree in public affairs from Indiana University, with a concentration in international development. For undergrad she went to Virginia Tech, majoring in environmental policy and planning, and minoring in Women’s and Gender Studies and Political Science.

Cassandra is a feminist, womanist activist working in sexual and reproductive health education. In her current role, she focuses on destigmatizing abortion and developing justice-informed curricula. She is passionate about supporting women and girls, emphasizing the need to prioritize q***r and trans women and girls of color.

Want to work with Cassandra? Check us out at joytutoring.com or contact us here.