Foster Care Experience Leads VCU Student to Become an Advocate for Others

By Gwyndolyn Miles of the Richmond Times-Dispatch

“I don’t want to be the exception,” Alexandria Davis said. “I want to be the expectation.”

At age 16, a series of family issues landed Davis in foster care. When she turned 18, she aged out, stepping into the “real world” completely alone.

“I was like, ‘I’m going to be like everyone else and go to community college,’” Davis said.

Living in California at the time, Davis soon learned that with no familial support and bills piling up, school would have to wait.

“I realized pretty quickly that I needed to prioritize survival,” Davis said.

Today, Davis, now 26, is working to make a difference for other foster youth.

Davis has her associate degree and is working on her undergraduate degree at VCU. She’s also a business owner and plans to pursue her MBA.

“When you don’t have to worry about survival, you can do so much more,” Davis said.

When she moved to Virginia in 2019, Davis worked several part-time and full-time jobs to make ends meet. When she realized that these jobs wouldn’t get her to where she wanted to be in life, she decided it was time to go back to school. She moved to Richmond in 2022.

“As a foster youth, figuring out how to survive on my own was incredibly difficult, but by becoming a student and entrepreneur, I changed my whole trajectory,” Davis said.

Davis was a student at Brightpoint Community College, graduating in 2024 with a 3.95 GPA. At Brightpoint, she discovered the Great Expectations program, which changed her life.

“I was out on a limb by myself,” Davis said. “Having someone for the first time, listening to your problem and giving you those heart-to-heart talks was really refreshing. I think a lot of people take that for granted.”

Great Expectations, which was founded in 2008, serves foster youth who are students at 21 community colleges in Virginia. According to their website, they had assisted more than 3,000 students by 2018.

At Brightpoint, the Great Expectations program can provide support in choosing a major, navigating financial aid, one-on-one tutoring and coaches to guide students.

“I got really emotional with my coach, and I might get emotional now. I felt like, this is what other people experience?” Davis asked. “To have an adult care for you and actually ask how you’re doing, it’s so tough to get that as a foster youth.”

Elizabeth Underwood is one of Davis’ coaches through Great Expectations. Davis says that Underwood’s support helped her begin her own business in 2021.

“She really showed me what it was like to have someone listen to you, someone to understand that your needs are important,” Davis said.

Davis started her own pastry business, Tiny Vines Food Company. She used what she learned in Great Expectations about budgeting and marketing to begin selling her products at local farmers markets.

“Baking became a therapy for me, but also a business,” Davis said. “It taught me how to create things with very limited tools.”

Alongside baking, Davis says that she fell in love with being an entrepreneur. Having Underwood’s support and listening ear gave her the confidence to push forward.

“It’s the little things that I feel like you get with a biological parent that these foster youths are not getting,” Davis said. “It makes a night and day difference.”

Opening up to others can be especially difficult for foster kids, Davis said. When a person is raised in an unstable environment, they learn that relationships are temporary.

“A lot of us don’t even have that trust anymore with adult figures, because you don’t know if you’re just going to lose your living situation,” Davis said.

Pete Landergan is another one of Davis’ mentors. Being vulnerable with him was something Davis struggled with at first, but gradually began to appreciate.

“He’s kind of acting like my dad,” Davis said. “He’s just that person that whenever I’m having a bad day or a good day, whenever I have decisions that I have to make, he’s the guy I call.”

Developing that relationship between foster youths and their coaches is something that requires hard work from both parties.

“It takes these coaches so much to break that boundary, to break down that barrier of trust,” Davis said. “And that’s one of the biggest things that they’re dealing with.”

Davis is currently an honors student at VCU with a 4.0 GPA. As if that wasn’t impressive enough, she also recently began an internship at the Great Expectations office in Midlothian. There, she helps with their marketing team and their website, she also sends handwritten letters to donors.

Her mission now: spreading the word to other foster youths. Although she has come to terms with her own journey, she wants to give others the chance to start earlier than she did.

“I did feel like I had wasted five years trying to figure out how to just be an adult in general, but it was so important for me to do because I’ve learned so much,” Davis said.

Davis now also leads workshops in partnership with United Methodist Family Services and Virginia’s Community College System, primarily focusing on the importance of having a solid budget and financial plan. She also spends time discussing college resources that are available and financial aid assistance.

The workshops are through other community colleges like Brightpoint and Reynolds, but also for high school students. At one high school workshop, when Davis asked the group of 15 who had heard of Great Expectations, nobody raised their hand.

“They really expect them to know everything and know what to do; to be proactive enough to be thinking about 10 steps ahead of them,” Davis said. “That’s not something a kid should have to do.”

Now, Davis wants to bridge the gap between foster youths and their resources, specifically within Great Expectations.

“I feel so passionately because I feel like if I knew I was going to get this amount of support earlier on, I would have gone to college earlier on,” Davis said.

Beyond her studies and advocacy, Davis decided to conduct an independent study on foster youths and higher education. She’s currently writing a research paper to sum up graduation rates, financial aid and dropout trends. Through her findings, she hopes to use the data to drive policy change and inform more people on what this group goes through and why it happens.

“Statistics show that there is a higher rate of homelessness and incarceration, not because of lack of potential,” Davis said. “But because of the lack of support and knowledge of choices that they have made.”

What she really wants people to know, though, is that foster youths are worthy.

“Foster youths are not broken,” Davis said. “They’re resilient, just like me. We are resourceful, we are ready.”

You can view the article here: https://richmond.com/news/local/article_4d8ca4e9-2256-4ef3-8489-5f03bc4e59f9.html#tracking-source=home-top-story