About

Our Forever Young Foundation initiatives include the following:

Sophie’s Places, dedicated music therapy spaces caring for young people suffering from pain, chronic illness, and serious injury as well as Forever Young Zones, recreational play areas for children, providing respite from day-to-day medical treatments in children’s hospitals throughout the country. 

Our 8 to 80 Zones afford technology, multimedia, and gaming labs as well as our 8 to 80 Meta Creators Zones offering gaming, coding, and training in VR, both making available industry leading equipment and mentorship for those living in under resourced communities.

The Forever Young Wellness initiative supports emotional health and provides access to resources that support emotional wellbeing.  Our international focus, Engage Now Africa, includes the building and expansion of schools in Africa, as well as enhancing health, educational, and athletic opportunities for African youth.

Forever Young Foundation continues to devote significant time and resources supporting other remarkable nonprofits through our Nonprofit Institute and grant making.

Steve Young and Barb Young

Founder and Co-Chairs of the Board

Founded in 1993 by NFL Hall of Famer Steve Young, Forever Young Foundation is a nonprofit 501(c)(3) organization focused on passing on hope and resources for the development, strength, and education of children. The Foundation serves children facing significant physical, emotional, and financial challenges by providing them with academic, athletic, and therapeutic opportunities currently unavailable to them. Forever Young Foundation primarily focuses our efforts in the United States and Africa.

Steve Young

About Our Founder

Steve Young’s fifteen-year career in the NFL was marked by a consistent standard of excellence that came from his own drive for self-improvement, to be a little bit better every day than the day before. Always someone to help his fellow man and to celebrate those who did the same, he brought that same ethic to his charitable giving, eventually resulting in the creation of the Forever Young Foundation, which he co-chairs with his wife Barb.

Board of Trustees

Edward Bryant, Jr.

Junior Bryant serves as an advisor to various companies. Currently, he serves as Executive Director at HGGC and as an Independent Director for Guild Mortgage (NYSE: GHLD) and chairs the Nomination and Governance committee. His other philanthropic duties include serving on the board of directors for The Golden Heart Foundation and The Go For Broke National Education Center. He previously served as Vice President and National Marketing and Sales Director for Pacific Global Investment Management Company and the Pacific Advisors Funds, where he oversaw communication,
servicing, and outreach programs for institutions, financial professionals, and clients.

Junior received a B.B.A. from the University of Notre Dame and is finishing his Master’s of Legal Studies at UCLA Law School in 2023.

Gayla Compton

Gayla Compton would love to save the world.

Short of that, she is actively managing the Maverick Foundation, the Compton’s own family foundation, engaged in encouraging people around the world and here at home to use their power and resource to improve their lives and others. Desire to both give and participate go hand in hand. Degrees and an early career in the social sciences have aided into the insight of these pursuits.

Family-focused, Gayla, along with her husband Kevin, are involved in several endeavors. At the local level, they support and participate in the ongoing educational and athletic pursuits of Valley Christian Schools in San Jose and of Eastside College Preparatory School in East Palo Alto.

Youth and collegiate sports are also a focus, with consideration given to the value of doing one’s best in all activities. They are involved with scholar-athletes at both the University of Notre Dame and Duke University. They are also active in scholarships for the Bay Areas’ Positive Coaching Alliance, with Gayla serving on the selection committee. The Sharks Foundation and The Aubri Brown Club are recipients of time and effort, as well.

Opportunity International, a faith-based micro-finance group, has been a longtime focal point, with Kevin and Gayla chairing the successful “Banking on Africa” capital campaign and travelling to various sub-Saharan countries to monitor the activity there. The growth of businesses, and the subsequent growth of individuals and families continue to resonate there. Gayla continues to work with the education arm of the same organization. They, together and individually, have been seated on advisory boards, financial, directional, and philanthropic, in various organizations, and have most recently taken a role on the board of the United States Olympic Committee.

As a team, they have continued to be active in their church and their community, giving, teaching, volunteering, coaching, tutoring, and fundraising. Gayla has also volunteered at Stanford Hospital and Clinics for the past several years.

A passion for not only helping, but helping others to help themselves, Gayla and Kevin both desire nothing more than to empower others to continue the good work.

Rich Lawson

Rich Lawson is Chairman, Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder of HGGC. Headquartered in Palo Alto, California, HGGC is a leading private equity firm with $7 billion in cumulative capital commitments and manages portfolio companies that employ more than 70,000 employees globally. Mr. Lawson has been involved in all phases of the firm’s development since its formation and directs the firm’s strategy and investment decisions, governance and investor relations. Since HGGC’s inception, Mr. Lawson has overseen over 650 completed transactions representing more than $71 billion in aggregate transaction value.

Mr. Lawson is Chairman of Pathfinder Acquisition Corporation, a special purpose acquisition vehicle backed by affiliates of HGGC and Industry Ventures and also serves as a director, chairman emeritus or trustee of several philanthropic and cultural institutions including the Capital Impact Foundation, San Francisco Zoo, Wasatch Adaptive Sports and the Forever Young Foundation, the organization that is a primary benefactor of HGGC’s carried interest proceeds used to support extensive philanthropic work in children’s causes around the world.

Prior to leading HGGC, Mr. Lawson established predecessor private equity funds Huntsman Gay Capital Partners in 2007 with industrialist Jon M. Huntsman and Robert C. Gay, as well as Sorenson Capital in 2002 with medical products pioneer James LeVoy Sorenson. Mr. Lawson also worked at Morgan Stanley in its mergers and acquisitions department and served as President and Chief Executive Officer of enterprise software company Found, Inc.

Mr. Lawson received his B.A. from Amherst College and his M.B.A. from Harvard Business

Robert Gay

Robert C. Gay is the founder of a global single-family office, Kensington Capital Holdings. The Office manages investments across North America, Asia, and Europe. He is a former senior partner and Chair of the Management Committee of Bain Capital and past CEO and organizing founder of Huntsman Gay Global Capital, HGGC.. In his early career, Bob was a management consultant at Mckinsey & Co and taught international economics at Harvard University. He began his career in private equity at GE Capital and Kidder Peabody.

Bob and his family office have also founded multiple humanitarian organizations, including Engage Now Africa, Ending Modern Slavery, the Ensign Global College in Ghana, and social impact centers at BYU and the University of Utah. He also co-founded Unitus, a worldwide leader, and accelerator of micro-finance, venture capital, investment banking, and social impact funds to lift people out of poverty, especially in India.

Bob has a Ph.D. in Business Economics from Harvard University and is a recipient of the Utahan of the Year Award and the United States Presidential Service Award. He is an emeritus General Authority for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints where he served as Chairman of the Self-Reliance Services and Perpetual Education Fund committees, Area President, and member of the Presidency of the Seventy.

Bob was born in Los Angeles, California, on September 1, 1951. He married Lynette Nielsen in April 1974. They are the parents of seven children and twenty-two grandchildren.