Wordpress Expert Needed, Website Customization; Directory Website (reviews)

I’m working on a website project that I’ve built a lot on Wordpress, but now need an expert’s help in customizing. I’ve done a lot on my own with no web experience, but it still looks very unprofessional.
Here’s the brief:

-It’s a directory-style website where universities can search for and rate educational products
-Right now I have a plugin for the directory, but it’s not quite what I want, and it’s not customizable and so I can’t fix little bugs . I’m not really happy with it.
-It is a star rating system (like TripAdvisor – leave reviews and answer questions) which I’ve managed to do with two plugins, but again it is a little clunky and looks cheaply built.
-I have a plugin that makes the website password protected, which works pretty well. It’s important that this asset remain as the website will be members-only.
-There is a section that has a forum for discussion, this seems to be working pretty well.
I really would like someone to take my rough draft of this website and make it into something sophisticated.

I would send you my original mockup and “dream” of how it should look, so you can see my vision, plus access to the Wordpress to make edits and to customize it. I’m fine if we need to do any new plugins or to customize something from scratch.

If you think that Wordpress doesn’t fit this idea, you can also suggest a different platform.

My “dream” for the website would be to have it look like TripAdvisor.com in terms of the directory searchability and editing. If you go to TripAdvisor.com you can get an idea of what I want to do, but I am open to original ideas.

Right now this is a single job, but eventually I would also like to hire someone to market the website, SEO, solicit signups, social media, run the blog, etc. However first I need to make sure the website looks nice!

So, I can only pay for this specific project right now. However, once I launch and market the website, you would be first in consideration to be the fulltime assistant.