A Full-Circle Honor: Speaking on Mount Carmel's Empowering Women Alumnae Panel

Some invitations feel like a homecoming, and this was one of them. As part of Mount Carmel Academy's 100 Years in Lakeview celebration, I was invited back to my alma mater on February 25 to join the Empowering Women Alumnae Panel — one of thirteen graduates asked to sit down with current students and speak honestly about life after Mount Carmel. (Read Mount Carmel's recap of the Empowering Women Alumnae Panel here.)

A Panel Spanning Generations

Sitting alongside alumnae ranging from the Class of 1962 all the way to the Class of 2010, I got a front-row seat to just how far-reaching an MCA education really is. Every woman on that panel had taken a completely different path — law, ministry, medicine, business, the arts — yet we all traced our confidence and our foundation back to the same halls.

We talked with the girls about how our years at Mount Carmel shaped our faith, our confidence, and our work ethic, and how those foundations carried into very different careers and callings decades later.

What We Talked About

The students asked real, thoughtful questions, and the conversation stayed honest and practical rather than polished. Some of what we dug into together:

• Balancing God, family, and a demanding career — and why none of it has to be perfectly balanced all the time to still be faithful

• Taking risks without a guarantee they'll pay off, and trusting that preparation plus faith can carry you through the uncertainty

• Learning from setbacks instead of being defined by them

• Building something of your own — for my part, I got to speak to what it's meant to grow a creative business from the ground up here in New Orleans, and how leaning on my faith has carried me through the hardest seasons of being an entrepreneur and an artist

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Why It Mattered

It was humbling to be trusted with that kind of honesty in a room full of young women who are still writing their own first chapters. I remember sitting in those same seats once, not yet sure what my future held. Getting to come back as a woman further down that road — and remind a room of girls that their faith and their gifts really can carry them somewhere unexpected — is one of those moments I'll carry with me for a long time.

If even one of them walks away believing that, then the afternoon did exactly what it was meant to do.

Source:

• Empowering Women Alumnae Panel — Mount Carmel Academy