First Star

Operational leadership sits with co-founder Peter Samuelson as President and co-founder Sherry Quirk as Vice Chair. Samuelson's background is in film and television producing alongside sustained philanthropic work through Starlight Children's Foundation and ASPIRE. Quirk is a partner at Schiff Hardin LLP, bringing legal and governance expertise. Day-to-day program directors at each university-based academy report into the national Los Angeles office, creating a centralized curriculum and fundraising apparatus with local academic delivery partners.

First Star identifies rising ninth-graders currently in foster care and places them into a four-year cohort program housed on a partner university campus. The model begins with a residential summer immersion, followed by monthly Saturday sessions during the academic year covering academic skills, life-skills training, and college-readiness coaching. Partner universities — which have included UCLA, the University of Rhode Island, and the University of Utah — provide facilities, faculty oversight, and student volunteers. First Star maintains contact with each participant through high-school graduation and into the first year of college or vocational training.

Samuelson co-founded the Starlight Children's Foundation with his cousin Emma Samms, served on the founding board of Jeff Skoll's Participant Media, and later launched ASPIRE (Academy for Social Purpose in Responsible Entertainment). Starlight focuses on seriously ill children; First Star focuses on foster youth. The two organizations operate independently, though they share Samuelson's network of entertainment-industry donors and board members. First Star does not appear to share a balance sheet or governance structure with Starlight or ASPIRE.

First Star's direct-service model requires cooperation with county-level child-welfare offices to identify eligible students, but the organization does not contract as a government vendor or accept per-diem foster-care reimbursement. Its academies operate on university campuses outside the foster-parent placement system, which positions First Star as a supplemental educational intervention rather than a substitute for case management. This posture allows university partners to engage without becoming entangled in custody or dependency-court proceedings.

No. First Star is an operating public charity that runs its own branded academies. It does not distribute grants to external nonprofits or community-based organizations. All program spending flows through the national office and the individual academy budgets. Fundraising goes toward staffing, curriculum development, and the residential summer-program costs at partner universities rather than toward a grantmaking pool.

The board draws heavily from the entertainment and legal networks of co-founders Peter Samuelson and Sherry Quirk. Samuelson's connection to Steven Spielberg (via Starbright World) and Jeff Skoll (via Participant Media) illustrates the Los Angeles philanthropic capital circle the organization accesses. Fundraising events and donor cultivation tend to leverage film-industry relationships rather than traditional foundation or government channels, making First Star's revenue model distinct from most child-welfare nonprofits that rely on state contracts or community foundations.

First Star funds its operations through private donations, corporate sponsorships, and fundraising events tied to the Los Angeles entertainment community. The organization files IRS Form 990 as a public charity, and those filings would show contributions and grants received. As an operating foundation, it does not maintain a disclosed endowment or permanent capital base. Specific donor identities are not publicly itemized beyond broad philanthropic-network affiliations.