New York man shares his journey from foster care to CEO

Roger Saillant spent 18 years in foster care. Now, at age 81, he has penned his memoir, “The Power of Being Seen,” about his experiences in foster care and overcoming feelings of abandonment and depression.

As reported by the Times Union, Saillant was just nine months old when he entered the foster care system in Pennsylvania and was placed with a family who owned a farm. He exited the foster care system without having been adopted, but with the hope of a bright future as he began studying at Bowdoin College in Maine.

“There’s about 400,000 children in the United States in foster care. And, although my experience was long ago and far away, there are certain emotional states that are common,” Saillant said in an interview.

Seen as someone with the potential to be a farmhand, Salliant was later tested by a social worker who said he was likely to do well in college. From that moment, he began working hard to get into college, reading and studying more at his high school. Though he lived with the same foster family from age four to 16, he ultimately moved between six homes during his childhood before moving in with a Quaker family who helped him to fulfill his ambitions.

READ: Son reunites with mother decades after being placed for adoption

“I had no idea what college was but I decided that’s what I’m going to do,” he said, noting that he loved to write. He earned a full scholarship to Bowdoin College and after he graduated he went to Indiana University, where he earned a doctorate in chemistry. From there, he did post-doctoral work at UCLA and took a job at Ford Motor Co. and Visteon Corporation. He married and then moved east to Albany where he took a job as CEO of Plug Power, holding that position until April 2008.

Now in his retirement, he does advocacy work for CASA (the Court Appointed Special Advocates for Children) of New York State and speaks up for children in foster care.

According to the National Foster Youth Institute, more than 23,000 children age out of foster care in the US every year. Only one out of every two foster kids will have some form of employment by the age of 24. They are also at an increased risk of being placed in jail and of becoming homeless without a support system.

“When I was in foster care, I felt abandoned. I suffered from depression. Nobody cared about me in the sense of advocating for me,” he said, “until a social worker took me under his wing.”

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