Candy Lee LaBalle, President

Founder of mbaClarity (previously mbaSpain, founded in 2005), Candy is an expert in the educational admissions consulting industry. In addition to her current term on the Board, Candy served as a Board Member in 2012 and 2013. She has chaired or co-chaired several AIGAC conferences, including those taking place at Harvard, MIT, Columbia, Cornell, Yale SOM, NYU Stern, Kellogg, Chicago Booth, London Business School, INSEAD, HEC Paris, and IESE. Candy is regularly featured in publications about the MBA application process and was voted in 2022 as the number one admissions consultant in the world by Poets&Quants. Candy has a degree in Anthropology and has worked as a researcher and travel writer for years. She lives in Madrid.

Paulo Cesar Moraes de Oliveira, Director and Conference Committee Chair

Paulo Cesar is currently Partner and Managing Director at Philadelphia Consulting, located in São Paulo, Brazil. He obtained his Master’s and Doctor’s degrees in Education Administration at BJU, Greenville, SC, and returned to Brazil, having founded and operated Philadelphia Consulting for the  past 28 years, offering GMAT and TOEFL Preparatory Programs and  Admissions Advising to Brazilian customers. Life Motto: “Destiny is not a matter of chance, but a matter of choice”.

Niketa Desai, Director and Professional Development Committee Chair

Niketa believes education is a lever for social mobility. Through Admit Beacon, Niketa has supported hundreds of candidates to make the next leap in their education and careers. Before diving into education full time, Niketa built software for banks, advised large financial institutions on optimising technology infrastructure, and built and ran an affordable housing venture.

Niketa earned her MBA from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business and a degree in Engineering and Information Technology from Charutar Vidya Mandal in Gujarat, India. She lives in Bengaluru, India, and is a member of various education collectives there, where she strives to pay it forward. 

Scott Edinburgh, Director and Survey Committee Chair

Scott Edinburgh, a Wharton MBA and MIT graduate, founded Personal MBA Coach in 2008 to help applicants worldwide gain admission to top MBA programs. Ranked the #1 MBA admissions consultant globally by Poets&Quants in 2026, Scott leads a team that has earned recognition as the #1 boutique MBA admissions consulting firm for three consecutive years. Last year, Personal MBA Coach clients earned over $11 million in scholarships. The firm provides comprehensive MBA admissions support, including early planning, school selection, GMAT/GRE/EA tutoring, essay development, and mock interviews with former M7 and T10 admissions interviewers.

Joy Pincus, Director and Membership Committee Chair

The founder of JP Coaching, Joy Pincus has been working as a full-time Admissions Coach for over twenty years. Her clients, hailing from over 25 countries, have gained admission to every top MBA program in the world. They have also come from numerous fields and industries, including finance, consulting, hi-tech, bio-tech, engineering, law, psychology, military, healthcare, and more. Joy also specializes in EMBA, MiM, part/time MBA, and master’s degree programs. The JP Coaching method has grown out of Joy’s experience in the worlds of journalism, marketing writing, and the arts, and is designed to support candidates throughout every aspect of the application process - from finding out what makes them unique, to deciding which school's offer to accept.   

Amit Kapur, Secretary and Sponsorship Committee Chair

Amit is a veteran of Wall Street, large-cap technology companies, and 10+ years at Sparrey Consulting coaching next-generation business leaders into business school, Amit joined SCG full-time in 2018. In his role, Amit is expanding coaching programs, managing alumni relationships, and helping launch new products to supplement SCG’s coaching services. In the meantime, Amit still coaches a cross-section of clients directly, provides a sounding board for other coaches, and celebrates every client’s success with a mixture of fist-bumps and emojis. In his spare time, Amit volunteers at local schools, & loves games, whiskey and creating learning opportunities for his two daughters.

Maria Cecilia Pineda, Director and Conference Committee

María Cecilia Pineda is an economist trained at Universidad de los Andes with a specialization in International Political Economy. As the Founder and Director of The Grad School in Colombia, she brings over 20 years of experience guiding candidates toward top international postgraduate and MBA admissions. She has been a member of AIGAC (Association of International Graduate Admissions Consultants) for many years and has served on the Conference committee. Her firm provides specialized test preparation and personalized consulting to help students navigate master's pathways across North America and Europe.

Eric Lucrezia, Director 

With 20+ years of experience in admissions consulting, career coaching, education, and recruitment, Eric Lucrezia has supported candidates worldwide to make the next leap in their education and careers. Beginning with his first role in undergraduate admissions in the US in 2000, up until his most recent role as the Director of Recruitment for MBA Programs at ESSEC Business School in Paris and Singapore, Eric has developed a global and multi-level perspective on what gives MBA applicants a competitive profile in the eyes of admissions committees.

The various professional experiences throughout Eric’s career that have been formative in becoming an MBA Admissions Consultant include teaching English in several countries, including at the prestigious French Ecole de Guerre, working in sales and marketing as a real estate agent in New York, and participating in conference or events where he presents numerous topics, including Interviewing in English, Personal Branding, Using LinkedIn like a Pro, and Networking with Class.

You can find Eric every week, streaming live as the host of weekly vidcast, MBA Waves, every Tuesday on LinkedIn, Facebook, and YouTube, where you can get loads of brilliant free tips from the guests he hosts, including many other fantastic coaches and consultants from the AIGAC community. He is also the author of the growing DIY guidebook series “Getting into an MBA.” These are country-specific DIY admissions playbooks, like the Lonely Planet Travel Guides, but for business schools, that take you on the admissions journey from A to Z. Since 2010, Eric has lived in Paris, France.