Fostering Connections

Palisadians Romi Lassally and Patrick McCabe Founded Ready to Succeed to Support College-Age Foster Youth in Los Angeles

By SARAH SHMERLING | Editor-in-Chief

Sometimes the right connection can make a world of difference. That is the foundation Ready to Succeed, launched in 2016 by Palisadians Patrick McCabe and Romi Lassally, is built upon.

Ready to Succeed—a “career and personal development nonprofit”—is designed to empower foster college students to graduate, launch careers and “reach their full potential.”

“Romi and I come from similar backgrounds in that we’re both recovering business executives,” explained McCabe, who moved to the Riviera neighborhood less than a year ago after living for 33 years in the same house in Santa Monica. “Romi worked in the film business for over 20 years, and I worked in cable television sports.”

After exiting the television industry, McCabe co-founded New Roads School in Santa Monica with partner Paul Cummins, the founder of Crossroads. McCabe was there for about 12 years, as head of the Lower School.

Through New Roads, McCabe worked with high school-aged foster youth as part of a program where students were placed in private and parochial schools, like Marlborough, Archer and Brentwood schools, in addition to New Roads and Crossroads.

“I saw these foster youth … I saw clearly, I wasn’t worried about them academically,” McCabe explained, since they were studying at “high-end private schools,” “but I was worried about them sociologically … I certainly wondered what happened to them once they got to college.”

After New Roads, McCabe became executive director of Covenant House, a shelter in Hollywood for people experiencing homelessness, where he garnered additional experience working with foster youth.

“After Covenant House … I really wanted to have my own agency,” McCabe said. “And then I just had the incredibly great fortune of meeting Romi through another mutual friend named Abby Adams, who runs something called CareerSpring here in Los Angeles.”

In addition to work in the film business, Lassally—who has lived above the Alphabet Streets since 2007—was also involved with several other entrepreneurial ventures, she explained. When thinking about her through line, Lassally said, for her, it was all about connecting people.

“It definitely fuels me to connect the dots, whether it’s resources or opportunities,” Lassally said, “and I really love working with young people.”

She was able to flex that connection muscle when she created a career day when her daughter was in high school, as well as helping build out mentorship programs through UCLA.

“I found some old notes from an interview I did, and it said I went from developing content, developing material, developing stories for film to developing young people,” Lassally said. “That’s really when I took my, you know, StrengthsFinder test. I should have always been working with people, like what was I doing? It’s just so much more fulfilling.”

At first, Lassally said, she began looking into a way for the work to be a for-profit business, that every student could use “additional career support and doors opened” if they did not have access to someone in the field they were exploring.

“I was thinking about that and quickly realized that there was probably a much greater need in marginalized communities than in communities where the students might have more access, including my own,” Lassally explained. “I was lucky enough to meet Pat.”

Lassally said she and Pat realized they weren’t going to be able to tackle the whole systemic problem foster youth in Los Angeles were facing—so they decided to focus on one piece of it, founding Ready to Succeed.

“These foster youth who make it to college are superheroes,” Lassally added. “The number’s gone up a little bit, but 4% will graduate from four-year schools. They’ve had some support to get into school, but no support there.”

“Foster youth faced some of the worst outcomes among their peers,” according to data shared by Ready to Succeed, with “extremely low college graduation rates and high rates of unemployment, housing insecurity (29%) and criminal convictions (42%).”

Lassally, who has three kids who have gone through college, and McCabe, who has two, said they thought about what was most helpful for their children, which, for them, was access to internship opportunities. So together, Lassally said, “we were going to leverage our networks for good” to connect foster youth with various industries.

“One of the first things I did was sit down with Pat with a legal pad and say, ‘OK, tell me everyone you know,’” Lassally recalled. “I realized between the two of us, we had the entire city covered in every industry.”

Starting with a few students, the nonprofit has, to date, helped nearly 500 program Scholars and alumni, with more than 90% of participants graduating college in four and a half years and 92% securing “strong entry-level jobs” within six months of graduation. Each year, Ready to Succeed forms a class of up to 50 students across 35 four-year universities in California.

Students join Ready to Succeed during their sophomore, junior or senior year of college, remaining in the program throughout their first couple of years of full-time employment—an extension, McCabe explained, is crucial.

“Graduation day for these foster youth is the greatest day in their life because they are that 4% … of all foster youth that are going to graduate a four-year school, so it’s an incredible victory,” McCabe said. “It can also be the worst day of their life because they lose their food, their housing, their mental health support and their social circle. And they can’t go back to Mom and Dad’s basement for six months to think about it. It’s not an option. So that’s why we continue to keep an eye on everybody.”

The program focuses on providing resources (one-on-one career and personal coaching), relationships (making 20-plus introductions to professionals in their networks) and opportunities (internship and entry-level job opportunities at “sought-after and prestigious” companies). There are also scholarship opportunities for participants.

“We know that it’s a solvable problem if these students can get what they need, when they need it,” Lassally explained. “Urgency is a huge driver for us. So it’s holistic, it’s urgent and it’s tailored. It’s really curated and selective and intentional and tailored to our students. And that’s why it works.”

The first step in the program is “new scholars are paired with career and personal development coaches,” according to the website. Scholars then “attend monthly workshops, receive one-on-on communications coaching and are introduced to major players in their industry of choice.”

Coaches then help Scholars create Individual Career Plans, as well as navigate the application and interview process. Once they are placed at a job, Scholars receive ongoing “career and personal support.”

Another facet of Ready to Succeed is Project Dorm Room, described as a collaborative effort with Make Good Inc. that ensures “foster youth move into college with the resources they need.” On average, according to the program, the cost per student for dorm room supplies—including sheets, blankets, pillow, mattress pad, lamp, shower caddy and more—is $750.

There is also the McCabe Impact Fellowship, which “provides select RTS Scholars with paid project-based fellowships,” where “participants gain critical work experience and build their professional networks.”

“RTS Scholars are eager to make real change and bring their voice and ideas to social impact organizations,” according to the description. “However, learning experiences like these are often limited and unpaid. The McCabe Impact Fellowship solves this problem by providing paid experiences with innovative partners.”

To date, more than 50 fellows have been served with 12,000 hours worked across 14 impact partners, including CASA, In a Perfect World, National Center for Youth Law and more.

In many cases, the alumni now form the network and connections in which Ready to Succeed scholars are placed. Two decades later, the very first ninth-grade student McCabe worked with through New Roads, Emmanuel Benton, is now a member of the Ready to Succeed board.

McCabe and Lassally recalled several program alumni who continue to help Scholars. “They’re the models and mentors,” Lassally said, adding the program has created “such a beautiful, virtuous cycle.”

Palisadians who are looking to support Ready to Succeed’s efforts have a couple of options, including donating funds to support programming or joining the Ready to Succeed network.

“People who want to leverage their networks for the good of people outside their networks, who are connectors and get a thrill from making introductions, it’s really gratifying,” Lassally said. “You really get a lot by giving.”

Looking forward to the future, McCabe and Lassally shared plans to continue the program—Lassally saying she hopes to infiltrate more campuses and help every foster student, and McCabe noting that the program could be replicated anywhere in the country to serve more students.

“Like a lot of things, it’s a very, very basic idea that Romi and I had,” McCabe said of the program, “but it’s really turned out quite well.”

“It’s in our DNA,” Lassally said. “We’re lucky to be living our lives of purpose.”

For more information, visit readytosucceedla.org.