In 2003, at just 32 years old, Lisa Guillette faced a crossroads when she was presented an opportunity to become the executive director of a tiny nonprofit known then as the Rhode Island Foster Parents Association, which at the time had just two part-time employees.

For around a decade since graduating college, Guillette had been doing policy work and helping plan training programs for special education teachers. The offer was a game changer for her.

“Honestly, I thought I died and went to heaven when they hired me to be their executive director at sixty-grand a year,” she said with a laugh. “I had been bartending at Fish Co. as a second job and they were like, you know, you’re going to have to give up the bartending.”

For the next 21 years, Guillette has worked tirelessly to turn the Rhode Island Foster Parents Association (which became Foster Forward in 2012) into Rhode Island’s premiere organization for assisting teenagers and young adults who have been forced to traverse difficult and crucial crossroads within their own lives.

That work has now been recognized on a national level, as Guillette was recently named Rhode Island’s selection for the 2025 “Women of the Year” awards, an extensive list of difference-making women from across the nation chosen annually by “USA Today”.

Changing lives through opportunities
Whether they’re currently experiencing life in foster care, they’re about to age out of the foster care system and don’t know where to turn for help, or they’ve just hit a snag in early adulthood and need a helping hand to get back on track, Foster Forward specializes in providing wraparound services to teens and young adults who have had any interaction with the foster care system, ensuring they have a fair shot to rise above the challenges that such a life naturally presents.

“It's all designed to center young people and to put them in the driver's seat of their own lives,” Guillette said. “This is a way for young people to overcome trauma and break generational cycles.”

Among their suite of offerings is a financial literacy program (ASPIRE), which has assisted just shy of 1,200 young people since it began in 2005. Open to anyone aged 14-26 who spent even just a single day in a DCYF placement, ASPIRE offers financial literacy training and a no-strings-attached initial infusion of $100 to go towards the opening of a savings account. A $1,000 annual match is then offered by Foster Forward to encourage saving and planning for the next step.

A career exploration and work readiness program (Works Wonders®) offers 16 hours of skills training and 12 weeks of individual career coaching, as well as paid, work-based learning experiences, as well as means to obtain a GED. The program has been recognized as a national leader and is currently being used as a model for fledgling programs in Tennessee and Indiana.

A mentoring program (Real Connections) gives those going through the system a real-life example of someone who has faced similar challenges and found success. Guillette, herself, went from mentoring a young woman going through the program to actually becoming her adoptive mother.

A 4,000-square-foot storefront on the Providence/Pawtucket border provides a clean and dignified shopping experience for foster parents and those who have aged out of the system to get the items they need without incurring debt.

But the biggest game changer offered through Foster Forward, and where Guillette has been making the most ambitious strides, is in their housing program (Your Way Home), which aims to provide housing opportunities and short-term rental assistance for young adults who have aged out of the foster system and are now at a higher risk of becoming homeless.

Over the past few years, Guillette has been making moves on that front. Foster Forward currently owns 9 subsidized housing units, and they have projects in motion to create 34 more such units. This includes 20 units set aside within their largest project yet — a 144-unit project on Taunton Avenue planned to be built in downtown East Providence that came together as a collaborative effort from One Neighborhood Builders, Crossroads RI, and the Family Service of Rhode Island.

Eventually, the goal is to create 110 total subsidized units in the state, and potentially begin their own property management arm to provide even more employment opportunities for their clients.

“Over a quarter of young people who age out of foster care will experience experience homelessness within the first year of leaving the system,” Guillette said. “Homelessness should be rare, brief, and non-recurring, right? So by having these services and supports available and really nipping it in the bud and interrupting early experiences of homelessness and getting young people to sustainable housing solutions, we are changing the lifetime trajectory for young people who have experienced foster care.”

A family legacy
Even after just one, hour-long conversation with her, it makes perfect sense that Guillette would be named Rhode Island’s “Woman of the Year.”

By her own account, Guillette has always been the kind of person who strives to excel in everything she does — a trait that was reinforced by her family early on.

“When I was younger, I just wanted to be the best. And when I was trying to be the best, I was the most competitive person in the room,” she said. “You go to a Guillette family reunion and the people would be like, ‘Did you take your pre-SATs? What did you get? What were your numbers?’ People were just always pushing you to do your best, and to move forward.”

But this recognition — coming in the form of such a singular accolade — must also be a little ironic for her. Because as competitive as Guillette might be, she would likely forfeit the award in a heartbeat if it would enable her to help one more person in need. And because she views her accomplishments as the result of a targeted team effort.

“For many years in my career, I would be in rooms where maybe my idea was bigger than the moment that I was in. And I felt constrained in that,” she said. “When I came to this organization, it was very small. But what I have felt for the last 21 years is that I have been completely unleashed in the ability to think as big, or bigger, than the moment…But if we didn’t have people resourcing this work, I'd still just be sitting here with ideas. Their support means everything.”

It was telling that Guillette, when interviewed on Monday, didn’t have a plaque showcasing her new award hanging up in her office. Instead, the frame that looks over her shoulder each day is a photograph with her late father, Robert Guillette.

Robert, who passed away in February of 2016, rose to the rank of Commander in the United States Navy Reserve and would go on to build a career and a name for himself as the director of the recently-closed Northern Rhode Island Collaborative, which offered services for students across multiple districts with the most severe special education needs.

Guillette credits his influence as a large part of why she first pursued a career special education, and ultimately made the pivot into transformative social work.

“I always saw him really seeing people and noticing people really on the fringe of things and calling people in to opportunities,” she said. “He was a really inclusionary person.”

Funding at risk
That upbringing also makes it difficult for Guillette to understand the motivations of federal forces, like the controversial new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), and their attempts to cut or freeze programs and grants that are essential to the kind of work being done by organizations like Foster Forward.

Guillette said that as much as 27% of their budget is currently at risk of becoming collateral damage to various cuts proposed by DOGE in recent weeks.

The federal housing voucher program that provides the necessary subsidies to allow for the aforementioned housing for at-risk young adults, in particular, would be a devastating loss.

“If that goes away, then we might not be able to afford to absorb all of those costs in our budget,” she said. “So, would we potentially have to sell any of the properties? We're basically doing contingency planning right now. And then we're also saying, okay, how could we hold the line? What do we need to do for new revenue? What do we need to do with fundraising?”

Combined with state budgetary woes and the end of temporary Covid moneys, there’s a lot of uncertainty at the moment. Still, she tries to remain optimistic.

“I believe in people. I believe in the power of people to overcome,” she said. “I guess we definitely have to try to play the long game here.”

And even in the most uncertain times, Guillette is guided by her principles that people are worth giving the benefit of the doubt, and deserving of empathy, just like her father taught her.

“I think a lot of people are leaning into their fear as opposed to leaning into love. And this is an opportunity to realign around that,” she continued. “Maybe this is an opportunity for everyone to get away from a headline and get into an action…get outside of the rhetoric on any position right now and just get centered in people. That's that's the way that we're going to find our way back.”