Todd Foege, MBA
Todd Foege, M.B.A.
Acting Executive Director/Grants Director
Naples Children & Education Foundation/Founders of the Naples Winter Wine Festival
Todd Foege, that’s Fay-Gee, tricky name, but serious about children’s advocacy, is a seasoned and accomplished children’s advocate, non-profit administrator, program writer, grant writer and his most important job, being the best dad he can be to his 3 ½ year old daughter, Emma Grace.
Todd hails from the Washington, DC area and has been in Collier County since 1995 only leaving for his undergraduate and graduate studies in Tallahassee, Florida at Florida State University for his undergrad, where he excelled as a student athlete from 1999-2001. Todd eventually graduated Summa Cum Laude with an M.B.A. from Hodges University in 2006.
The son of an administrative law judge in Washington, DC, Todd’s professional path was almost predetermined for law school and contract law. While Todd studied pre-law at Florida State University and was accepted to law school, in lieu of law school, he choose to return to Naples to teach at-risk and disadvantaged high school students who had been expelled from public school for socially mal-adaptive behaviors, drugs, gang activity, etc. To use Todd’s words, “the children’s sense of academic excitement became infectious and… The first time I saw a child accept education where he had resisted in the past, I was hooked. I needed those children more than they probably needed an idealistic young teacher.” Foege quickly noted the dichotomy between the have and the have not’s in Collier County noting, “the disparity was unsettling at best and bordered on criminal as to how our children were living.”
In partnership with long time Collier County children’s advocate and special needs teacher, Beverly Hiltabidle, Foege began to write literacy and mathematic curriculums for school age children in the most impoverished sections of Collier County. Through creative brokering with community partners, volunteers, parents, The United Way of Collier County, and The Naples Children & Education Foundation (founders of the Naples Winter Wine Festival), Foege and his team established satellite after school and summer academic tutoring and remediation programs for school age children serving 550 children a day in Golden Gate Estates, Gargiuilo tomato packing plant, two locations in East Naples, and one in Immokalee. Pleased at the investment, The Naples Wine Festival recruited Foege to administrate their grants programs in late 2005.
Foege’s problem solving skills and his ability to connect players in an effort to avoid duplication of services, reducing inefficiencies and applying metrics to assess outcomes has been the largest feather in his cap. Todd’s true passion lies in trying to level the playing field for all children. All children deserve an equitable opportunity to be successful regardless of socioeconomic status. It is in this fashion that Todd truly embraces the grass roots organic efforts on behalf of the unsung heroes of the non-profit sector.
When Todd is not working, you can still find him playing men’s lacrosse and teaching his daughter, Emma Grace, the fundamentals of the game.