Tiffany Leveille
3 years in Foster Care
19 years old
She/her/hers
Tiffany Leveille will enroll at a university in Massachusetts, where she will major in Psychology with a minor in Musical Theatre. She aspires to a career in a psychology research field, and would particularly like to study how childhood adversity impacts individuals’ lives. Tiffany hopes that by researching the ways that mental illness or childhood trauma impacts the parents of foster children, she can provide insights that help disrupt the cycles of abuse and neglect and eradicate generational trauma within the foster care system. Tiffany is also a music lover and wants to one day open a studio where children, especially those in foster care, can learn to express themselves through music.
Tiffany is the founder and executive director of In the Write, an international online publication that features stories about social justice, teen culture, and foster care. She leads a team of writers and editors from multiple countries, and pens articles herself. Tiffany was inspired to create In the Write after winning a battle to include a culture section in her high school newspaper. She is a proud Arab-Irish American, and knew that other students at her school would benefit from being able to share and learn about their diverse cultures, backgrounds, and traditions. She also runs a foster care advocacy page on Instagram called Just Another Foster Kid, where she shares her thoughts on the foster care system.
Tiffany was in foster care for about three years. She is dedicated to connecting with current and former foster youth through her work at In the Write and beyond and hopes that time and effort she puts into researching and writing about faults in the system will inspire positive change. Tiffany’s experience in foster care ignited her passion to reshape the system and drives her to be empathetic, understanding, and actionable. She firmly believes that we are not defined by our struggles, but by how we respond to them.