Eason: Paying back the school that changed her life

Britt Harris Eason heard the story often from her mother. After her mom attended Xavier Prep for her freshman and sophomore years, her family no longer could afford the tuition, forcing her to switch to a public school.
 
One generation later, Eason is determined to do what she can to keep that from happening to other deserving students each year.

Since 2010, the 1999 St. Mary’s Academy graduate has donated $6,000 to $8,000 annually to her alma mater to provide scholarship funds for current students. It is a gift of love, motivated by her mother’s difficult experience with economic realities.
 
“I wanted to give back to St. Mary’s,” Eason, 35, said. “My mom was one of those students who had to drop out because her family couldn’t afford it any more. I know what that school meant to her, and I knew about her experience. If you want to attend St. Mary’s, money shouldn’t be why you’re not able to go there.”
 
Eason finished in the Top 10 of her St. Mary’s Academy Class of 1999. She still keeps in touch with valedictorian Avione Brown Pichon, salutatorian Rachel Harris and several other classmates despite living more than 2,000 miles away from New Orleans in California’s Silicon Valley.
 
After earning a bachelor’s degree in management information systems from LSU, Eason went on to Harvard University to obtain a master’s degree in technology, innovation and education, placing herself among the most marketable graduates in the country.

LinkedIn program manager
She now serves as a technical program manager for LinkedIn, producing software products for the 400 million members of the nation’s premier professional social network.
 
“Facebook is personal stuff and pictures of cats and dogs,” Eason said. “LinkedIn is about getting advice from people, finding mentors, learning about an industry, looking at industry trends and searching for actual jobs that recruiters post.”
 
Seventeen years after receiving her diploma from St. Mary’s Academy, Eason says the school changed her life.

“I would not be where I am without St. Mary’s Academy, period,” she said. “I absolutely had extremely low self-confidence, but I had role models who walked with great esteem and responsibility and faithfulness. My first impression of the Sisters of the Holy Family was that they were very well educated and they carried themselves with such respect. I don’t know how, but they demanded that you have that same type of reverence.”
 
Eason was always a mixture of right and left brain. She loved music – she played the violin as a child – and she also had her own computer from the time she was 6. She cherished reading and writing poetry, but she also was extremely interested in math, science and technology.
 
“I always had that access, so in that sense, I was very privileged,” she said.

Father directed her path
Her father, Keith Harris, a Brother Martin graduate who had a degree in computer science, convinced her to look in that direction in college. But it was her St. Mary’s experience, she said, that was foundational to her life.
 
That experience was heavy on loving discipline.
 
“My parents were strict, but the amount of discipline at St. Mary’s was just phenomenal,” Eason said. “I always tell people I miss the discipline, and they ask me, ‘How could you ever miss the discipline?’ There were things like the length of your skirt and the length of your nails and don’t talk too loudly. I am naturally this loud-talking person. You learned the word ‘boisterous.’ You had to speak at a respectful tone or else they would call you out. Even little things were important like how we walked in line and ‘don’t walk on the grass.’”
 
Eason said most of the rules were written in black-and-white in “this phenomenal rulebook.” One of the regulations she grew to appreciate was the prohibition against males coming on campus to pick up girls – unless they had registered their driver’s license in advance with the school.
 
“If someone said, ‘My brother is going to pick me up,’ that wouldn’t work,” Eason said. “They were very, very careful that way. Some of the girls would say, ‘They’re so strict,’ but that was a great protection mechanism.”

Her favorite debutante ball
Eason said she is thrilled St. Mary’s still hosts a debutante ball for the students because it has so much meaning in her life.
 
“My favorite memory with my dad was spending months practicing for the ball,” she said.
 
The all-girls’ nature of St. Mary’s also led naturally to the students developing their leadership skills, Eason said.
 
“We had very, very high expectations,” she said. “We were just this class of really smart girls. I remember Sister Alicia (Costa), our math and calculus teacher, telling us, ‘You’re sitting on your laurels.’ And we would say, ‘What?’ And she would say, ‘You think you’re smart, but you’re not pushing yourselves.’ She would demand that we push ourselves  even more. Even though math is very specific – it’s either right or wrong – she would say, ‘You really have to show how you came up with that answer and how you understood it.’ She didn’t want us just to memorize it.”

Competition is good
Quite often the Sisters would post the students’ grades on the blackboard to encourage even more competition.
 
“We were always driven to be the best in all ways,” Eason said. “If you fall down, you need to get back up and show that grit and perseverance and determination. They would always say, ‘There’s no excellence without hard labor.’”
 
Eason remembers her English teacher Sister Jean Martinez’s mantra to the students that they had value and had high expectations.
 
“She would always tell us, ‘You are young ladies of substance. You are becoming someone and you are a person of success,’” Eason said. “She would say that over and over. For me, that was something I needed to hear, and the message sunk in. It was such a privilege to be there in a place where people loved you and had high expectations for you, not just preparing you as Christians but also to thrive in society.”
 
Eason laughs about her most rebellious moment. Over the summer, she decided to dye her hair “honey blond.” When she reported for the first day of school in August, Sister Leona Bruner pulled her to the side and said: “Excuse me, Miss Harris, you either need to dye your hair back to its natural color or cover it up.”
 
When Eason argued that other students had lighter hair, Sister Leona tore apart that reasoning. “But that’s because it’s their natural color,” she said.
 
Eason got the message.

She asks two questions
Her scholarship fund is open to all students. Sometimes the annual amount is split among several students. Eason asks the applicants to write short essays on these questions: What do you love about New Orleans and what would you improve about New Orleans? What would you do for a young woman in that community?
 
“I’m trying to get them to think about moving this community forward,” Eason said.
 
She said some of her friends joked with her that usually scholarship funds are named for alumni who are “supposed to be dead or something.” 
 
“It was funny, but there are a lot of foundations that are named after people who are living,” Eason said. “The key thing is that it’s good to see the name of a young person. You don’t have to wait until you’re 65 to give back. It’s important to see that. I want to make this not just about St. Mary’s but about education in general, especially in New Orleans. Living in the Silicon Valley, I know that every one of those kids are being prepared to compete in a global society.”
 
Eason has awarded more than $30,000 in scholarship funds since 2010. She hopes the students whom she helps stay in school and receive a St. Mary’s education will continue the legacy of passing on what they have been given to others.
 
“St. Mary’s taught us that to whom much is given, much is expected,” she said. “That is something I live by.”
 
Peter Finney Jr. can be reached at [email protected].