Success Stories This Year's Graduates

David Ambroz, who is in his mid-thirties, is Director of Corporate Citizenship & Social Responsibility for Disney/ABC TV group based in Los Angeles – a dream job for a man who has worked his entire life to see his dreams become reality. When asked how he attained such a heady job at such a young age, David responds, “You live the life a foster kid typically lives – you embrace the adventure and do a lot of networking.” David’s adventure included growing up with two siblings and a mentally ill mom who was loving but physically abusive. David and his siblings lobbied hard to be taken from her care and eventually were heard by a school safety officer and a judge. At age 11, David recalls, “we went from the pot into the fire” in foster care in states including Massachusetts, New York and Florida. Often separated from his sister and brother, he threw himself into education – earning a grant to study abroad while in his teens, and eventually obtaining a full scholarship to attend Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, NY. It was there that circumstances brought him together with Foster Care to Success. “My major costs were covered by the scholarship,” David says, “but I needed clothes, books, a place to go for holidays, money to participate in social activities. That’s what I love about FC2S: they think about the whole person and no other organization does that.”

David earned a BA in Political Science from Vassar and a law degree from the UCLA School of Law, with an internship in the Clinton White House along the way. “FC2S invested in me every step of the way,” he says. “It is not an organization but a collection of people who are passionate about young people who are struggling.” Today David and Dan, his partner of six years, live in a beautiful Hollywood home and David is involved in many community activities including as a California Child Welfare Commissioner. He remains a strong proponent of networking, particularly for former foster youth, pointing out that his first association with the ABC Network was through another Vassar alum.