Fluent Futures
Following her heart meant pursuing a different path. She became a management major, earned her MBA and found success and satisfaction in positions at MetLife, Bankers Trust and T. Rowe Price.
But six years into her career at T. Rowe Price, she had another change of heart. “When I had my twins in 2003, I realized I wanted to share my love of language and culture with them,” Peyton says.
Peyton was raised in a bilingual household by Costa Rican parents. She says she always had an appreciation for her parents’ heritage, language and culture, but it became more pronounced when she had children.
While still working at T. Rowe Price, Peyton began researching language immersion programs. “I felt this strong pull toward this,” she says. “It came from having children and knowing what I wanted for them. If it didn’t exist, I would need to build it. I built the curriculum. I built everything. I had this fire in me to make it happen.”
Seventeen years later, Peyton is the founder and director of Fun with Foreign Language, a program that teaches Spanish and Mandarin to children as young as two years old in the Baltimore area. “The ability to learn another language is tremendous when you start young,” she says. “Young children’s brains are flexible; they aren’t yet hardwired to have a preference for only one language.”
As her program blossomed, Peyton built partnerships with local schools to bridge cultural divides and help parents navigate their surroundings. “We work with a lot of Spanish-speaking families who are new to the country and trying to make their way and figure things out,” she says.
Peyton has seen the benefits in her community and with her children. Her twins, now 20 and in college, are fluent in Spanish.
“The value is that you are creating global citizens,” she says. “When these kids go to college, they are interacting with kids who are not like them. To be able to see the world from more than one perspective, to have cultural sensitivities and a greater understanding of the world, creates more compassionate people.”