Kastner Hill Learning

It seemed serendipitous when Nathan Kastner and Owen Hill met as colleagues at Loudoun Test Prep, an award-winning tutoring company serving the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area. Despite coming from entirely different worlds—Owen, freshly out of graduate school with a master’s degree in mathematics, and Nathan, an NYU-trained songwriter with a background in politics—they immediately saw eye-to-eye on the principles of teaching that have formed the bedrock of Kastner Hill Learning: learning should be fun; great teachers should also be mentors; a student is more than a score. KHL began in June 2020 in Austin, Texas. While that was a difficult time to start a business, Nathan and Owen focused on supporting their students during a trying school year. After a year of meeting with students virtually and at coffee shops, KHL moved into a permanent location in the Westlake neighborhood of Austin in the summer of 2021 and hired its first two tutors that same year. KHL has thrived in the following years: its office space has tripled, the team of four tutors has grown to almost twenty, and KHL’s tutors taught over three hundred students last year. However, as KHL has grown, its foundational principles remain the same. Throughout their years working together, and now as the co-owners of Kastner Hill Learning, Nathan and Owen’s belief that results are best achieved through compassionate teaching and a holistic approach to student engagement has only been reinforced. At Kastner Hill Learning, we believe that success extends beyond the test. We strive every day to be more than just tutors and to always remember that a student is more than a score.