For many families, mentioning “college admissions” causes immediate tension. The rankings, the deadlines, and the pressure for the candidate to be outstanding can make the entire process feel overwhelming. Margaret Baudinet has based her professional career on changing such feelings.
She is the CEO of College Solutions and, over the course of fifteen years, she has practiced something deceptively simple. Before offering any guidance, she first sits with students and families, asking thoughtful questions and listening fully (without an agenda). She believes she cannot properly advise families without first understanding what drives them, what scares them, and what they want their life to look like beyond the admissions decisions and college outcomes. That kind of listening is the foundation of her work.
She is a CEO, a counselor, and a mother of six. Rather than treating these as separate identities, she integrates them. Together, they have shaped a leadership style that is defined by listening, discipline, and human-centered leadership. In an industry crowded with advisors who offer formulas and frameworks, Margaret Baudinet offers something far more valuable: perspective. She believes families are overwhelmed by information overload and need someone to provide clarity. This has been her work for fifteen years.
Respect and Generosity: The Foundation of Her Leadership
When describing her leadership philosophy, Margaret Baudinet does not share a complicated framework. She gives you two words: respect and generosity.
Respect, to her, means seeing people clearly, honoring their experiences, paying attention to their questions, and never considering someone’s choice as straightforward simply because it appears that way from the outside.
Margaret Baudinet sees generosity as showing up fully, listening without rushing to fix, asking better questions before giving answers, and committing to someone’s journey even when it gets complicated.
These are not abstract ideals. They are how Margaret Baudinet operates daily. Margaret often says she does not see herself as a traditional consultant. She sees herself as a counselor. A consultant delivers solutions, while a counselor creates space for honest reflection, real conversation, and for a family to figure out what they actually want.
College Solutions works at the nexus of ambition, identity, and financial reality. The families who come to Margaret Baudinet are frequently under a lot of stress. They are looking for someone to help them think things through without added noise or pressure. Families need clarity, and College Solutions helps them slow down enough to find it.
Home as a Classroom: What Motherhood Taught Her About Leadership
Margaret’s professional journey has been deeply informed by her personal experiences. And when you hear her talk about raising quintuplets and a toddler, it becomes clear why.
Parenting five children of the same age is, as she puts it, the best leadership training that exists. Every day brings competing needs, loud opinions, real emotions, and decisions that must be made quickly and fairly. “You cannot manage it with a spreadsheet. You must be present, patient, and genuinely attentive to each person—not to the room as a whole, but to each individual within it,” says Margaret.
That experience has made her a sharper CEO. It has deepened her patience and reinforced her belief that meeting people where they are, rather than where you wish they were, is always the right starting point. For Margaret, home and work are the same world (not competing worlds) where she must consistently show up, pay attention, and care enough to get it right.
A Culture That Puts People First, Every Single Time
At College Solutions, “family first” is a fundamental policy that changes how people work.
If a counselor’s child is sick, another counselor steps in. If a member of the leadership team faces a family crisis, they log off with no questions asked. Every full-time employee has unlimited paid time off, not as a reward for good performance, but as a basic expression of trust.
Margaret Baudinet is deliberate about this. She believes that people cannot fully support clients if they feel like they have to sacrifice their own lives to do it. When people feel trusted, they invest in the work. When they feel supported, they take ownership. The culture Margaret has built is strategic, and it works.
The Year Everything Shifted and What She Learned From It
In 2023, Margaret Baudinet received unexpected news: after years of infertility, she was expecting a baby. While deeply joyful, the moment also revealed something she had not fully confronted as a leader.
She had not built her succession plan with enough intention. Too many decisions were still flowing through her. When she needed to step back to focus on her family and health, the structural gaps became clear.
What followed was a period of recalibration. She elevated leaders within College Solutions, created clearer ownership across functions, and built systems designed to keep moving without requiring her constant presence. Margaret Baudinet also practiced trusting other people to lead, even when their approach looked different from her own.
She summarizes an important lesson learned in one brief sentence: “If the organization depends on you, you have not finished building it yet.”
Honest, Open, and Unapologetically Real
Margaret Baudinet communicates the way she lives: openly, directly, and without a lot of performance. She describes herself as someone who leans toward oversharing. “I am a person who might tell a stranger in an elevator about the embarrassing thing that happened to me that morning. It is not calculated. It is just who I am,” she shares.
She has found that this quality is one of her greatest professional strengths. When a leader is genuinely transparent, it changes the culture around her. It tells the team that they do not have to be perfect to be respected and allows people to feel safe enough to raise a concern, admit a mistake, or ask for help.
And she has also learned to pair that openness with discipline. Margaret’s standard is simple: be real, be clear, and create the conditions where others feel safe enough to do the same.
The Legacy She Is Quietly Building
When Margaret talks about legacy, she does not focus on revenue or recognition. She talks about how her students feel.
She wants every student who works with College Solutions to feel seen: not sorted, not ranked, and not reduced to a GPA or an extracurricular list. Margaret wants them to feel understood as individuals, not defined by metrics.
That is what she is building: an organization rooted in honesty, dedication, and creativity. And she hopes that standard will outlast her leadership.
What She Tells the Leaders Coming Up Behind Her
Addressing the leaders of tomorrow, Margaret advises, “Do not wait until you feel ready. You will not feel ready. Leadership is something you grow into through action and reflection, not something you arrive at once you have ticked enough boxes.”
She emphasizes the importance of building a team that thinks differently, not identically. Strong organizations are created with a team of people who are aligned by shared values and kept honest by different perspectives. This combination is the foundation of any team worth leading.
The Thread That Runs Through Everything
Strip away the title, the business, and the accomplishments, and one principle remains firm: people want to be understood.
Whether she is helping a teenager figure out which college is the right fit, leading her team through a major organizational change, or surviving the dinner-time chaos of six children, the principle does not change. People want to be seen. They want to be heard. And they want to be guided by someone who cares about where they land. Margaret Baudinet has built her career, her company, and her leadership identity on that belief. And every day, in every conversation, she proves that it works.
Margaret Baudinet guides her business and her life by the belief that respect builds trust, generosity builds capacity, and clarity moves people forward. And great leadership, as she has always understood it, begins the moment you decide to truly listen.
