Today we’d like to introduce you to Maggie Lin.
Thanks for sharing your story with us Maggie. So, let’s start at the beginning and we can move on from there.
I was born and raised in Taiwan into a family that was not quite ready to raise a child. I spent most of my childhood bouncing all over the countryside of Taiwan until dire circumstances forced my grandmother to immigrate to California with my sister and me.
Within a year, my sister and I ended up in the foster care system because of physical abuse and ended up moving from foster home to foster home in LA County. I have seen the good and bad side of humanity, and yet I am driven by all the good that lives in people. I moved around LA County eight different times before I ended up in a foster home where the family wasn’t doing it for the paycheck from the government.
My sister and I have lived in homes where they put locks on the refrigerator or left us for hours after school because they didn’t want to go out of their way to pick us up. The last home we lived in was with a family that did it for the right reason: simply because they wanted to provide love and care to children and youth without a family. With the right mentorship and guidance, I ended up getting a scholarship to Dartmouth College where I graduated with a BA in Philosophy.
In my time there, I worked with many different organizations and community nonprofits from education to service projects that took me on trips to rural Kentucky, Nicaragua, homeless shelters of Washington DC, and ambassador programs back to my home country. It was in these years that I learned to broaden my horizon and my perspective on humanity.
Upon graduation, I got a job working with a Nobel Laureate and the United Nations for the Chairman of the IPCC, Dr. Rajendra Pachauri. Through that experience, I was able to travel around the world and learn from different cultures. This job took me to Delhi, India where I lived for three years. From there, I moved to Mongolia where I worked with a nonprofit that built a school for children living in the slums outside Ulaanbaatar.
This eventually led me back to Los Angeles where I worked with the CAA Foundation for a short while before meeting Jeanne Pritzker whose private family foundation is the main supporter of Foster Nation, a nonprofit I co-founded that is dedicated to supporting and empowering youth aging out of the foster care system to become the Nation’s future leaders.
We aim to do so by rallying and engaging millennials and young leaders to champion the foster care cause. We specifically work with foster youth that have emancipated because that is generally when the government stops providing them with resources to thrive or succeed in the real world, And many of the youth we have worked with have moved through 30+ different foster homes by the time they’re 17 years old.
And then when they turn 18 years old, they are given a trash bag and a list of homeless shelters and turned to the streets. This takes us to today where the organization has been around for two years and have since hosted two networking events for foster youth aging out of the system to have a chance to network with professionals from 90+ different companies here in LA.
We have raised funds to provide foster youth in colleges here in LA County with holiday gifts so that they have a reason to celebrate when it’s normally a time they’re reminded they don’t have family to return to. And we are working to develop a mentorship program that matches mentors to foster youth in college in order to help them thrive and become self-sufficient adults.
Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
I wouldn’t quite say life is a smooth road but with regard to starting Foster Nation, it has been a rather smooth road. I consider myself pretty lucky to be surrounded by people with incredibly big hearts here in LA that are so committed to giving back to their community no matter their financial circumstances.
Foster Nation has a Young Leaders Collective where we have 23 professionals across fields such as law, business, entertainment, marketing, etc. serve on our Collective to fundraise and raise awareness of the foster care system.
The main struggle along the way was engaging the foster youth in this County. There are a lot of trust issues with foster youth (and understandably so) which made some of our events a bit challenging to coordinate.
Alright – so let’s talk business. Tell us about Foster Nation – what should we know?
Foster Nation is different from many other nonprofits because it is driven entirely by a young leadership junior board that brings together cool companies for a good cause. For example, we have partnered with companies like Smashbox, Funboy, sweet green, Malibu Wines, Headspace, Sound Tea, etc. to host events that bring together young millennials to give back to the foster care cause.
When we first started Foster Nation, we wanted to do away with stale and traditional nonprofit galas where people are expected to pay $500 for a ticket. Just because we can’t afford to attend those galas and write large checks doesn’t mean we don’t want to be involved. And it is with this thought in mind that we tailor our events to millennials and young leaders so that we can foster a nation of supporters, mentors, and future foster parents.
We are known for our career networking events and our fun parties for a purpose! Our organization specializes in rallying millennials to champion this cause in order to benefit emancipated foster youth in college trying to find a support network. What we’re most proud of is our #SpeakUp Series where we provide a community and platform that allows foster youth voices to be heard and celebrated.
Any shoutouts? Who else deserves credit in this story – who has played a meaningful role?
The people that deserve credit are first and foremost Jeanne Pritzker for her undying effort and commitment to challenging the status quo in the foster care system here in LA. Without her family’s generous support, we would not be where we are today.
Equally important is the Pritzker Foundation staff, as well as all the young people that serve on the Young Leaders Collective from its inception. We have planned incredibly successful events that have helped raise awareness among different companies, social circles, and individuals.
Contact Info:
- Address: 11150 Santa Monica Blvd, Suite 1500 Los Angeles, CA 90025
- Website: www.fosternation.org
- Phone: 310-575-9400 x1161
- Email: [email protected]
- Instagram: @thefosternation
- Facebook: https://facebook.com/thefosterNation/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/thefosternation
Image Credit:
Daniel Rivera
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