A Life-Changing Gift—and Lemonade
Maria C. Green established a scholarship that provides transformational support to exceptional students.
Photo by Arianka Ibarra on Unsplash
A Life-Changing Gift—and Lemonade
Maria C. Green established a scholarship that provides transformational support to exceptional students.
Maria Green earned her JD from BU Law in 1977. “It was a really challenging time to be African American in Boston,” she states, as longstanding racial tensions became exacerbated by an intense busing crisis in the Boston public schools. “But my law school experience was a good one.”
Green was one of just six African American students in her class. But you might say they turned lemons into lemonade.
“We were pretty close-knit,” she says, adding that the Black Law Students Association worked with similar groups at other Boston schools to sponsor events and create a sense of community.
Green went on to a distinguished legal career—including stints at Freddie Mac and as the general counsel of Illinois Tool Works, and then of Ingersoll Rand. Now retired, she serves on a number of company and nonprofit boards in Chicago, where she and her husband (also a lawyer) moved after marrying in Washington, DC.
“I’ve been really blessed with a lot of good fortune,” she says. “And I’ve always been passionate about education.”
That’s why she recently established the Maria C. Green Scholarship, providing a full-tuition scholarship for all three years at BU Law to an African American woman “who has shown exceptional academic performance.”
“I’ve seen the transformative effect of education on people’s lives,” Green says. “I had lots of loans, and if we can provide the means to not have that burden—it changes the whole trajectory of their lives.”
Kanda Faye (’22) knows about that kind of transformation firsthand. A first-generation college student, Faye majored in political science and peace & justice studies at Wellesley College, and decided to go to law school.
“Then I realized I’d never met a lawyer—never spoken to one,” she says. “My dad worked at Newark Airport; I didn’t know anybody who had an advanced degree. How do I jump into law school without ever having a single conversation with somebody who’s been through it?”
So she took a job at the Boston office of global law firm Nixon Peabody. Her four years there confirmed her interest in the law—and heightened her interest in BU. “There were so many BU alums there, and others who weren’t alums but spoke very highly of BU Law. They were amazing mentors.”
Faye applied “far and wide,” she says, but “BU called me, said ‘Congratulations,’ and sent a handwritten note. Those personal touches made me think: ‘I could have a home here.’ “Still, she admits that she was “terrified” of the debt she would take on. She would meet almost the entire cost of her education herself through substantial loans—a pretty sour prospect, until the day when, thanks to Maria Green, the outlook suddenly turned sweet.
I’ve seen the transformative effect of education on people’s lives. I had lots of loans, and if we can provide the means to not have that burden—it changes the whole trajectory of their lives.
Faye was on her lunch break in a Boston café, drinking a matcha lemonade—“the worst drink I ever purchased,” she recalls with a laugh—when the School of Law Financial Aid office called about a looming deadline. Then, unexpectedly, the woman on the phone said, “‘Hold on, I’m going to have the director of the office get on the line with you.’ So now I’m on hold thinking, ‘They made a mistake, I did not actually get into this amazing school…’ Then the director comes on and says, ‘Congratulations, Kanda—you will be receiving the Maria Green Scholarship.’
“When I heard that,” Faye says, “I spilled the entire matcha lemonade on my dress. Literally. I don’t think I’ve ever been so happy in my life. It was a life-changing moment for me. “I realized how much I was consumed by dread,” she explains. “To apply—to get in, to finally do it—and then to have this fear hang over me like a monster reading every ‘Welcome to BU Law!’ email over my shoulder. For a first-generation, African American student with a modest background, taking on a tremendous amount of debt to go to law school felt like a very high-stakes risk. All of that fear and dread was just sucked away with this one phone call and some spilled matcha lemonade.”
The support is not just life-changing for her, Faye notes. “The amount of debt that I am not taking on—it lets me consider the prospect of homeownership. It means I’ll be able to take care of my parents in their later years. It just opens up so many doors for me.”
So many doors; so many gifts. “That,” says Faye, “is the kind of gift that I want to give to someone after BU Law. I’ll make sure to pay it forward.”
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