For 20 years, this UC Berkeley program has helped students who’ve been in foster care succeed

Tristan Lombard's first interaction with what was then known as the Cal Independent Scholars Network was to call the Better Business Bureau and report a scam.

It was 2006, and Lombard's pre-college years had looked different than most of his peers: He'd attended four different high schools, sold drugs, had brushes with law enforcement and experienced periods of homelessness. So, as what he terms a "very bitter 17-year-old," he saw an invitation to create a wish list for move-in day dorm products and assumed it was a con.

It wasn't. Rather, it was part of a fledgling program established by a single housing employee to help students who'd been in foster care, starting before they set foot on Berkeley's campus.

"If the university had not invested in someone like me and given me the financial aid, given me just some bed sheets, a welcome week, my life could have gone a very different route," said Lombard. He went on to graduate in 2010 and become a successful startup marketing consultant after working in nonprofits and higher education.

2025 marks the 20th anniversary of the program, now known as Hope Scholars. Over those two decades, it's grown from one leader and one student to a full-time team of four who have supported more than 360 students, including 170 just this year. Under its current director, Charly King Beavers, enrollment tripled between 2020 and 2022, and the program expanded offerings to reach graduate students and secured funding for more staff and space.

Hope Scholars' track record shows "20 years of proving that when we invest in students who have experienced foster care or childhood homelessness, we are investing in brilliance, in leaders, in scholars and changemakers," said Beavers at an anniversary celebration in November.

In the audience as Beavers spoke sat Lombard and the program's two founders, Michelle Kniffin and Deborah Lowe Martinez - role models so influential that Lombard said he would have them walk him down the aisle at a hypothetical wedding.

The cofounders of the Hope Scholars program, Michelle Kniffin and Deborah Lowe Martinez, look at a yearbook from when it was known as the Cal Independent Scholars Network. Photo: Luis Ramirez Martinez/UC Berkeley

Hope Scholars is Kniffin's brainchild. Then an assistant director of university housing, she was troubled by hearing that a new student who'd been in foster care had arrived at her first day at Berkeley alone by bus with just a duffel bag of clothes. No bedding had been provided by the school, and she cried herself to sleep that night.

Kniffin leveraged her three decades of institutional knowledge into rustling up funds to support such students. She found allies in then-Chancellor Robert Birgeneau's wife, Mary Catherine, who had been a social worker, and professor Jill Duerr Berrick from the School of Social Welfare. Two years in, Lowe Martinez, an attorney with experience in foster care law and a UC Berkeley parent, read about the program in an article and wound up becoming its first director.

Today, Hope Scholars supports not just students who have experienced foster care or housing insecurity but anyone who wasn't raised by biological parents, like orphans or people whose legal guardians were their relatives.

A scrapbook showing Hope Scholars from years past. Photo: Stanley Luo/UC Berkeley

Beavers leads the program with first-hand experience; after being orphaned at a young age, she was brought up by relatives. For this Bay Area native, it's a "dream job" to make higher education more accessible to a population that faces substantial obstacles at a university like Berkeley.

Research shows that under two-thirds of students in foster care in California - as opposed to 87% of their peers - graduate high school in four years. Just 3.6% of adults who'd once been in the state foster system had earned diplomas from a four-year university by the age of 23. (Nationally, 8% to 12% graduate from two- or four-year colleges by their late 20s.)

Navigating college requires certain skills, from composing a professional email to signing up for housing, which parents often help out with. "You're asking students who've moved through multiple schools and foster homes-who've faced instability and broken support systems-to arrive at one of the most demanding universities and already know how to succeed," said Beavers. "Foster youth often don't have someone they can turn to and ask, 'How did you do this?'"

For peer advisor Alexis Wood, a fourth-year graduate student in geography who entered the foster care system at age 10, her first time in college at the University of Miami was deeply disorienting.

Alexis Wood, a fourth-year Ph.D. candidate in geography, hopes that her mentorship makes other students who have been in foster care feel like graduate school is an attainable goal. Photo: Stanley Luo/UC Berkeley

"I just had no concept of what a college experience even looked like," she said. She had never encountered a syllabus before, and the freedom of college life was worlds away from her regimented high school experience. Finances were tight, since the money she was earning from a part-time job went toward her mother's rent. Feeling isolated, she dropped out and moved across the country to California, where she eventually tried again at Berkeley City College.

That, too, felt daunting, as if she'd intruded into a bubble where she wasn't supposed to be. She remembered crying outside of the community college on her first day. Once she transferred to UC Berkeley, a lecturer invited her to rehearse her answers to questions before class so that she wouldn't sit silent, too petrified of making a mistake to participate.

She hadn't checked the box about foster care on her application forms, wanting to distance herself from that label. "I wasn't a part of Berkeley Hope Scholars at that point, but I really wish I had been," she said. Once she began grad school, Wood became involved as a peer adviser to pay forward the mentorship her dissertation adviser had offered her.

In addition to peer-to-peer mentorship, Hope Scholars offers students access to a financial adviser, a mental health clinician and an academic counselor. That counselor, Rebeca Borges, had herself been a Hope Scholar.

"Charly and Rebeca are always there in the way you don't get in a university system," said Wood.

"Everyone puts their heart into the work," added Beavers.

Charly King Beavers has led the Hope Scholars program since 2020. Stanley Luo/UC Berkeley

Hope Scholars aims to give students holistic support, which includes help with material essentials - move-in packages, a food pantry and a stipend of $3,000 for students' first year and $2,000 in subsequent years. Lombard, who worked three jobs to put himself through school, said that financial assistance can be game-changing.

The program also cultivates connection. It hosts game nights and "gratitude dinners" for Thanksgiving. A course introduces scholars to each other and to on-campus resources. Students can also choose adult mentors who will then help them with the kinds of tasks a parent might, like figuring out how to open a bank account.

Lombard remembered one of his mentors funding his flight to a study abroad program in South Africa, which was his first time outside the U.S. The same family took him to dinner for his graduation, and they've stayed in touch.

"[Hope Scholars] really impacted my personal life by helping me start to see that there were people who genuinely want the best for you, and that the whole world is not out to get you," he said.

Current students at the Hope Scholars anniversary event. Photo: Luis Ramirez Martinez/UC Berkeley

The program also seeks to smooth the transition to the workplace. "Many of our students come in without the social capital others often take for granted," explained Beavers. Program employees have planned events where students practice networking with retired professors, created internship placements and taken students to tour tech companies. There's also a fund for professional clothes, GRE test fees or travel to visit graduate schools they have been accepted to.

Graduate students make up about one-fifth of the Hope Scholars cohort, with their own specialized events and a $6,000 stipend. Wood advises other graduate students on dilemmas, like how to navigate academic politics, and demystifies the advanced-degree application process for undergrads.

Erick Mendes, a current senior double majoring in political science and business administration, also serves as a peer adviser, helping fellow Hope Scholars by connecting them to campus resources or providing a listening ear.

Erick Mendes, a senior and peer adviser, at the Hope Scholars 20th anniversary event. Mendes, who is set to become the first in his biological family to graduate college, has a job in the financial sector lined up after he leaves campus. Photo: Luis Ramirez Martinez/UC Berkeley

"It's just much more approachable, and it feels accessible and more welcoming" to talk to a fellow student, he explained. Born in Wisconsin, he entered the foster care system at age five when his parents were arrested. Along with his younger siblings, he was adopted by his second foster family at age 10 - "I got lucky," he said - and grew up in Petaluma, California. He's on pace to become the first in his biological family to graduate college.

"People who grew up in the foster care system … aren't supposed to succeed," he reflected. "People here are spectacular and have beaten all the odds."

The anniversary celebration featured a panel of Hope Scholars alumni who had beaten those odds - although they were candid that the road to do so had been rocky at times. Lombard, as one of the program's first alumni, spoke on the panel, as did a licensed psychotherapist, a nuclear engineer, an operations coordinator and the director of student services at Berkeley's College of Chemistry.

Sonia Aldape, the therapist, said that in addition to helping her get on track when she was on academic probation her sophomore year, Hope Scholars had shaped her professional path. "It is also one of the reasons I ultimately became a therapist, because I saw the great impact it had simply being an emotionally supportive space," she said. Today, she's working toward a doctorate in her field.

Sonia Aldape, left, and Tristan Lombard, right, spoke on the Hope Scholars alumni panel. Photo: Luis Ramirez Martinez/UC Berkeley

Near the end of the evening, Beavers announced another hard-earned achievement for the program: They'd be tripling their office space in the César Chavez Student Center. The program was reaching more students and needed more room.

"I almost cried," said Kniffin. "That they have four staff members now - oh my God, pretty amazing." Then she turned to hug and chat more with Lombard.

His two cents? "I loved seeing how much it has grown … It really warmed my cold gay heart."

Beavers made her concluding remarks in front of a smiling crowd, reflecting on the program's 2015 rechristening to Hope Scholars. The word choice, she said, was important: "Hope is not a passive word; it's not something to wait for. It's something we build every day together. It's what carried our students through uncertainty and challenge. It's what turned this small program into a legacy."