Staff Highlight: Layni Pistone

Layni is Summer Springboard’s Admissions Manager, but she has a long history with Terra Education and has filled many roles at SSB as well.

Name: Layni Pistone

Title: Admissions Manager / Yale Program Manager

Years with SSB: 3 Years

Hobbies: Hiking the mountains of Denver, arts & crafts

Layni took a roundabout path to her final destination at Summer Springboard. After working with SSB’s sister company, Global Leadership Adventures, in the 2010s, she took a break from the teen program milieu. When the opportunity presented itself to come back to Terra in 2021, she jumped at the chance. 

“We really are the best, and I wanted to be a part of that,” she says. 

Layni spent the summer of 2022 serving as the Assistant Campus Director at Yale, where she worked closely with students and staff and took the lead in coordinating excursions and activities outside of the classroom. She loves the quiet feel of the Yale campus in summer, and the ambiance provided by the towering brick buildings and green lawns. “There is so much history there,” she says. “Plus, the food in the dining hall is INCREDIBLE–like really top notch.”

“Yale is a great campus for students who want a smaller group feel away from the city. There’s a distinctive community feel here.”

While Yale’s campus served as an excellent backdrop, the students’ work ethic, talent, and energy is what sticks with her. The  end-of-session presentations in particular left her speechless. One group from the Emergency Medicine track performed a mass casualty simulation. 

“The students really got into it. Those playing ‘victims’ gave an A+ performance and the students who were the medical staff were so impressive to watch! They were calming, commanding and so knowledgeable about what they were doing. It was so awesome to be involved and to see those students really use what they had learned in their course.”

While Layni thrives in the field, she loves that she has the opportunity to talk to families about her experience on a program as the Admissions Manager from the comfort of her home (office) in Denver, surrounded by her “coworkers” Opa and Bean, two friendly cats that she rescued in her neighborhood. 

“It’s one thing to research a summer program, sign up, read all the literature, etc. but it really can’t compare to having a conversation with someone intimately familiar with the day-to-day.”

When asked what sets Summer Springboard apart from similar pre-college programs, Layni laughs. “Where do I even start! SSB manages to hit the sweet spot, the perfect combination of academically challenging material, socialization and networking opportunities and fun–all components that are so crucial during this time of life. Students don’t burn out and they really maximize their time. It’s incredible to watch them come into their own given the opportunity.”

Check out programs at Yale here, or learn more about Summer Springboard’s staffing model.