Today we’d like to introduce you to Michael Sison.
Michael, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?
I never set out to start a tutoring company. Over fourteen years ago I was a young civil engineer looking for some extra income, so I applied to tutor with two private tutoring companies in the area. Neither seemed to mind that I had no teaching background. What mattered was that I knew the material and could explain it. Within six months I was working with more than twenty students on evenings and weekends, on top of my engineering job.
Those first months taught me something that has stayed with me. Parents weren’t really paying for algebra help or SAT prep. They were paying for someone who would show up, figure out how their child thinks, and stick with them. I also got to see how these companies worked behind the scenes: recruit strong tutors, match them carefully, and take the logistics off the parents’ plate. I thought it could be done more personally, so I started Magellan with two friends. One of us built the website and systems while the rest of us worked with families and recruited tutors. For years we grew almost entirely by word of mouth.
2020 changed everything. Both of my partners stepped away that year, just as schools went remote, and I found myself running the company on my own at the exact moment Arlington families needed help most. It was the hardest stretch we’ve had, and it was also the turning point. Demand grew faster than I could handle alone, and I learned that a tutoring company can only grow as fast as the people behind it.
So I built a team. Hazel came on first to help run operations, then Vanessa, and this summer Andrea joined as our third manager. Together they take care of families from the first phone call through scheduling and finding the right tutor. John runs our website and technology, Carol manages logistics and tutor hiring, and Makayla, our lead SAT tutor, trains every tutor who joins our SAT team. Behind them are nearly 100 tutors across Northern Virginia and online.
Today Magellan offers one-on-one tutoring for K–12 students in math, reading, writing, science, Spanish and more, along with SAT prep built around our own Magellan SAT Testing Platform. This has been the biggest year in our history. But the idea hasn’t changed since my first students: the right tutor, matched with care, can change how a kid feels about learning. Everything we’ve built since is in service of that.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
Not at all!
The first real test was 2020. My partners left the same year the pandemic hit, and suddenly I was running everything myself while demand was climbing faster than I could keep up. I learned quickly that you can’t grow a tutoring company on your own evenings and weekends. That’s when I started bringing on the people who run Magellan with me today.
The second was one most people never saw. For a stretch in 2023 and 2024, a large share of our work was funded through Virginia’s Learning Acceleration Grants, which helped families pay for tutoring after the pandemic. When that program wound down, that business disappeared almost overnight, and 2025 started with us rebuilding. We went back to basics: answering every inquiry quickly, matching tutors carefully, and earning families who would stay with us because of the results, not because a grant was paying. It took most of a year, but it made us a much stronger company. This year has been our biggest ever, and almost all of it is families choosing to invest in their kids themselves.
The challenge that never goes away is finding great tutors. Demand in tutoring comes in waves, at the start of the school year, before SAT test dates, before finals, and every wave arrives faster than you can hire. Early on I had to turn families away, which I hated. We’ve since built a steady hiring pipeline, with interviews, background checks and an SAT training program every new SAT tutor completes, so we’re rarely caught short. But we’re still careful. Putting the wrong tutor in front of a student is worse than taking an extra week to find the right one.
Looking back, almost every struggle taught me the same lesson: demand was never our problem. Our growth has always been limited by how well we take care of the families we already have, and by having the right people in place to do it.
As you know, we’re big fans of Magellan Tutoring. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about the brand?
Magellan Tutoring offers one-on-one tutoring for K–12 students and SAT prep across Northern Virginia. We’ve been doing it for over 14 years, mostly for families in Arlington, Alexandria and Fairfax, and online for families anywhere. Sessions happen wherever a student learns best: at home, at the local library, or online.
On the general tutoring side, we cover nearly every subject a K–12 student runs into, from elementary reading and math through calculus, along with writing, science, Spanish and more. Students can take a free IXL diagnostic in Math and Language Arts through our IXL classroom, which shows exactly where they stand against grade level, so the tutor can build a plan around real gaps instead of guesses.
For SAT prep, every student starts with a free full-length practice Digital SAT on the Magellan SAT Testing Platform, our own testing platform with more than 5,000 practice questions and 20 full-length adaptive tests. Those results become a personalized Score Plan, and every SAT tutor on our team has completed our in-house SAT Tutor Training. Our students have historically averaged around a 100-point increase. Results vary, and we don’t guarantee a score. I’d rather tell parents the truth than make a promise nobody can keep.
What sets us apart is how much care goes into the match. We don’t hand a family the next available name. We look at the subject, the student’s personality and how they learn, then introduce one tutor we think is the right fit, with a real bio, before anyone commits. Every family starts with a risk-free trial.
The other difference is how reachable we are. Every family has a group text with me and our managers, so a parent with a question is one message away from someone who can actually answer it. Our tutors are background-checked, and we treat them as the professionals they are, which is a big reason good tutors stay with us.
Brand-wise, I’m proudest of our Google reviews. Every one of those five-star ratings was written by a parent who trusted us with their child, and we work hard to keep them. I’m also proud of the families who’ve stayed with us for years. And it’s been an honor to share what we’ve learned beyond our own families: I’ve been featured as an education expert on WUSA9 (CBS DC) and KATV (ABC 7), and in U.S. News & World Report.
If there’s one thing I want readers to know, it’s that we care about progress more than grades. A better grade is a great outcome, but what we’re really building is a student who understands the material, believes they can do hard things, and doesn’t need us forever. Families can reach us at magellantutoring.com, info@magellantutoring.com or 703-203-7572.
Can you talk to us about how you think about risk?
I’m an engineer by training, so I think about risk the way engineers think about a bridge. You don’t build one that carries no load. You build in a margin, so that when the unexpected happens, it holds. I’ve never been the type to bet everything on one move, but I’ve taken plenty of risks I thought through carefully.
The first was starting Magellan at all. I kept my engineering job while the business got off the ground, which some people would call playing it safe. To me it was what made the risk possible. It gave me the room to make mistakes, learn the business and grow it the right way, without making desperate decisions to pay the bills.
The biggest risk came in 2020, when both of my partners left. The sensible move might have been to wind things down or keep it small. Instead I decided to keep going on my own, right as the pandemic turned education upside down. A big part of that was hiring people before I was sure the business could support them. Bringing on managers to run day-to-day operations meant paying for help I was betting we’d grow into. We did, but at the time it was a leap.
Some of our risks are ones we take on so families don’t have to. Every family starts with a risk-free trial: if the tutor isn’t the right fit, they owe nothing. Some families try us and don’t continue, and we absorb that cost. I’d still rather earn a family’s trust than ask them to commit before they’ve seen what we do.
Honesty is a risk too. In SAT prep, plenty of companies promise a specific score. We don’t. We tell parents what our students have historically averaged and that results vary. I know that sometimes costs us a family who wanted a guarantee. I’m fine with that, because a promise nobody can keep is a bigger risk to a reputation than a lost sale.
This year we took another one by asking new families to commit to the school year through our memberships, instead of buying a few hours at a time. Some families aren’t ready for that, and we’ve made it easy to step back if plans change. But consistency is what actually moves students forward, and I’d rather build the business around what works than around what’s easiest to sell.
Pricing:
- as low as $62.50/hr for in-person
- as low as $53/hr for virtual
- as low as $85/hr for SAT Prep
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.magellantutoring.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/magellantutoring/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MagellanTutoringDMV
- Other: https://www.magellantutoring.com/request-a-tutor
