Hollywood Actress Camille Guaty Founded A Non-Profit To Benefit Foster Care Children

Camille Guaty, Hollywood actress and CEO of Foster A Dream, is leveraging her platform to raise awareness on helping children in the foster care system. Known for her roles on VH1’s dramedy Daytime Divas and Netflix film’s Nappily Ever After and A Futile and Stupid Gesture, Guaty is building her reputation throughout the industry as a social impact entrepreneur. Her organization directly partners with the Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services to address the gaps in service and find ways to improve the lives of thousands of foster youth in LA county.

Since 2016, Guaty has raised money and awareness for underprivileged foster-children. Then in 2018, she partnered with Katie Jordan, cofounder, and Carla Gonzalez of the Department of Children and Family Services to launch a successful Toy Drive, which reached hundreds of children of Los Angeles County during the holidays. After witnessing the success of the toy drive, Guaty and her team decided to create a glam prom event for the young men and women living in foster group homes where the teens have their own glam-squad to help them prep for the high school prom. 

Guaty only had a month and a half to create the glam prom day. “Our prom glam day started with one of my hairdressers from one of the television sets,” Guaty explains. “She basically said ‘I'm going take care of the hair and makeup department.’ She hired people, professional hair and makeup people, so we had a whole room of 25 hair and makeup artists.” Grade point average didn’t matter in order to participate; many of the programs for foster children require a certain GPA. Guaty became sympathetic to the challenges and circumstances that many of these teens had to face while in the system, so she opened it up to anyone who qualified to attend prom. 

“We got a movie trailer that was donated that had all the barber setup in there,” she continues. “So, the guys got to get their hair buzz cut and everything that they needed to do. We had about four really popular stylists in the business come on board. They got suits, ties, hats, vests and shoes. We're talking not just Men's Wearhouse suits, we're talking Gucci suits…The dresses were of the same caliber.” Before the event, Guaty and Gonzalez organized a group of social workers who could conduct a session on self-confidence; to make sure that the young men and women knew that they deserved to enjoy and embrace the experience. 

Guaty’s professional acting career began on the set of Bob Saget’s Raising Dad television series for the WB Network where played a feisty best friend to Kat Dennings and Brie Larson. “My dad is from Cuba,” she comments. “He came here during the revolution in the 60’s when they were called Peter Pan kids. When looking at it now as a mother, you want the best for your children; you work so hard to create a safe world for them. Going to college, being the first here to go to college and a good school too, their dreams for me were a lot different. So, it's completely understandable, but I remember the first time that my dad came to New York. He saw me on T.V. and he was like, ‘oh, you're actually doing it.” She proceeded to secure roles on hit series such as Prison Break, Las Vegas and Scorpion. 

Long before Guaty married and started having children of her own, while still living in New York City, she and her friend started Make A Difference NYC. Children that lived in government housing would write letters to Santa. Through fundraising, Guaty and her friend collected the letters, shopped for the presents and delivered them to the children. As her career advanced and she moved to Los Angeles, she tried starting her own family. However, Guaty faced many challenges that included five years of IVF and an egg donor who lost all of her eggs. She and her husband began looking into adoption and realized how many thousands of children in foster care were in need of love, support and care. While looking into the foster-to-adopt process, their second donor was able to supply one egg, which ultimately produced an embryo. 

It was Christmas time, and Guaty and her husband still wanted to provide assistance to foster children. They were connected to the Department of Children and Family Services in Los Angeles who informed them that there were still hundreds of tags on the Christmas Tree. In two weeks, through Guaty’s network, she was able to collect enough money to shop for 300 children. That experience ignited the vision for Foster A Dream.

As Guaty transitioned from strictly acting and producing to becoming an entrepreneur, she focused on these essential steps:

• Utilize your resources. No entrepreneur can do it alone. Ask your network for assistance and research online tools.
• Remember why you started this journey. There will be times that challenge you to see if you have what it takes to succeed.
• Believe in yourself. Before anyone can buy into your vision, first you have to believe in it. It takes a lot of self-reflection and understanding of exactly what you want to do.

“I love to come up with ideas and see them fulfilled in a short amount of time,” Guaty concludes. “I'm one of those people that I'm like, ‘I have this idea.’ There are people who say, ‘this is kind of impossible for you to do in that amount of time.’ I rebut, ‘watch me! I'm going to do it.’”