On this episode of the RAISE Podcast, Brent hosts Christine Pena, Chief Advancement Officer at Miss Porter’s School.

Christine shares how a childhood fascination with The Facts of Life led her from a small dinner table in West Falmouth on Cape Cod to a snowy visit at St. Paul’s School, where she instantly knew, “This is where I want to be.” As a heavily aided, first-generation student from a working-class, third-generation Cape Cod family and an African American girl crossing “the bridge to the rest of the world,” she reflects on feeling like a fish out of water, challenging assumptions about wealth and privilege, and learning never to judge a book by its cover.

From there, she traces her path to Wesleyan University, a brief but lucrative detour into management consulting in New York City, and the mental checklist that pushed her toward more meaningful work: respecting the people she worked for, doing work that mattered, and, as she jokes, not having to wear pantyhose every day. That audit led her into admissions at Dartmouth, graduate study at Harvard’s ed school focused on higher education governance and history, and eventually into major gifts work at The Madeira School and Wesleyan.

Today, at Miss Porter’s, Christine thinks deeply about the global nature of girls’ education, the cost of private education, and why institutions must joyfully, factually, and collaboratively tell the stories that prove the power of investing in human potential.