or Blacks, making it professionally is the ultimate goal. If you come from humble beginnings, making it also means moving from a bad environment to a better place. But what if financial success doesn’t equal personal pride?
For Aulston Taylor, success meant going back home to run the very school that gave him his education, and ultimately his financial success.
Taylor graduated from St. Augustine High School, located in New Orleans, Louisiana. After college, Aulston landed a rousing position in media sales and quickly rose the corporate ladder to become one of the rising star executives in the media sales industry.
His education did exactly what it was supposed to do. It has given Taylor a chance to earn a high income, travel the world, and meet some of the most interesting people on the planet.
However, when he returned home on a visit to New Orleans and to the school that created his status, something pulled at him. He saw a school that looked nearly the same as it did when he was a student. The school needed a facelift, physical repairs, and was in search of an expanded pool of donors to sustain its place in history.
St. Augustine High School was founded in 1951 by the Society of St. Joseph of the Sacred Heart (The Josephite Fathers and Brothers) through the Youth Progress Program of the Archdiocese of New Orleans.
During the 1950s and 1960s, St. Augustine witnessed breakthrough success with its students and alumni accomplishing many “firsts” for African Americans in the state, region, and nation. Momentum grew as the school positioned itself as a Christ-centered institution of academic, athletic, and music excellence while battling the remnants of segregation.
In 1967, St. Augustine won a legal battle, which led to the desegregation of Louisiana high school sports as well as the school’s admittance into the Louisiana High School Athletic Association. The same year, the school’s legendary Marching 100 became the first African American marching band to participate in the Rex Parade during Mardi Gras. Within this period, St. Augustine presented its first graduating class in 1955, and early alumni began to blaze trails in collegiate atmospheres where African Americans were once excluded.
Today, while St. Augustine welcomes students of all races, it remains the leading secondary school for Black males in Louisiana and is nationally recognized in educational circles for outstanding success in preparing its students for higher education and leadership.
Taylor, a product of the school, made the calculated decision to leave his corporate job, taking an 82 percent pay cut to return home to join the staff in 2019 and lead the school where he once attended.
“I knew that something greater needed to be done,” Taylor said. “There was no way I could come home, enjoy homecoming in 2018, leave, and allow the place I love to continue to look the way it did if it was going to continue to be a pillar in the community of New Orleans, and produce the quality of graduates we all expected to see.”
And produce St. Augustine does. To date, the school has produced notable civic leaders, countless athletes who have reached the professional ranks, medical leaders that impact groundbreaking research and some of the world’s top musicians, including Jon Batiste, the award-winning musician and composer.
When Taylor took the position, he first began by positioning the school as an irreplaceable global leader for the growth of young men.
“The city of New Orleans knows St. Augustine, but the world doesn’t,” Taylor explained. “Given my experience as a sales executive, I knew our first order of business was to tell our story in meaningful ways beyond the city limits of New Orleans. My background was perfect for the role that needed to be leveraged to galvanize our alumni, re-engage foundations, friends of the school and corporations.”
Taylor went to work and created a winning formula that promoted the school to the right benefactors, while demanding excellence from administration, staff, students and parents.
In four years, Taylor was able to raise over twenty million dollars for improvements to the school’s physical plant and expand the school’s endowment from 3.6 million a year to its current invested amount of 9.8 million.
For Taylor, the thought of giving up status and above-average compensation to return home to elevate the school gave him the deeper sense of purpose that his media sales roles couldn’t match.
“I enjoyed my time and work in New York City, but I always knew God had something greater in store for me. What I gave up in pay, returned to me in mission-driven work for young men at a place I call home,” Taylor said.
Taylor is an example of living in your purpose. He is also an example of betting on yourself. His mission to give back has given him way more than he could ever have imagined.
St. Augustine remains one of the top high schools in the country for young Black men seeking a training ground for leadership. Taylor is proof that giving back should be the pursuit for everyone. ●
