ASU sociology grad and foster mom devotes career to serving at-risk youth
A volunteer trip to Malawi inspired Joni Manon to support at-risk youth through community and nonprofit service. Courtesy photo
Editor’s note: This story is part of a series of profiles of notable spring 2026 graduates.
By the time Joni Manon enrolled at Arizona State University, she already knew the foster care system from the inside — not from textbooks, but from six years of opening her home to children who needed one.
Now graduating with a Bachelor of Science in sociology from the T. Denny Sanford School of Social and Family Dynamics at Arizona State University, Manon — an ASU Online student and Barrett, The Honors College student based in Fort Collins, Colorado — returned to school to better understand the systems affecting the lives of young people.
The path that brought her there started in Lubbock, Texas. She first enrolled at a university at 18 but left at 21 on academic suspension, convinced higher education wasn’t for her.
During her final semester, however, she volunteered in a village in Malawi, working with a community-based orphan care organization. The experience — where she also met her husband — sparked her interest in supporting vulnerable youth, a focus that stayed with her long after she returned home.
Years later, after fostering 16 children and adopting twins, Manon began searching for a way to continue that work beyond her home. When she became eligible for the Starbucks College Achievement Plan, she saw an opportunity to return to school, learn more about the systems surrounding at-risk youth and build the skills to support them in new ways.
“After my first attempt in college, I thought, ‘I will never do that to myself again,’” she said, laughing. “And then 20 years later, I went to ASU, and it’s been a completely different experience.”
At ASU, she balanced accelerated courses, full-time work and parenthood while earning high grades — a feat that involved many 3 a.m. homework sessions.
Now, she works at The Matthews House in Colorado — a job she plans to continue after graduation — where she supports youth and young adults through a drop-in center that offers everything from a hot meal to basic life skills. Some days, she might be helping an 18-year-old learn how to cook on a budget. Other days, she is helping someone apply for a job or file their taxes.
Her background in sociology helps with this work.
“Sociology taught me how to look at an issue from different perspectives, which has helped me identify resource gaps in my community,” she says. “I can look at a situation and ask, ‘What’s not here yet?’ And then try to build something that fills that gap, like our hot-lunch program.”
Her honors thesis explored the plight of young adults transitioning out of foster care and the role nonprofit organizations play in filling gaps left by state and federal systems.
Ahead of graduation, we chatted with Manon to learn more about her project and her advice for students.
Question: What did you learn from your honors thesis research?
Answer: One of the biggest challenges is that the young adult foster population is very hard to research. They’re what I’d call a trifecta of vulnerability — many are minors who can’t consent to research on their own, often lack stable parental relationships and have experienced significant trauma or housing instability. Many aren’t in shelters, either. They’re couch surfing, living in their cars or staying in places that feel safe but aren’t visible.
Because of that, detailed research is limited. What exists tends to be broad statistics — how many youth have been in foster care, or how many have experienced homelessness or involvement with the justice system — but it’s much harder to understand individual experiences or dig deeper into the data.
What I did find is that youth with foster care backgrounds face higher risks of homelessness and incarceration. But consistent social support, especially through community organizations, can reduce those outcomes by about 26%. Even though they’re often set up to struggle, there are clear ways to support them and improve outcomes.
Q: What’s the best piece of advice you’d give to other students?
A: Believe in yourself. I struggled with imposter syndrome at first and wasn’t sure I could do it.
Also, use tools that make your life easier. There’s an app called Speechify that reads your assignments out loud in different voices, including celebrities, and honestly, it helped me get through a lot of reading. I would be in the car listening to Snoop Dogg narrate a research paper. It was great.
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