Featured Story A Legacy that Lifts Generations

With a final push by her undergraduate Honors Program advisor at DePaul University, and her only Journalism professor at DePaul, Renita realized she wanted to be the talent, not  represent them, and left her dreams of  becoming an entertainment attorney behind to pursue broadcast journalism. The move was the right one for Renita, who has realized many of her dreams over the past two decades - covering the 2012 London Olympics via Twitter, launching and hosting successful web series like Goldwatch and Your Money Story, reporting on huge national news stories, and much more.

These opportunities have led her across the world, honed a habit of creating things with meaning and passion wherever she went, and inspired her to build a company from the ground up.  Throughout it all, she has continually acknowledged the important role her mentors and friends have played. 

You can learn more about Renita’s career on her website, www.renitadyoung.com.

Renita’s story is built on her talent and her drive, a strong belief in  the strength and power of her  community, and her faith. These beliefs are reflected in her current roles as founder and Chief Vocal Architect of The Vocale Group and adjunct professor  at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism.  She now has the platform and opportunity to leverage her expertise and offer professional development workshops, media training and voiceover work to help clients give voice to their visions, as well as nurture the next generation of journalists. 

It’s a full circle moment. “That’s the power of telling a 16 year old kid, ‘you’re a pretty good writer. You could be really great, keep nurturing this writing,’” Renita shares. “That’s a gift that McAuley gave me, that I’m now able to give to whoever comes into my classroom. I’m able to assess people’s talents pretty well. I’m able to tell them. And it reminds me of something I knew a long time ago: I have always felt like my purpose in life is to help people see themselves.”

Amidst her busy schedule, Renita has made time to return to Mother McAuley, attending Career Day, the Black Student Union History Makers Breakfast, and for an opportunity to speak to the Mighty Mac Student Ambassadors.

This led to a lot of research and an eventual decision to pursue chemical engineering at Villanova University, which she felt closely mirrored the smaller class sizes, personal experience, and Catholic identity she had at McAuley. “It was important [for me] with engineering, that there is a moral compass to it. [Villanova] had an engineering ethics class... We dove into not only what we can do as an engineer, but how we do it, how we do it ethically, and what else does it impact long term.”

No matter how far her career has taken her from Chicago, Julia has always made an effort to come back to McAuley to speak to students. “To me, [chemical engineering] is such a different field and I want the girls to know what their potential is. It can be intimidating but to me, it’s also door opening, right? Thinking about the people who influenced me to go into not only engineering, but the food industry specifically, I wanted to be that and to show the girls that there’s a lot to offer and that science is really fun and really cool… and you can do it in a fun industry,” Julia shares. “My perception of engineering was always cars and rockets and buildings and highways, but those aren’t the only things that you can
engineer. There’s a lot of fun stuff and if you’re passionate about it, it makes it even more fun.”

“And she was so enthusiastic and I felt so inspired by that,” Rachel continues. “One comment she made that stuck with me was something along the lines of, ‘I’m a chemical engineer and I get to make Pop-Tarts.’ As a high schooler, I thought it was amazing… McAuley girls have a lovely gratitude for their careers or their activities in life. So her word selection, saying I get to do this cool thing… That’s really what I feel like McAuley does - we’re practicing gratitude. And that made me feel seen and was so aligned with my values. It was the affirmation I needed that I was selecting the right career path.”

Rachel shared this story over lunch at the end of Career Day this year, as she sat with a group of women who were reminiscing about the ways in which one person or one sentence could completely change your life.

The Value of Sisterhood and “Balloon People”

Kate Scully Krebsbach ‘05 is no stranger to the importance of community and bringing people together. Now an insurance agent for Scully Insurance Group, she helps business owners understand their risks and options through the lens of insurance, so they can focus on the important task of growing their company and caring for their employees. She has a background in human resources and media relations, giving her a unique lens as she advises and assists her clients.

Kate shows this same care and attention for the personal connections she cultivates. “It’s a big world,” Kate reflects. “It’s a lot of life and you have to have your friends to keep you buoyed when the seas get rough. Making time for joy, that’s my biggest goal. Who you surround yourself with is a huge component of that.”

She shared an analogy she heard from the priest who led her and her husband through Pre-Cana. The idea is simple - everyone has a string that they hold onto in life, and sometimes that string gets heavy with life’s worries or concerns, becoming paperweights on their string. You have to surround yourself with people who are balloons to help lighten the load, because if there’s an imbalance, your arms are going to get heavy and you can only do so much. The shorthand of that is: make sure the people you’re spending your time with are balloons and they’re not paperweights.

This has stuck with her through the years. When Kate and her husband moved into their new home, she jumped at the opportunity to host a dinner party for her mom, some of her mom’s friends who had become role models to Kate, and other women who were “bright lights” in her life.

“It was one of my most favorite events of my recent adult life because we were getting together for the full purpose of friendship,” Kate shares. “These women had supported me in different ways, [and in bringing them together], there were a lot of individual connections that happened that seemed fortuitous. That’s the power of McAuley and living a life filled with people who are going to raise you up in life and not drag you down.”

Through this intentionality of caring for and supporting the “balloon people” in her life, she stumbled on a fundamental idea that you don’t need a holiday or event to trigger a get-together; you can choose to spend time with people simply for the enjoyment of each other’s company. This seems to be a theme that gets lost in adulthood, when busy work and family lives take precedence.

With this in mind, she and her three closest friends, Stephanie Florence ‘05, Laura Washburn ‘05 and Lindsay Washburn ‘05, who met as kids through McAuley theatre’s Kid’s Kamp in the 90’s, established what they affectionately call “quarterly earnings.” They set a quarterly date to all get together, where they stay in, order the same exact meal, watch a movie, sleep over, and go out for breakfast together in the morning.

“It’s not like we have an agenda,” Kate laughs, “but we do call it quarterly earnings because it’s kind of like all of our lives are operating as a little firm… We have the chance to recap our lives, check in and see who needs what, and just enjoy being together.”

So many alumnae share their gratitude for the lifelong friendships that began at McAuley. The safety net and comfort that can be found in friends who were with you in such formative years, who see you for who you are and are your biggest cheerleaders in the good and the bad, is vital. We are all stronger and more successful when we celebrate our sisterhood.

Beth is now a judge in the Circuit Court of Cook County, following a legal career in the courtroom as a trial lawyer where she advocated on behalf of the mentally ill, injured and disabled. She has carried her Mercy values and confident leadership skills into her impressive career, and has participated in the recent Women in Law events at McAuley.

There is a strong sense of pride as Carol witnesses her granddaughters, Maria and Anna, experience Mother McAuley. They both jumped right in, becoming active in theatre and music, joining clubs, playing sports, fostering friendships, and growing their community.

This resonates with Carol, who remembers her time at McAuley and the camaraderie she felt fondly. “As a class, we called ourselves, ‘the spirit of 65.’ We were just one of those classes that said, ‘Okay, here we are. We’re a force. And we were in it together.’ We’re still in it together. It’s interesting how we passed that spirit of McAuley down, and now it’s there for my grandchildren. It just keeps on flowing.”

Carol also shared a reflection from Maria at the reunion luncheon. “McAuley has given me a network of supportive and powerful women who make me proud to be a Mighty Mac. Even after graduating and moving to Washington DC for college, I see Mercy in action wherever I go, running into successful alumnae on my George Washington University campus, as flight crews on planes, on Capitol Hill during discussions about policy and digital strategy!”

These same Mercy values are deeply rooted in their family. “It turns out that in the late 1800’s, my great grandmother attended St. Francis Xavier Academy for Females, the very early beginning of Mother McAuley,” Carol explains.

As a family built on a multi-generational foundation of Catholic, Mercy values and leadership, they are a strong testament to the resiliency, strength and foresight of Catherine McAuley and the Sisters of Mercy, who have staunchly believed that “no work of charity can be more productive of good to society than the careful instruction of women.”