The task was simple, but it would require thought.
“Take a minute to think about your own future. If you could invent your own tomorrow, what would it look like?” Kimberly Easton asked the 300 guests who attended the Great Girls and Wonderful Women luncheon at Foundation for Youth Tuesday.
Easton, multicultural director at Bartholomew Consolidated School Corp. and co-emcee of the luncheon, instructed each girl and woman to write their responses on a yellow sticky note and post it to the glass window just inside the entrance of the FFY gym.
The notes read of hopes, promises, dreams and goals.
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“Tomorrow, I will be brave.”
“Ensure everyone has the same opportunities regardless of income limitations.”
“I dream of a society without a gender pay gap!”
“I will cause a ripple so big it makes huge change.”
The annual Great Girls Wonderful Women Luncheon provides an opportunity for women in the Columbus community to support Foundation for Youth girls and their endeavors. At the event, FFY participants are seated with female leaders from around the community to have lunch and talk about goals, dreams and future plans.
In its fifth year, the luncheon welcomed more than 300 people Tuesday to the annual event at FFY, 405 Hope Ave. All funds raised from the event support Foundation for Youth’s general scholarship fund. The fund enables the organization to serve children of the community who need assistance the most.
‘I need to make a change’
Before the girls and women in the audience were asked to consider their own tomorrows, they heard from one female leader in the Columbus community who beat the odds and turned her dreams of tomorrow into a reality.
Angie May, 54, is the president of Analytical Engineering Inc., a market leader in engine and engine component development. But the road she traveled to earn the position she has today was not easy.
“Many people like me like to talk about the good ol’ days,” May said. “I can tell you you couldn’t possibly pay me enough to go back and relive all of those days.”
As a baby, May was adopted through foster care. She recalled the day she started to hear her parents argue. The arguments got louder, she said, and one day, her mother left, and she never saw her again.
Just a couple months later, her grandfather died of a heart attack. Within the same year, her dad remarried and the family moved to Michigan. May said she was picked on often because she looked different from everyone else.
Michigan became home as she made new friends and grew comfortable with the new environment, but as soon as she got comfortable, her father’s job forced the family to move back to Indiana.
“He fought everything in his power to keep us from having to move,” May said. “He applied for multiple jobs but nothing worked. He was always rejected for the same reason: He didn’t have a college degree.”
This made an impression on May. She promised herself that she would somehow take control of her own future, and she saw college as a means to do just that.
Having studied hard, working part-time jobs as a babysitter and grocery store clerk and involving herself in extracurricular activities, May thought she had a scholarship in the bag.
“My senior year, I remember applying to every single scholarship that was available at my school,” May said. “I was excited. I went and sat down in the auditorium, and I waited. The announcements began to happen and I saw all kinds of people walking up to get their scholarship. The announcements ended, and I never left my seat.”
“What could she have done wrong?” May asked herself.
She was puzzled. Her family didn’t have an answer. She thought her chances of going to college had disappeared, but May said she somehow raised enough money between savings and loans to get her in the door.
Each scholarship May had applied for required an in-person interview. Thinking back to her performance in those interviews as a shy young girl who didn’t like to talk to others, she said she probably interviewed quite poorly.
“I looked at my future and thought, ‘You know, I need to make a change,’” May said.
Turning failure into a detour
Through college, May forced herself to journey outside her comfort zone. It worked.
She got involved in activities, earned a part-time job at a foundry, taught herself to smile more and help other people along the way. May received scholarships in college and even started a work-study program.
“All those things got me through to my graduation day, and that day was very different than the day in high school. I interviewed with five different companies and I got five job offers.”
May came to Columbus and accepted a job at Cummins Inc. as a mechanical engineer. After nearly a decade, May and her husband decided to leave and start AEI. Nothing went as planned, she said.
The couple leased a space and started a company, but all three contracts they had were pulled. They were left to figure out a way to pay for things and keep the doors open.
“It would’ve been pretty easy to just say I’m done,” May said. “But we had this vision of trying to create a company where you could do something fun and interesting. So we stayed with it.”
May and her husband had their big break when they formed a contract with the United States Navy, involving hearing and teeth. They learned how to do machinery, do injection molding and make something that would go in a mouth as a mouthpiece and take signals and transfer them out of your mouth through the water to another scuba diver and they would receive them and interpret it as sound.
The product went to the market and was distributed worldwide, but AEI wasn’t making enough money to keep the doors open and the company shut down.
When they closed, they were left with a group of employees who had a can-do attitude and were determined to get AEI back on its feet, this time in the engine production market.
“One of the things I’ve learned throughout life is that people worry a lot, and it really doesn’t do any good to worry about things that are beyond your control,” May said.
“A lot of people are afraid to try new things because they’re afraid to fail. I’m here to tell you I’ve failed a bunch, more times than I can count. But instead of looking at it as failure, if you work hard, think about it as a detour.”
The road to the present day is tough, but you’ve gotten where you are, May reassured the 300 people in the room Tuesday.
“You’ve grown,” she said. “Maybe it’s not going the direction you want it to, but there’s another opportunity to overcome it. It’s going to seem like things aren’t fair. You’ll have to work harder than you think you should have to. But there’s great reward in that.”
AEI is celebrating its 25th year in business this year, and its motto is a testament to the work they do each day: “Innovation in action.”
May told each young girl Tuesday that they have the power to innovate their future, no matter what stage of life they are in.
‘I can be like her’
Carolina Andrus, an eighth grader at Northside Middle School, has attended Foundation for Youth since she was in elementary school. She remembers being in the shoes of the younger girls one day and meeting the “wonderful women” at the luncheon.
On Tuesday, she co-emceed the event for the first time.
“I have always loved hearing all the stories from the powerful women in Columbus and further,” Andrus said. “It’s so important for younger girls to see they can be like her and do what they want to do.”
When the kids see what someone like May could do through a platform like the Great Girls Wonderful Women luncheon, Andrus said they not only have hope for their own futures but they see an example of how anything is possible.
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Great Girls Wonderful Women gives the “Wonderful Women” of the Columbus community the opportunity to support some of Foundation For Youth’s “Great Girls.” Each table of eight includes six Wonderful Women and two Great Girls, allowing the opportunity for connection and mentorship.
Proceeds from the event benefit the Foundation For Youth Scholarship Fund and will provide girls with the opportunity to participate in FFY programming, even if registration fees are a barrier for their family.
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To learn more about Great Girls Wonderful Women and Foundation for Youth’s other initiatives, visit foundationforyouth.com.
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People interested in donating to Foundation for Youth may visit the website at foundationforyouth.com/donate.
For more information, call FFY at 812-348-4558.
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