By Shruti Menon Seeboo
The morning sun cast a gentle light across the sprawling expanse of the Royal Green in Moka, but inside, the atmosphere was already charged with a different kind of energy. The air hummed with a collective anticipation as professionals, and aspiring changemakers, from bankers to textile manufacturers, gathered for a seminar on Women in Leadership in the Workplace – Fostering Gender Diversity and Inclusion. The room was filled with the promise of more than just a morning of discussion; it was a space for genuine connection and profound insight. The guest speaker, Allyson Marie Reneau, a woman whose life story was a testament to resilience and global impact, was about to take to the stage.
When she spoke, her voice was warm, her smile infectious. She began not with a formal address but with a personal anecdote, a story that instantly bridged the gap between a celebrated American speaker and a Mauritian audience. She first thanked her hosts—CA Counselling Services, Mind Initiatives, and the Mauritian government—for their welcome, sharing that she had been in Mauritius in 2018 and it was a fantastic experience. She then confessed what truly captured her heart.
“I not only fell in love with the island and the nature and the beach and the sand and the dolphins, but mostly in love with the heart of the Mauritian people,” she said, her eyes twinkling.
She then shared a humorous account of her recent arrival. At every stage of immigration and customs, she was interrogated about her purpose and duration of stay, while those around her breezed through. Finally, in a moment of pure wit, she looked up at the security camera and said, “You all think that there’s a chance I may not leave here? You’re probably right.” The room erupted in laughter, instantly disarmed by her sincerity.
But the playful start gave way to a deeper revelation. Allyson had not travelled 30 hours, sleeping on airport floors, just to share a pleasant story. She was there for a purpose. “I came here because I truly care about you,” she said, her voice filled with a profound conviction. “I care about your life. I care about your future.”
The Harvard of the Heart and the Purpose of Our DNA
Allyson’s message was rooted in a foundational belief that every individual is uniquely made with a specific purpose. Drawing on lessons from her astrophysics professor at Harvard, she spoke of the staggering scale of the universe. “He told me that in the Milky Way Galaxy, which we live in, there’s over 200 billion stars… and he said, there’s well over 200 billion, if not more, galaxies.” Yet, in all that cosmic vastness, she said, each person’s fingerprints are utterly unique, a divine signature of their individuality.
She then presented an even more breathtaking fact, one that she had learned from a biology professor: within every cell of the human body is a single DNA strand. “If you take every single DNA strand in your body… and you lay it end to end,” she paused for effect, “you realise you could go to the sun and back 200 times? Isn’t that incredible? So you know, we are truly uniquely and wonderfully made.”
This was her core message: that behind every struggle, every doubt, and every moment of feeling lost, was an inherent, irreplaceable value. She was living proof of this, for her own life was no fairy tale. The “purpose” she spoke of had been buried for decades. She was a farm girl from a very small town in Oklahoma, with a population of only 250 people.
She described an upbringing of hard work and resilience, of wheat harvests, tending to cattle, and the lessons learned in the dirt. This was her first education, one that instilled a quiet strength. But at 19, she fell in love, got married, and soon found herself a mother. She promised herself that she would finish her degree once her first child turned five, but as she humorously recounted, “then there was another one and another one and another one,” until she had eleven children, nine of them girls.
“I was an only child, so to be honest with you, I didn’t even want to have kids,” she said with a laugh. “But I guess that really made me a better person to do that.”
Despite her many jobs and businesses today, she said, “my greatest job, the most challenging job, the most fun job to this day, is taking care of my eleven children.” She spoke of the struggles she had witnessed, both in her own life and in her daughters’, and expressed a deep compassion for women and their shared experiences. She even spoke of the countless socks she had to match, a testament to the daily challenges she faced that had taught her to simply “let it go emotionally.”
The Turning Point: From Procrastination to Purpose
Allyson delved into the internal battles that she, and countless women, face every day. She cited a study from the United States National Science Foundation which found that women think 44% of their thoughts are negative about themselves. She admitted to her own struggles with procrastination and self-doubt. She confessed that even the night before her talk, she had woken up thinking, “Can I do this training properly? Will I say the right thing?”
Her strategy to combat this internal voice was not about pushing through the exhaustion but about prioritising self-care and embracing a fresh start. She spoke of her simple habit of leaving the dishes in the sink if she was too tired to finish them at night, so she could get a full seven to eight hours of sleep. “I’m not some sort of hero that’s going to last on four hours a night,” she said. This deliberate choice, she explained, was about a fresh start every day. “I know I better start my morning routine the next day. And if I’m energized from that morning routine, I’ll do those dishes ten times faster.”
Her own turning point came at 48 years old. She felt like she had given so much of herself, and her life was a “wreck” in every category—her health, her emotions, her marriage, and her finances. She felt “stuck” and “desperate.” In that moment of rock-bottom, she turned inward and asked for a second chance. The idea that came to her was to finish her education. She enrolled at the University of Oklahoma and, within two and a half years, graduated with a bachelor’s degree in communications, achieving top honours at 50 years old.
This accomplishment was a revelation. “I actually discovered things about myself that I was actually good at that I didn’t even know,” she said, her voice filled with a renewed wonder. “I was only good at changing drivers. I only know what I could say.”
Then, a new “spark” came to her on another snowy morning run. “I needed to know what’s next,” she recalled, adding that at 50, you can’t afford to make a mistake. The message that came to her was bold and seemingly impossible: “You’re supposed to go to Harvard University and get your master’s degree.”
Her mind immediately went into overdrive with all the reasons why she couldn’t: she had no money, seven kids still at home, and the overwhelming feeling that she didn’t belong there. She even recalled a moment when her own daughter, Olivia, asked her, “Mom, what’s the point? You’re so old.” Her response was a testament to her faith and resilience: “The only point is God has that habit of using old people. God has a habit of using broken people.”
And so, she took a leap of faith, flying to Boston on borrowed frequent flyer points and sleeping on her suitcase in the subway to save money. She described her emotional state as not being scared, but rather “so excited, finally that something was happening in my life.” At the Harvard master’s degree orientation, she found the Dean, a strong woman, and laid out all the reasons she couldn’t enrol. Allyson expected to be told to go back to Oklahoma, but instead, the Dean put her finger in her face and said, “Allison, you will find a way to fly here every single week, and you will complete this degree, because it’s going to change your life.”
It was a priceless relationship, a miracle in the middle of a fog. Allyson applied for a private scholarship and won, covering her airfare, tuition, books, and hotel. She flew to Boston every week, took her classes in a single day, and flew back to take care of her family. She graduated in 2016 at 55 years old, with straight A’s from Harvard. Her resilience as a farm girl, she said, was the only thing she felt she could control.
The Global Problem, A Woman’s Solution
Allyson’s personal journey had opened her eyes to a profound global issue. She spoke candidly about her marriage to a man who did not want her to be educated or work. “You would think in the United States of America, this doesn’t occur, but it does,” she said. “It’s a global problem.”
She provided historical context, reminding the audience that American woman had only been able to vote for 40 years when she was born. They couldn’t get credit cards or bank loans, and were denied access to astronaut programmes despite outperforming men in tests. These examples showed that even in a so-called developed nation, women have faced, and continue to face, systemic barriers.
To overcome these, Allyson’s solution was both personal and entrepreneurial. She told the story of how a “spark” in the middle of the night led her to start a gymnastics programme, despite having no money or experience. She started small, in her backyard, with a single student, and built from there. Then, an incredible story of generosity unfolded. A man she had helped years ago, whose son she had mentored, called her out of the blue. He and his wife, the Vice President of United Airlines, sent her $325,000 to “go change lives.” With this, she opened her gym, Victory Gymnastics, without a bank loan.
“Banks don’t want to give traditional bankers do not want to give women like me, maybe even today, who have 11 kids who don’t have any assets,” she stated. “But we have a lot of barriers still because of who we are, even though we’re talented and hardworking people.”
Her business philosophy at Victory Gymnastics was an extension of her mission to empower women. She hires an all-female staff, believing they are “better workers than the men.” She said, “They give you all their heart and soul, they’re loyal… they’re instinctive. They can pick up on the emotions of each other.”
She also told the remarkable story of how she offers her female employees’ interest-free loans to start their own businesses. “I give them a private loan. And that sounds counterintuitive, because what if you give that woman a loan, she starts a catering business… and then they leave you,” she said. But she explained that they always paid her back, and many chose to stay because they felt valued and understood they could be both a great professional and an entrepreneur. This was the mark of a true leader—someone who empowers others to become everything they were meant to be, without fear of losing them.
Allyson’s seminar was more than a series of lessons. It was a journey through the heart of a woman who had faced countless struggles, only to transform each one into a testament to resilience, purpose, and the extraordinary power of a single person to change a life. Her final words were a call to action for every woman in the room, encouraging them to get to know two people they didn’t know during the break.
“The miracles are in the relationships,” she reminded them, urging them to have no regrets. The seminar concluded, but her message lingered in the air, a whisper of encouragement for every woman to find her purpose, trust her instincts, and believe that if a farm girl from Oklahoma could change the world, so could they.
