Brave Over Perfect: Insights from Christina Breen
00:41
Mara Kamat
Hi, everyone. Welcome back to In Her Land, where we highlight amazing women who are leaders in their field in and around the land. And this week, we are excited to welcome someone who has an incredible footprint both in Cleveland and as a leader in education and in our lives, as the head of school of Laurel, Christina Breen.
01:24
Christina Breen
Yay.
01:24
Carrie Aguilar
Christina, it's so great to have you join us. It's not every day that I get to interview my husband's boss, so I'm glad that you're here, and I'm hoping I do well. I know when Mara and I were putting together our season, we kept talking about having you join, and were, like, so nervous to ask, and Mara was like, I'm just gonna do it. I'm just gonna do it. And then when she said that you said yes, she was so excited. We were like, yes.
01:50
Christina Breen
She said yes.
01:51
Carrie Aguilar
She'd love to. So thank you for joining us.
01:54
Christina Breen
Thank you. It's a pleasure to be here.
01:57
Mara Kamat
So as we start, we always like to learn a little bit more about our guests. Can you tell us about your early life? Where did you grow up, and what was your family like?
02:06
Christina Breen
Sure. I grew up in Massachusetts.
02:09
Carrie Aguilar
I come from where in Massachusetts.
02:10
Christina Breen
I'm from a town called methuen. It's about 40, 30, 40 minutes north of Boston. Right near the New Hampshire border, actually. And I have seven siblings.
02:22
Carrie Aguilar
Wow.
02:23
Christina Breen
Come from a really big family. I have six sisters and one brother.
02:28
Carrie Aguilar
Is the brother the youngest? Did your parents just like, keep trying for that?
02:31
Christina Breen
No, he's right in the middle. He's in a very privileged cocoon surrounded by sisters who adore him.
02:40
Carrie Aguilar
That's how I feel about my brother. I've got one and he's got three sisters, so. Right on that.
02:45
Christina Breen
Yeah, it's great. And I have six sisters, so I have sort of six built in best friends, which is incredible. We're Really a very close family. My parents are very active 88 year olds. And we feel blessed every day that we have this family.
03:03
Carrie Aguilar
Wow.
03:04
Mara Kamat
What is the age distribution? How many years between the top and the bottom?
03:09
Christina Breen
Well, there's seven of us in nine years.
03:12
Mara Kamat
Oh, my gosh.
03:13
Christina Breen
And then there's the outlier. Who came 12 years later? My little sister Bernadette. Oh, Bernadette, who's by far the coolest.
03:22
Carrie Aguilar
For sure.
03:23
Christina Breen
You saved the coolest for last. Yeah.
03:26
Mara Kamat
That's wonderful. And how many, like, with such a large family, how many cousins between all of your kids and their children?
03:34
Christina Breen
Yeah, I think there are. Sorry if I get this wrong. I think there are 13 grandchildren. And now there are. With Patrick, who just arrived last week, there are five great grandchildren.
03:48
Mara Kamat
Oh, that's amazing.
03:50
Christina Breen
So it's just. We just keep replicating ourselves and it's really. It's wonderful. Our family is really close. We spend a lot of time together in the summer in New Hampshire at the beach.
04:03
Carrie Aguilar
At the beach.
04:04
Christina Breen
A town called Rye, New Hampshire. Yeah. New Hampshire only has 13 miles of coastline.
04:09
Carrie Aguilar
I was gonna ask.
04:10
Christina Breen
Cause you can find it on a Portsmouth. Yeah, it's right in town, right next door. So that's where we all grew up spending our summers. And now our children did. And now their children are. So it's very special.
04:22
Carrie Aguilar
I have a sister who actually lives right near York Beach, Maine. So very close to. So I spend a lot of time in that area.
04:28
Christina Breen
Yeah. My son Luke is a surf instructor in the summers in York Beach.
04:33
Carrie Aguilar
Oh, I love that. Oh, that's so fun. Small world. Yeah. So tell us a little bit about, like, where you went to college, what that looked like.
04:43
Christina Breen
Sure. I went to Tufts University right outside of Boston. I was a student athlete there. I played lacrosse there and also did a lot of theater. So I really enjoyed my time at Tufts. I'm a big booster for that school. I feel it is the perfect school. It's the perfect size elephants. Yes. Well, I do now jumbos.
05:05
Carrie Aguilar
Yeah. Tufts has like 30 elephants all around.
05:08
Christina Breen
Yeah. At school. And it was just the greatest school for me. I had internships in Boston. You know, it's only three, four miles away. Getting into the city, it could be a student athlete. Was really involved in a lot of student organizations at Tufts, and I was an English major there. I loved it. Then I went to the University of Vermont for graduate school and then began my career in education.
05:34
Carrie Aguilar
Do you. I know that I did some homework. And your families composed of educators.
05:42
Christina Breen
Yes.
05:42
Carrie Aguilar
Can you talk a little Bit about what first drew you to education beyond your family and then what made you want to go into school. Leadership.
05:54
Christina Breen
Sure. I went to a boarding school called Phillips Academy Andover before I started working at Phillips Exeter Academy. They're very similar schools. And I loved that the people who worked there could be teachers in their area of expertise, but also work with students in sports or the arts or debate. It felt a little bit like summer camp, actually. And that you could kind of explore and flex different parts of your identity and your interest and work with students in multiple ways. What's really fun about boarding school is that you'll have somebody who lives in your dorm, but then you may teach them, you know, in a Jane Austen class and then coach them on a team, walk by them in the dining hall. And so there's. It's a much more complex and rich relationship between student and teacher.
06:56
Christina Breen
You know, these kids, many more dimensions of these kids. And I really loved that. I was drawn to that possibility. So I knew when I went to grad school that I would like to work in a boarding school in particular, not just in education and not just in high school, but in that residential environment to be fully immersed. So my husband and I got married in July and we moved into a dorm in August and we stayed there in dorms for 30 years. So when we moved here, like, wait, where are the students?
07:35
Carrie Aguilar
We have a house.
07:36
Christina Breen
Why aren't they knocking on our door asking if we have any food?
07:39
Carrie Aguilar
That's so funny.
07:40
Christina Breen
Yeah.
07:41
Carrie Aguilar
So I actually went to boarding school too. So I can definitely like my favorite teachers. I mean, I totally understand your. Because the community is what makes it so incredible. And you. I remember for my advisor, who was also my dorm parent, I babysat his child. Like I was like the first person to babysit his kid when William was like three months old or something. And now he's, you know, 23 years old. But I totally understand. It's an incredible. It's an incredible experience. That's really cool.
08:15
Mara Kamat
Out of curiosity, how did that influence the decisions that you made for your own kids education?
08:21
Christina Breen
Well, I began working at Phillips Exeter when my children were, I think like 4 or 5 and then 6 and 8 or something like that with the idea in mind that I really wanted them to have the opportunity to go there if it was the right school. Because Andover and Exeter in particular are just extraordinarily well resourced schools. They're more like small colleges. I kind of compare them to Amherst and Williams more than, you know, your typical vision of what a boarding school would be, and I knew that it would be an extraordinary opportunity for them to go there. So I really tried to position myself as an employee there so that my children would have that opportunity. It's also incredibly diverse. So in a not very diverse state of New Hampshire, it's a little pocket.
09:14
Christina Breen
And for my children to be able to have those kind of rich conversations really early on in their life with kids from all around the world who have many different worldviews and perspectives, that felt like a real gift I was going to be giving to them. So that was what helped me decide to move into that position and allow that opportunity for our kids.
09:36
Mara Kamat
Fast forward, how'd that work out for them?
09:38
Christina Breen
It worked out great. Two of the three of them went to Exeter. My third child went to a wonderful school called Proctor Academy that has many of the elements of Butler, a lot of experiential learning opportunities in the woods of New Hampshire, you know, with their own ski hill. And so everybody ended up at the school where they belonged. And it really helped to launch them into their college lives and beyond.
10:03
Mara Kamat
Well, so I know we'll talk about Laurel more in a minute, but staying on the subject of education, there's so much changing in the way that we educate kids today. What would you say are the biggest impacts that you're thinking about for the next five to 10 years in educating our children?
10:24
Christina Breen
I mean, I think our school just did a full day professional development on AI. I don't think that we can put our heads in the sand and say we're just not going to pay attention to the digital world. I really do think it's going to play a significant role in education, and it's up to us to learn as much as we can about it so that we can manage it and control it in a way that's best for our students as opposed to being reactive to it. So I do believe the ways in which our students will. Their education will be shaped by AI will be significant. That can be positive or negative or a combination of both. But, you know, we at Laura, we really want to try to shape that narrative and shape that experience towards the.
11:11
Mara Kamat
Positive, obviously, and we certainly have opportunities there. In one of our podcasts, Penelope gave us her idea of what AI is going to do to people. And Carrie, do you want to share Penelope's interpretation?
11:28
Carrie Aguilar
Like, she just. She's nervous that everyone's going to become not intelligent. Yep.
11:34
Mara Kamat
That they're going to.
11:36
Carrie Aguilar
Yeah, exactly. Exactly.
11:37
Mara Kamat
And they'll lose their ability to kind of Think thoughtfully and strategically, because they'll just type it in and get answer, and they'll take that for face value. And so it was really interesting to hear a fourth grader's perspective, which.
11:51
Carrie Aguilar
Yeah. Which.
11:52
Christina Breen
I mean, which was real.
11:53
Mara Kamat
Yeah. You have to teach people how to responsibly use it and when to know how to challenge it and how to use it as a tool to augment versus potentially replace.
12:02
Carrie Aguilar
Yeah.
12:03
Mara Kamat
But that's up to you to figure out and to teach our children. Right.
12:07
Christina Breen
Okay, I'm on it.
12:08
Mara Kamat
All right, good.
12:09
Carrie Aguilar
So in that same vein, in your mind, how do we prepare children to adapt to this rapid change without losing who they are or what makes them human, what makes them unique?
12:21
Christina Breen
So my philosophy about AI in thinking about its role in education is actually kind of this, like, really elegant combination of digital and analog, and that we have to grow them in both ways simultaneously. So we want our girls to be super skilled in technology, be able to navigate this world. They're being launched into it.
12:43
Mara Kamat
Right.
12:43
Christina Breen
If you think about where Penelope is going to be in 10 years, she's going to be in this world, and we want her to have lots of skills and fluency in that area, and at the same time, much more deepened and enriched relationships and social skills. Those soft skills, ability to collaborate, to be part of a disagreement. Civil discourse is a real tenet for us, a real pillar for us at Laurel. So it's a both. And there are some schools that are sort of going deep dive into tech and ed tech everywhere you go. And I think cautiously wading through those waters will be the smart avenue for Laurel, and at the same time, bolstering and prioritizing human connection and human relationships. So both of those things need to happen in parallel.
13:38
Mara Kamat
You talked a little bit about civil discourse just now. And in the world that we're living in, with so many different perspectives, so much conflict happening internationally. Can you tell us a little bit about how you prepare or how you're thinking about helping students to build stronger skills and thinking capabilities in the space of civil discourse?
14:02
Christina Breen
Absolutely. They are a set of skills. You don't come out of the womb being able to be in a constructive dialogue. Right. These are things that we do need to teach our children. And I think exposure to different points of view is really essential. It speaks back to what I was saying about being part of an international boarding school where kids from all around the world and you're sitting at a table learning was, you know, somebody from Korea and somebody from LA and somebody from Canada and Somebody from Costa Rica who all have different sets of families and values and faith perspectives. And you will be enriched if you listen and allow yourself to be part of that conversation and share your perspective and disagree respectfully.
14:56
Christina Breen
So I do believe that social media in particular, and just news in general has basically put everybody into closed feedback loops. And unfortunately, we're not letting enough diversity of opinion come into our spheres. And I really want our students to be challenged that we want their views to be challenged and then be able to articulate why they believe what they believe and to be able to understand why somebody else believes what they believe. So it really is going to be so important basically to the survival of the species fairly.
15:40
Mara Kamat
I've had some situations in my professional life in the last five years that I wish I would have had stronger skills in civil discourse as well as stronger skills in my ability to kind of separate myself and my own beliefs from the conversation. And that's not to say I didn't react appropriately, but I did internalize some of the conversations afterwards to a point that was like, emotionally challenging for me. And some of it was in the space of what was happening in Israel with the hostage situation. And I was at Harvard taking a class with a very diverse group of people. We were living together for two weeks in a dorm setting. And one of the gentlemen was from the Middle east, and he was like, well, I believe in Hamas, right. Which was very different than what I believed.
16:33
Mara Kamat
And what was happening at such a hard time, because it was just after the hostages were taken, like within, you know, two and a half months after the hostages were taken on October 7th. And so it was a hard time. Really interesting, though, to sit in the room with a group of, you know, eight of us from around the world, incredibly global. One from Australia, one from uae, one from Brazil, myself from the us An Indian gentleman, another person from the us And I know I'm missing two other countries that were represented in that group all to say our conversation was fine, but I wish I had the skills to be able to listen and feel less personalized in that moment.
17:23
Christina Breen
Yeah, it's interesting. It's almost, you know, some of the sort of stereotypical phrases from therapy need to be brought into discourse, such as tell me more. Right. There's a wonderful book called I Never Thought of It that Way, which talks about civil discourse. It's been a very guiding text for me. So just wanting. People don't just come to their beliefs armaturely they have family histories around this, religious and cultural reasons for their beliefs. Socioeconomic reasons for their beliefs. And young people in particular really do carry a lot of what their parents are saying at home into the school because they haven't quite yet formulated their own perspectives. So we really. I do really feel that it is the job of educators when they come into the building to create spaces where, you know, a big diversity of perspectives are allowed. Yeah, yeah.
18:24
Carrie Aguilar
That's so important. So shifting a little bit to Cleveland because you're new to Cleveland and Laurel, because you're new to Laurel. You lead a school that's deeply rooted in Cleveland. So besides it being a tundra right now and you being where you're from, I'm sure it's, like, very normal for you. How do you like Cleveland, and are you feeling at home here yet?
18:46
Christina Breen
Cleveland's like, don't sleep on Cleveland.
18:49
Carrie Aguilar
No, it's the best.
18:50
Christina Breen
It is really wonderful. You would be not. You'd be completely priced out of the market to live in a suburb of Boston in the way that you can live in a suburb of Cleveland and have access to sports and arts and parks. Everybody here is really friendly and nice. I think just the general tenure of the region is just, you know, just be nice and kind. It's much more gruff in New England. Not as much eye contact.
19:23
Carrie Aguilar
The roads are a little less friendly. I feel like driving, although, I must.
19:28
Christina Breen
Say, way better plowed. Yeah, the plow game is rough out here.
19:34
Carrie Aguilar
Go to Cleveland Heights, it's even worse.
19:37
Christina Breen
Yeah. So I've really enjoyed it. I mean, there's one road. I don't know if it's cedar. When you're over by us in Shaker Heights, where you can kind of look and see the city looming up above. And I love that. I love that it's so easy to. To access. And I've really, just really enjoyed this move here. Everyone's wonderful, and these towns are gorgeous, and the parks are incredible. All during the summer, we had a really warm summer, and I made a commitment to go to a different Metro park every weekend. It was a great way to get to know the city.
20:14
Carrie Aguilar
Oh, that's awesome.
20:15
Mara Kamat
Yeah.
20:16
Carrie Aguilar
I remember you were talking about how people are so nice. So my husband and I moved from Arizona a couple years ago, and I grew up here, but he came from Arizona, and he had lived in Arizona for the first 47 years of his life or whatever. 45. And he. I remember him coming back from the grocery store, and he is like. He's like, I'm just not used to. We had been here for, like, six months. He's like, I just don't get it. Like, everyone is so nice. Like, the checkout person at Heinen's was asking me about my day and then, like, wanted to hear about it. He's like, it's just the strangest thing. So I love that you pick up on that, because it's like, it's very. It's very, like, Midwest in that way.
20:57
Mara Kamat
Is there something that has happened that maybe you didn't expect as you came into your role at Laurel? Something that's perhaps surprised you about Laurel or the job itself?
21:09
Christina Breen
I have spent my entire life in private schools in New England independent schools. I was really struck by the loyalty of the alumni body at Laurel. It's really incredible how much people who graduated 20, 30, 40, 50, 60 years ago cite this experience as being the most seminal, the most formative of their lives, and how loyal they are. We have a wonderful director of alumni relations, Julie Donahue, who I call the walking Laurel encyclopedia, and she created these wonderful events by decades. So I met with alums by decades. And, you know, we would start each of these gatherings in the same way. Tell us something about your Laurel experience. And they all went to, like, who won the song contest.
22:08
Carrie Aguilar
Right. Of course.
22:09
Christina Breen
50 years ago, you know, and they were like, Sally Jones. She was very good at the piano. And that's why we lost, because it was rigged, because Sally was, you know, she really knew how to break out the parts and the harmonies from 50 years ago. They are holding onto these experiences as being so important to them. So, you know, people love their schools in New England, but really not to this level. And I really feel like Laurel is even a greater outlier than any of the other schools in Cleveland. And the ways in which the graduates are really love Laurel.
22:47
Carrie Aguilar
Yeah, I'm giggling. My mom was class of 71. My sister was class of 95. And though my other sister and I did not graduate from Laurel, it's like this. It's very much the same. Like, my mom went to every single. She lives in Chagrin Falls. She went to every single. Oh, when were. Or when were looking, were in the search for you, essentially. She would go to all of the town halls. She would go to every single one. And I will say that right after she walked out, she called my husband, and she's like, christina Breen is the real deal. Like, that's what she says.
23:23
Mara Kamat
I had a group text after every town hall with a bunch of parents to assess, like, who was up there and how everybody felt about them.
23:31
Christina Breen
Right. I mean, that's an incredibly engaged parent body.
23:34
Mara Kamat
Yeah.
23:34
Christina Breen
I mean, we're not trying to be like, will someone please come to one of these things?
23:38
Carrie Aguilar
Right.
23:39
Christina Breen
Going to an open house and there's two parents sitting in the front row. I mean, that was a packed house.
23:44
Mara Kamat
Yeah.
23:45
Carrie Aguilar
There was a whole group text bomb.
23:48
Mara Kamat
Thing happened happening after each candidate.
23:50
Christina Breen
I love the investment. As a head of school. That's what you want?
23:54
Carrie Aguilar
Yeah.
23:54
Christina Breen
You want the investment in that way. Yeah. That's brilliant.
23:59
Mara Kamat
As mothers of daughters, Carrie and I often talk to people and our guests about the importance of confidence and building future leaders. How important do you feel the single sex education is to building that confidence in future leaders, in our girls? And what are the values or attributes and you most wish to impart on these young women who are coming to Laurel as students?
24:25
Christina Breen
Sure. I really want our girls to find their voice and hold onto it and honor their own voices. I feel that is crucial. And I'm going to say something that may seem unexpected, but I really hope our girls learn to fail. They have to make mistakes and stumble. In fact, that is, in fact, the scientific method is to make mistakes most of the time until you find the right answer. And I want our students to not be afraid to fail, to jump into something new, to try a new skill, a new activity, even if they're not perfect. And I do feel that social media has tried to convince girls that they have to be perfect in the way that they look, in the way that they talk, in the way they perform.
25:20
Christina Breen
And we want Laurel to be a place where you can experiment, fail gracefully, learn from those mistakes, and move forward. So it may sound silly that I want our girls to be less about being perfect and more about being brave.
25:37
Mara Kamat
It's not silly at all. And it's honestly something that I worry about all of the time with my kids. And Ariana, my youngest daughter, who's 10, competes in gymnastics, and she's very serious about it. And so competition season just started. We're now on our third competition that we're going into, and in the first one, before she got on the beam, she started crying because she was afraid she was gonna fall off of it. She ended up having a stellar performance and being great. And I'm like, okay, that was a great experience. Now let's debrief about why you were crying and the stress you were feeling. We manage that.
26:16
Mara Kamat
And then at the last meet, she fell off the beam, and she was so mad and in such a bad mood and kind of like not a great attitude, if I'm honest, and couldn't get herself out of that space for several hours. And we had a lot of discussions around, like, it's okay to fall, and you're still on a team. And so you need to think about the attitude that you bring forward for the rest of your team, for the rest of those events. And so. So for me, these have been, like, incredible learning experiences for her and building that resilience and learning how to fail. And I know that there's, like, academic ways as well that they need to build those skills and flex in. And so it's interesting because I have one child that is very much.
27:07
Mara Kamat
My older child very much wants to be perfect all the time. So it's even more important to me that she learns how to stumble, how to fail and build that resilience. Because the reality is, that's what happens in the world.
27:20
Carrie Aguilar
I was gonna say one of. I was at doordash for a long time. In one of our values, we had two values. One was. Well, we had actually 12, which is another story.
27:28
Christina Breen
But a lot of value. It has a lot of value.
27:31
Carrie Aguilar
A lot to hold on. But two of them that really resonate with me was fail faster. So, like, just in the corporate world, especially when you are in a growing. Like, this was obviously a tech company, but it's like, how do you. You just need to fail faster so that learn and then, like, the scientific method. And then the second one was 1% better every day, which is built into the fact that, like, you're not 100%, you're not perfect. You're not supposed to be perfect. So how do you push yourself to fail faster and then also to get better?
28:05
Mara Kamat
I don't think I can be 1% better every day. I'm too tired as a mom.
28:10
Carrie Aguilar
It's a lot. It's a lot to ask. It's a lot to ask. Okay. One thing I always think about is what a big job you have. And I wanted to ask about the alumni, because I'm sure who are like, you just have a lot. Like, you have people who are like, 75. Like, my mother, being like Christina Breen is the real deal. So it feels like you have to be in five places at once while managing expectations, connecting with students, teachers, parents, and all this active alumni that Laurel has. How are you finding balance? Or are you.
28:43
Christina Breen
I think I'm still trying to find it. I wouldn't want to suggest that I am perfect at balance, because we're always a work in progress. It is a really quite A different job than the one I had for the past 30 years. Even though I was part of leadership at Exeter, being the boss 24 hours a day is really quite different. I love the variety of the day. It's really fun for me that somebody comes into my office and we have to figure out about whether we're labeling our gluten free options. And then the next person comes in and says, will you come and read to the preschoolers? And then the third person comes in and says, we need to make some large budgetary decisions. That's all within 10 minutes.
29:35
Christina Breen
And I love that kind of the requirement of me to use a lot of different parts of my brain and problem solving. I really enjoy exercise. I just started playing pickleball this year. Love that out here in Cleveland. Shout out to Jerry, who's 72. He pumps me up every week. He just says, christina, you're so athletic.
30:00
Carrie Aguilar
Thank you. I think it's Jerry.
30:02
Christina Breen
Jerry, I love you, Jerry. So started to, you know, try to branch out in that way and, you know, just take some time to do things that aren't necessarily related to work. I love movies. My husband and I really enjoy going to see movies. And theater is really live. Theater is really important to me too.
30:25
Mara Kamat
And you move to the perfect city for that. I mean, we're so lucky to have Playhouse Square.
30:32
Christina Breen
I know. I can't even keep up with them, actually. And the symphony, the Cleveland Orchestra, they change their program every three days. It's absolutely incredible.
30:44
Mara Kamat
How is your husband integrated into the Cleveland community?
30:49
Christina Breen
He's getting there. He hasn't been here that much. He's been here probably less than 40 days total since I moved here in July. He works remotely and he's checking on our home in New Hampshire from time to time as well, and travels quite a bit. He's very malleable. He knows that this was an incredible opportunity for me professionally, has been so supportive of this move and loves meeting new people.
31:20
Carrie Aguilar
So that's amazing.
31:21
Christina Breen
He's doing just fine.
31:22
Carrie Aguilar
I love that.
31:23
Christina Breen
That's good.
31:23
Carrie Aguilar
What a great partner.
31:25
Mara Kamat
Can you share a time when you felt like you personally absolutely failed and how you recovered from it, rebuilt your confidence, and moved forward as a human or leader?
31:36
Christina Breen
So about 25 years into my teaching career and having been exposed to some leadership opportunities at Exeter, I really wanted to lean into the opportunity to be a leader in education. So I began applying to jobs at other schools and I got some offers and some of the ones I really wanted I did not get. And that was difficult for Me, Why was I not chosen? What was wrong with me? What was wrong with them? I went through all of the stages and I had a real conversation with myself and talked to a lot of mentors about how would I position myself better. Every time I didn't get a position, I would ask the placement agency what I could be doing differently to try to get better and level up. And it occurred to me in my late 40s that I needed another degree.
32:41
Christina Breen
I had two master's degrees, but I needed one in leadership. So I applied to Columbia. I ended up being a Klingenstein fellow there, which was incredible. And really it. It changed my horizon of what I was capable of and what possibilities would be available to me. That program is incredible. I spent two summers living in New York. That was a risk for me to be away from my family and live in New York. I had only been a visitor of New York and never an inhabitant. And it allowed me to see myself in a new way and to take even more risks and apply for head of school jobs. And this job came across my transom.
33:30
Christina Breen
And it was amazing to me that I was in a position where I saw myself as a potential candidate, whereas a few years earlier I had limited myself in what would be possible for me. I came out to Laurel for my interview and fell in love with the school, particularly the Butler campus, because I'm a. I love nature and trees and fresh air.
33:57
Carrie Aguilar
There's plenty out there.
33:58
Christina Breen
There is. There is. And I was frankly, even at the point where they called the board of trustees, called and offered me the job, I was still surprised. But I did believe in myself by that point, that I had done all the work that I needed to do with 30 years of experience founding private school three degrees, you know, I'd done the work and I had earned this position. And I think that helps to stave off imposter syndrome that I think a lot of women feel. And yeah, so the failure was the nos and the way to respond to those failures was to say yes to myself.
34:41
Mara Kamat
That's a beautiful lesson, sentiment, however we wanna frame it. But so with that being said, what advice do you have for other women that are navigating some of those challenges? Because that's the reality of the world that we live in. And sometimes it's that voice that holds us back, it's the failures we've faced previously. How did you overcome that? What was that moment for you that helped you reground to keep going?
35:13
Christina Breen
Well, I didn't want to keep doing the same thing, apply for the same kinds of jobs and get, you know, maybe jobs that I didn't want or settle for a job that I didn't want. So I think my advice is to take a hard look at why you're getting the no's, because there is a reason and there often can be a pattern. And using mentors and experts to look at your materials, to look at the way you answer questions interviews. How are you presenting yourself so that you can level up? You have to be honest with yourself and be willing to take your lumps. And I think that would be some advice that I would have for other women who are thinking about making a change in their career.
35:58
Christina Breen
And something that I say over and over again to women in education in particular, if they would like to become leaders, is to really buff up on their business acumen. Most teachers are subject area experts. They're incredible at math, or they're wonderful at French or amazingly accomplished in English literature, But they don't know how to manage a spreadsheet or to look at our P and L sheet or to make projections or to have a vision about how to think about budget and finances. And so particularly for women in education who want to be leaders, I recommend that they get on a board and they join the finance committee.
36:43
Carrie Aguilar
A lot of our listeners are leaders in their respective fields and by doing so have to drive major change and impact. How do you drive meaningful change and prioritize big goals when resources, whether it's financial people time, are limited?
37:00
Christina Breen
I think working collaboratively and getting stakeholder buy in is really crucial. If I just went into Laurel and said, okay, no more uniforms, I feel that we should just have school three days a week and we should be entirely in Spanish only. We're now in a Spanish immersion school. Right. That starting tomorrow.
37:23
Carrie Aguilar
Right.
37:24
Christina Breen
That kind of change is not going to fly. So I spent most of the last seven or eight months really meeting with every employee at the school and as many alums and community stakeholders as possible to understand the school itself. And then to try to build coalitions with people in the building who are not afraid of change and want to try to make the school the best it can possibly be. So you have to do it together, you have to do it in community, collaboratively, communicate well and be bold and brave. I think sometimes we can hem ourselves in to say, well, this wouldn't be possible. And my sort of mantra this year is what if, what if were possible. And obstacles at schools are often schedule and transportation and funding. And I feel that all three of those things can be fixed.
38:23
Carrie Aguilar
Yep.
38:25
Mara Kamat
As you've gone through your listening tour, are there any key themes that have continued to pop up that really stand out for you as areas of opportunity to address or areas of just interest that you'll spend a little bit more time digging into?
38:43
Christina Breen
We are in a very tight marketplace over on the east side with many schools that are within a stone's throat. Literally, Literally. Like with a really good arm, you.
38:55
Carrie Aguilar
Can make it, I can make it.
38:56
Christina Breen
So it's important that we know who we are and differentiate ourselves and not try to just replicate programs that we can see at other schools, but really bring on enterprise programming here at Laurel that are unique to us so that we're continuing to evolve. And I'm really excited about a new program that will be launching in the fall called Laurel Leads, which is really kind of helping us to narrate the story of leadership at Laurel. You would not believe how many incredible leaders such as the two of you, that we see out in the world that started at Laurel. So we want to tell that story and make sure that people know that you're going to learn to be a leader when you're at Laurel. And one sort of arm of this program is our higher ed partnerships.
39:48
Christina Breen
So we are launching some incredible courses that are experiential, often have a travel element tied to them with Stanford, Yale, Harvard, Penn, John Carroll, Case Western. And these are going to be opportunities for our students to be exposed to higher education much sooner and be ready when they land at college after they leave Laurel. So that's one area that I'm really excited about are the people in the building. Because when you start with programming, that starts with them, with our teachers, that they have helped to build and shape themselves, that they are excited to shepherd and bring along and nurture, they bring to the table so much energy and excitement that the kids then feel. So it redounds back to kids in a beautiful way.
40:45
Mara Kamat
I'm excited for that personally, as a parent as well. I mean, we. We are big believers in experiences. We do less gifts and things around the holidays, and it's all about the experiences that we have it as a family. And that is inclusive of seeing the world or being out in nature or whatever that might be to expand our horizon and view of the world. So we are personally so excited for those programs to come to life and look forward to our daughters being able to engage in them. So thank you for that.
41:18
Carrie Aguilar
Up.
41:18
Christina Breen
You're welcome. They'll be up and running.
41:21
Carrie Aguilar
So before we wrap Up. We always like to ask two questions, the first being if you could have a conversation with your younger self, what advice or direction would you give her?
41:33
Christina Breen
Great. So there is lore in my large family that for most of a decade I spilled my milk at dinner or would fall downstairs or would trip. I was a bit of a klutz. My arms and legs and the limbs, they just were out of control. I'd be telling a story and there goes the milk. And I fell down a lot. And as a result, I was not scared to fall down as an athlete. So I actually became the type of lacrosse player that got fouled more than anybody else. I invited that kind of foul so that I would have a free shot and could score.
42:21
Carrie Aguilar
Oh, that's smart.
42:23
Christina Breen
And it ended up shaping, you know, my high school career as a three sport athlete and as a college athlete. And because I had limbs going everywhere and fell down a lot, I wasn't scared to fall and to go into, you know, barrel through a group of defenders so that I could get to the goal. So I would be kinder to myself as a child and that klutzy, skinny, awkward, falling down, milk spilling child and say, this is going to serve you well when you get older.
43:01
Mara Kamat
So one last question. We love to ask, what's one thing that's bringing you joy right now?
43:07
Christina Breen
I'm a massive tennis fan and do you play? Not very well, but I do play.
43:14
Carrie Aguilar
Okay.
43:14
Christina Breen
I enjoy it a lot and I love watching tennis at its highest level and we're in the middle of a major right now, so to me that just is absolutely like relaxes me. I can just like it's the little asmr, the tennis ball hitting from back there to back. It's just lovely. So I really love watching tennis. Wonderful.
43:43
Mara Kamat
We love watching tennis too. And maybe that's what makes you great at pickleball. So I find that I'm like not a great tennis player, but I'm a much better pickleball player.
43:52
Christina Breen
My net game was the best part of my tennis game.
43:55
Carrie Aguilar
Oh man.
43:56
Christina Breen
So it's serving me well.
43:58
Carrie Aguilar
What an iconoclast. I love tennis. My net game is terrible. I go up, I'm just, I just avoid it. Like I don't want to be upset.
44:08
Christina Breen
Stay back at the basement. Oh yeah.
44:09
Carrie Aguilar
Pound it over for sure. I love that. Well, thank you so much for joining us. This has been amazing and we really appreciate the time and effort you came to take here and talk to us.
44:22
Christina Breen
Thank you for asking me. I was so shocked to be asked and so pleased. And what a fun way to spend a morning. Thank you.
