New Bedford-raised Steve Pemberton: From trauma to triumph

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Some people never recover from their childhood. But some people use the challenges of their upbringing as a vehicle to benefit those in similar scenarios.

Steve Pemberton has chosen to do the latter.

Growing up in New Bedford, Pemberton lived through multiple traumatic experiences during his time as a child in the foster care system. Through much of his adult life he has acted to assist those who have been told their circumstances as foster children will be nearly impossible to overcome. Pemberton has proven otherwise.

In December 1983, three days after Christmas, a 16-year-old Pemberton was sitting in the office of his New Bedford social worker in an attempt to escape a tumultuous foster home he could no longer live in. 

He sat for hours that Friday as the social worker made numerous calls to find him a safe setting. At 5 that evening the social worker was able to find a receptive home in the form of John Sykes, an English professor at Southeastern Massachusetts University (now UMass Dartmouth). 

The experience would serve as an inflection point in Pemberton’s life. He knew in that moment that he would eventually act to help those struggling in the foster care system and make the industry more responsive to their needs.

Today, at 58, Pemberton is living in Chicago as a successful corporate executive. A husband of 28 years, he is the father of three adult children and a grandfather. Boasting two degrees from Boston College, he is the author of three books with a fourth to be published in February 2027. 

He has received multiple accolades for his writing and is a noted motivational speaker on the subject so close to his life. In particular, he has been a vocal proponent of Court Appointed Special Advocates (CASA), a system formed to work for children experiencing abuse or neglect in the social welfare system, an opportunity that wasn’t available to Pemberton during his upbringing.

In recent years, he has worked with the Boys & Girls Club of Greater New Bedford to award the Pemberton Family Scholarships. The scholarships are named after Pemberton’s first book, the best seller “A Chance in the World,” which was adapted into a young adult book and a feature film.

He recently gave the commencement address at Bristol Community College and in April was the keynote speaker at the Annual CASA Boston Gala.

Pemberton spoke with The Light about the experiences that shaped and inspired his life, why he was able to overcome the situations of his youth, the benefits of CASA, and with the virtues and challenges of the foster care system.

New Bedford Light: You’ve overcome so much. What do you attribute the success of your adulthood to?

Steve Pemberton: Several things. I would say that there is a vision I have always had that life could be different and better. I was bent on realizing that vision and relentless about it.

In many ways I still am. My children are the first in my life who aren’t orphaned. My father was orphaned and my grandfather on my mother’s side was orphaned. There was a history of this that had been unfolding over several generations that has mercifully come to an end.

Having a vision for a different life is sometimes all you need. I think a love of education helped a great deal too. And then I had some people who stepped onto my path and guided me, and I think about that every day.

I cannot tell you where I would be today had John Sykes not picked up that phone on a Friday evening at 5 o’clock at night on December 28th. I wasn’t homeless in the sense of being on the street, but I can tell you what it’s like to not have any place to go.

NBL: Do you think your experiences are a positive example for those who are in similar situations?

SP: I would say so, but with a particular note. I’m not an exception. It’s a reflection on what is possible. I think sometimes when we see individuals who overcome adverse situations and circumstances we think they have some unique superpowers. There’s some element that they may have, but by and large it is this desire to make a crooked row straight, and I think any of us can do that. 

So it’s very important for young people, when they see me, I want them to see somebody with strengths and talents. That I’m not the exception. If anything, I should be an example of what is possible. I want them to say, “If he did it, then I can do it.”

NBL: What are your aims and goals when you write and speak? Is it cathartic?

SP: It’s not necessarily cathartic, although I do learn some things as I write, for sure. What I’m trying to tell is a deeper human story that we all have. We all have different stories and within these stories are some mutual chapters, and I want my writing to highlight that. Because something needs to be put on the other side of the scale, opposing the dissonance and the division and the polarizations that are all around us.

NBL: What is it about you that inspires you to help others?

SP: It’s a sense of responsibility. The people who changed the arc of my life and stepped onto my path. They didn’t say this to me directly, but I certainly feel the responsibility to try to step onto the path of others. What they did for me is not free. It does not come without an expectation that I will do the same. Whether that is being an advocate for those aging out of foster care, creating scholarships or supporting CASA. 

This is a responsibility that I feel I have. I owe, in essence. I’m always going to owe these three people in particular and this is my way of saying thank you to them for what they did.

NBL: What are the virtues and challenges of being a foster parent?

SP: When a child has to be placed in care it’s usually because something went awry in that child’s life, but it wasn’t the child who went awry. Something failed. The opportunity to help that child reset the stage and reset their own story is, I think, one of the great virtues.

The challenge is of course that the number of foster parents I’ve talked to who ultimately decided said, “Well, I kept looking for the best time until I realized there isn’t any best time.” There was always going to be a recognition that anytime was going to be challenging. So timing is one. 

I think there’s some challenges particularly in terms of becoming a foster parent. You really have to go through a fair amount of paperwork, a fair amount of challenge to get certified and make sure it’s a safe home. The process is the biggest challenge, but the virtue and impact you have far outweighs that.

NBL: What goes into being a successful and effective foster parent?

SP: Love. When it’s all said and done that’s what it comes down to. It’s not much more complicated than that. 

Depending on the situation, there are interventions that we have to make. Maybe counselling and/or therapy are involved, but providing the love and support is invaluable. I would also say helping the child reframe their narrative. Because by and large, when you’re entered into the system there is a language that has already been assigned to you – “at risk,” “underprivileged,” or in my case “not a chance in the world.” 

But that’s not what the child believes. If you ask them who they are they never say, “I’m underprivileged, I’m at risk.” They don’t ever think like that. Children don’t describe themselves that way. We, the adults, do that and we ought to recognize the importance of talking to children in the language of their dreams and not their circumstances.

NBL: How do you know that CASA works and why?

SP: The reason it works is because it is delivering exactly what Judge David Soukup of Seattle who started it and wanted it to do, which was to give judges in particular the information that they needed to make the best decisions possible. To give that child a voice in the courtroom that did not exist prior to then. 

And when you’re dealing with the volume and velocity of cases that are in courtrooms you can see why that would be so important to give children a voice.

Because they have a voice they’re more likely to find stability. They’re not just going to receive support, they’re going to receive the right kind of support. I think we know that there’s better engagement in school and it’s going to reduce their time in the foster care system. That’s how we know that it’s effective and it works.

We have to also recognize that social workers have an enormous burden upon them. They’re dealing with the most vulnerable in our society — young children who have done nothing wrong. They have a vast case load that they have to navigate through on a daily basis. CASA comes and stands alongside the judge and the social worker to provide support for that child.

NBL: In your book, “The Lighthouse Effect,” you coined the term “lighthouse.” What does that mean?

SP: In essence, a lighthouse is the opportunity to be a lighthouse to someone and to find one for yourself. I chose the lighthouse as a metaphor very specifically because lighthouses are structures of resilience and endurance. They’re also incredibly selfless and they’re placed in very specific positions to help guide us through uncertainty and I wanted to suggest the idea that that’s exactly what we do as human beings.

NBL: Could you talk about the experience you had at the age of 8 in a New Bedford courtroom and how it affected you?

SP: My foster parents were summoned into a courtroom because I had been in their care for several years. At the time the rule was if a child remained in your care for a number of years you have to adopt them — what I now know as a Permanency Hearing, which is what I walked into at 8 years old. 

I thought I was going to be finally relieved of being in their home, but that was not what happened. In that moment what I needed was a Court Appointed Special Advocate or a guardian from the community, who might be able to see through the specifics of my case. And unfortunately that did not happen.

But what I remember from that moment was I was overcome with emotions because I was going to have to go back to this foster home after all. I was overwhelmed with emotions. I looked up and a lot of other people were overwhelmed with emotion too, and I realized that it was because they thought I was feeling joy. And it wasn’t. That experience did not leave me.

Looking back, I could have benefitted from CASA.  

NBL: What are the pros and cons of the foster care system, and what are the ways that it could be improved?

SP: I would tell you that the pros of it are that it aims to provide that safety net. If you have to call upon a foster care service or any other social service provider something’s gone wrong. Something has happened that is usually traumatic, very, very difficult. So it’s going to provide safety.

When you hear social workers talk about things like emergency removal, for example, where you have cases of terrible treatment and the first priority is that that child needs to be made safe, you’re calling the foster care system for that. It’s also ultimately trying to find a path to some permanent adoption. So stability is something that is important.

I also think that there is a lesser known story about what the system produces. Most of the superheroes that we know of were orphans — Batman, Spider-Man, Superman, Frodo Baggins, Black Panther, Harry Potter. There’s a long history of creating superheroes out of children who navigated through adversity. 

Those aren’t the intentions of the system, to produce superheroes, but the reality is that the foster care system can provide support to help those superheroes reveal themselves.

Where does it struggle? What are the cons of it? I wouldn’t direct this at the system as much as I would society. We’re seeing an enormous volume of cases in the foster care system. So there’s a lot of instability and a lot of movement. It’s not uncommon to hear about multiple placements. 

There’s going to be inconsistency in the quality of care that you get. It can depend on the quality of leadership in that state or county or community. I’m yet to meet a social worker who says they don’t have enough to do. They are overburdened.

That’s exactly where I found myself. In our society, when you leave the system at 18, which was the case for me, society says, “We’ve met our obligations to you.” For me, fortunately, I had a college acceptance letter. So I knew where I was going. But if I didn’t, I was going to age out with very limited support.

NBL: What was the turning point in your life?

SP: Oh yes, I remember it quite vividly. It was that day on December 28th when I was sitting in my social worker’s office. I was in downtown New Bedford trying to escape this foster home. I use the word “escape” deliberately because that’s what it was. 

I got to the office, and there were some other things that unfolded, but the overwhelming majority of that day I spent seated next to him calling families and trying to get somebody to take me in. I’ve never forgotten that  experience. 

Hour after hour after hour I’m watching him call families trying to get somebody to take me in. I could see how desperate the situation was, because I was the most difficult kind of child to place. I do remember my reaction in that moment being “Whatever I have to do to make sure this doesn’t happen again, I’m going to do it.”

Sean McCarthy is a freelance writer and frequent contributor to The New Bedford Light.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.