Fall 2010/Winter 2011
After being a business owner, vice presidents at major corporations and a retiree by age 40, Kathryn Seabrook Autin checks in twice a month on her friend and former teacher, MESA co-founder Mary Perry Smith.
Autin was the youngest of eight siblings who attended Oakland Tech High School. She graduated in 1979 and was the last of her siblings to take a class with Smith.
“MESA helped a lot of students understand that going to the university was part of the plan,” she said.
MESA began in 1970 with Smith and other visionaries, who wanted to develop academic and leadership skills and raise the confidence of California students historically underrepresented in engineering and other math based-fields.
Forty years later, Autin and two of her brothers, Karl and Eric Seabrook, also MESA alums, escorted Smith to a reception honoring her and other MESA founders during the program’s 40th anniversary year. Autin said Smith’s commitment to her students never wavered.
“. . . some of the kids were homeless at the time, so for (Smith) to be able to keep those types of kids focused and keep them studying and survive, that takes a special person,” she said. Autin said that MESA taught her how to focus, prioritize and understand difficult concepts through group study and collaboration. She and her brothers would study on UC Berkeley’s campus after dinner while they were still high school students.
“That’s incredible collaboration and dedication for 15 and 16 year olds, which is what MESA did,” she said.
That focus prepared her for the challenge of earning an electrical engineering degree from the University of Southern California.
“I saw students who didn’t have that foundation and they struggled. It wasn’t a cake walk for me, but I was more grounded and understood the consequences I think more than students who didn’t have MESA.”
Autin went on to work for companies including Bank of America and Visa, before starting her own consulting business. It was so successful she retired at 40, but decided to work again when Oracle courted her to be their director of global operations. She evaluates technology and products related to mergers and acquisitions.
One of Autin’s brothers, Eric Seabrook, is the vice president for The Phillips Group, a building code consultant company. He said his interest in buildings was piqued during a MESA field trip to a San Francisco building with a floor that rotated. For Seabrook, MESA provided focus and exposure.
“That exposure to industry is probably the essential part of getting me ahead in my career,” he said. “It helped me make a decision early.”
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