Amber Gray helping our kids figure out: Where to next?

Amber Gray’s life is one of successes, to be sure.

She was an All-American basketball player at Lakota West. She made the University of Tennessee Lady Vols team and played in 27 games as a freshman for legendary coach Pat Summitt. She then played at Xavier University and plays professionally. She’s about to be inducted into the Lakota West Firebirds Hall of Fame.

But it is also the adversity Gray faced that prompted her to start her Where2Next foundation, which focuses on helping kids decide their next steps, whether that means in school, in sports or in life. After her first year at Tennessee, she had a brain aneurysm doctors found after shoulder surgery. The aneurysm had begun to hemorrhage, causing a stroke. She spent months in rehabilitation.

So she gets that life can be hard. She understands battling difficult circumstances. It’s those lessons she hopes to bring to some of our older teens as they transition from life in foster care to life on their own.

Step one: Bringing Christmas to some of our kids in independent living.

We always appreciate holiday donations for our kids in foster care. But we don’t often get things for our older teens. Gray is changing that this year.

We also look forward to what we hope is a long-term mentoring relationship between our teens and this successful young athlete whose goal is to “leave a legacy greater than I was given.”

 

by Jane Prendergast

Filed Under: News

Tagged: ambergray, hamilton county job and family services, mentoring, where2next