Annual Report 2016_web

trustee profile:
Leighton
& Amanda
MAIN
Amanda and Leighton Mains’ support of Lindsey Wilson
College started small.
When Amanda was a student in the University of Louisville
Louis D. Brandeis School of Law and Leighton was a new
teacher in Louisville, Ky., the young alumni couple began to
give $20 a year to their alma mater. They made the gifts as a
way to show their love for their alma mater and also to show
their gratitude to those who supported them when they were
LWC students.
More than 15 years after they first started to give to LWC, the
Mains established the Vicki
“
Because of the generosity of
those that loved this school, this
wonderful opportunity was made
available to us.”
Main Endowed Scholarship,
named in honor of Leighton’s
late mother.
“This college means so
much to me and my family because
it is my family,” said
Amanda, who is a 1996 LWC
graduate and a member of the Lindsey Wilson Board of
Trustees.
One of three children, Amanda was a first-generation college
student at LWC. Education was valued by both of her parents –
her father was an Army veteran who worked at a printing plant
in Louisville and her mother was an immigrant from Thailand
who earned a GED when she came to America with Amanda’s
father.
“My parents valued education, and they wanted nothing more
than for their three children to have educational opportunities,”
she said. “For as much as my parents valued education, they had
not saved enough money for me or my sisters to go to college.
… so I was going to have to do it largely through scholarship
money.”
Although LWC was not the first school on Amanda’s list of
prospective colleges, she fell in love with the college on her first
visit.
“It was still just as lovely as it is today,” she said. “In meeting
with the students, teachers and staff, it really came across to me
that the people were here because they wanted to be here, not
because they had to be here. And by the end of my visit, I
wanted to be here as well. … I truly believe that I was meant to
be here.”
Amanda received a Presidential
Scholarship to attend Lindsey Wilson,
and Leighton, who graduated
in 1997, received a soccer scholarship.
“Because of the generosity of
those that loved this school, this
wonderful opportunity was made available to us,” she said.
While in law school, Amanda was an editor of UofL’s law review,
and she graduated in the top five of her class. She then
went on to work at one of Kentucky’s larger law firms before
joining the in-house legal team at Louisville-based Brown-Forman
Corp.
“My Lindsey Wilson education laid the groundwork for all of
that,” Amanda said. “It really is an amazing thing to look back
on and contemplate right now. I could never pay back Lindsey
Wilson for all of the blessings it has given me.”
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