It’s been 52 years since Lorraine (Fitleau) Dykas '72 graduated from Bryant with a degree in Accounting. But she had a couple of other numbers on her mind when she recently sat in an Academic Innovation Center classroom to watch her granddaughter, Hannah O’Brien ‘25, deliver her honors thesis on the role of technology in financial literacy for young investors. 

Three: Hannah is the third generation of Dykas family women to attend Bryant, following not just in her grandmother’s footsteps but in those of her mother, Colleen O’Brien ’96. 

And, zero: That’s how many women were enrolled in Bryant’s Accounting program when Dykas first arrived on campus in 1968. 

“For a girl, an Accounting major in those days was very unusual,” she recalled. “I had to really convince the dean of admissions to allow me to take Accounting, believe it or not. I sat in his office and just stayed there until he said okay, because he wanted me to take another, more traditional major for women,” such as the social sciences or secretarial and office education courses offered at Bryant at the time.

Dykas turned her degree into a life-long career — she’s still working today — primarily keeping the books for her family’s vending machine company. "I always liked accounting, maybe because when I was little I always helped out with business things for my parents,” said Dykas. 

Colleen O’Brien shared her mother’s interest in business when she enrolled at Bryant in the mid-1990s. A Finance and Marketing student, Colleen then went on to Suffolk University Law School after graduation, worked in some of Providence’s largest law firms, and is now in-house counsel at property management firm Gatehouse Management Inc. “The political science and business law classes I took at Bryant sparked my interest,” she said.

“She's a better speaker than I am,” said Dykas with a laugh. “That’s why she's the lawyer and I'm behind the scenes with the pencil.”

Colleen played tennis for the Bulldogs, a legacy handed down to her daughter, Hannah, who is the captain of Bryant’s varsity tennis team and a Finance and Applied Analytics double major. Like her grandmother, however, Hannah enjoys crunching numbers, and recently accepted a job with PwC.

“I'm so grateful to have such a strong line of successful and independent females in my life who are such great role models.”

“I feel like I'm a little bit of a combination of the two of them,” she said. “I'm so grateful to have such a strong line of successful and independent females in my life who are such great role models.”

Hannah said her grandmother’s story of breaking barriers at Bryant “was always something that I was really grateful for and looked up to, not just with academics but everything in my life. I know that anything that I really put my determination to I can accomplish, and I use hers an example for that.”

That pride and inspiration is intergenerational as well. “We never pushed Colleen to work hard, and Hannah either, to do as well as she does. She’s always so motivated,” said Dykas. “I was glad when my daughter decided to go to Bryant. And then my granddaughter  — that was really good, too,” said Dykas. 

Attending Bryant and playing tennis was always a goal for Hannah, her mom said. “She got multiple offers from D1 schools, and they tried to woo her, but Bryant was her first choice,” Colleen said. “She had her sights set that this was the school for her, and it's really been fabulous.”

In addition to her family, Hannah was supported in the audience for her thesis presentation by her tennis teammates and faculty mentors.

"When I started at Bryant, there were still some COVID restrictions in place, so I couldn't really take my mom and grandmother to events,” she said. “So to have them finally here for something and celebrate our three generations of Bryant was not only full circle, but just really meaningful.”

Leila Zbib, Ph.D., the editorial reviewer for Hannah’s thesis and an assistant professor in the Finance department, finds inspiration for the broader Bryant community in O’Brien’s family story, as well.

“Especially in Finance, we lack female students, so having three generations of women making it at Bryant and beautifully succeeding after all these years, I think it's a huge plus for our students to see,” she said.