Black tech CEO shares personal story of how Trump order on foster care youth could change lives

Sixto Cancel, founder of Think of Us, says the “Fostering the Future” executive order will expand the kind of opportunities that saved his life.

Last week, President Donald Trump signed an executive order expanding the federal government’s partnership with states and the private sector to improve the lived outcomes of foster youth and those who age out of the foster care system.

The executive order calls for the federal government to “harness Federal support, technology, and strategic partnerships to provide young Americans in or transitioning out of the foster care system with the tools they need to become successful adults.”

The EO, spearheaded by First Lady Melania Trump, focuses on key areas, including modernizing the child welfare system and establishing a “Foster the Youth” online resource platform, which will be executed by an interagency task force that includes the First Lady’s office and the Department of Health and Human Services.

Sixto Cancel, CEO of Think of Us, a tech, research, and design company focused on improving the foster care system, played a role in advising the Office of the First Lady on the order that President Donald Trump signed on Nov. 13. Cancel has been leading bipartisan engagement with every White House on issues related to the child welfare system and foster youth since President Barack Obama’s administration.

As a Black man who grew up in and out of the foster care system, he knows firsthand how critical the execution of the order will be for foster youth, most especially Black foster youth who make up a disproportionate share of the foster population.

The order’s focus on foster youth who age out of the child welfare system is especially critical, said Cancel, who said his personal experience is a testament to the barriers foster youth endure–and the impact investments and support programs can have on their lives.

“I entered foster care as a baby, 11 months…Then I was adopted at 9. It was an abusive adoption. At 13, I found myself couch surfing, locked out of the house,” Cancel told theGrio. “It took me taping a recorder to my chest, recording the abuse so that I could get back into the foster care system. I would have these open cases, closed cases, open CPS cases, closed CPS cases.”

But it wasn’t just the abuse at home that posed as a threat; it was also attending a “failing” school and living in a neighborhood trapped by poverty and gang violence in Bridgeport, Connecticut.

“When you live in those conditions, you kind of always wonder, will you ever get out of the hood? And then when you live in foster care, and you know you’re going to age out—it’s not like you’re getting adopted or you’re going to find some family member to go to,” he shared. “My teenage years were really spent thinking, ‘What’s actually going to happen to me? What will life after high school be like?’ I really didn’t expect to live past 18.”

Cancel’s saving grace was a program called the Jim Casey Youth Opportunities Initiative. The program provided him and other foster youth with needed life skills, including financial literacy. It also provided him with a work-to-learn program that allowed him to save money. The program also provided him with a savings account and matched every dollar he saved.

“So when I graduated from college, I had purchased a car…and I had put down a deposit for my apartment. So going into college, I was so stable because I had access to these programs,” said the foster advocate and entrepreneur.

The program Cancel participated in was made possible by a combination of state and federal funding; he says that kind of collaboration, which is expected to scale as a result of the Trump administration’s commitment, will ultimately lead to more foster youth who age out of the system having better access to education, employment, and housing.

“This particular executive order is about expanding those opportunities. It’s about collaboration between the federal government to be able to do that,” he told theGrio.

Cancel said he is most especially grateful to the First Lady, Melania Trump.

“The thing that I appreciate about the First Lady is that it feels like almost every month, she is doing something that is pushing the ball forward for the children and youth through the Be Best Initiative. It’s only driven by what’s right for children,” he told theGrio. “I thank her for centering the voices of youth with lived experience.”