Peggy is a first-generation Irish American and a first-generation college student. A native of Cambridge, Massachusetts, she is a graduate of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. Past professional roles include President of the University of New Hampshire Foundation, Director of the Massachusetts Attorney General’s Consumer Information Service, Manager of Government Relations for Comcast in Boston, Massachusetts, and Program Director for Court Appointed Special Advocates of East Tennessee. Peggy serves on the Executive Committee of the Bexar County Fostering Educational Success Pilot Project. She is a tri-chairperson for Senator Jose Menendez’s Blue-Ribbon Task Force on Child Abuse Prevention and the Child Welfare/Foster Care Workgroup of the South Texas Trauma-Informed Care Consortium. Peggy’s board and advisory service includes Texas CASA, the Najim Charitable Foundation, ChildSafe, the UTSA Veteran & Military Affairs Advisory Board, the UTSA Libraries Advisory Council, the United Way of San Antonio and Bexar County's Ready Children Impact Council, and the NXT Level Youth Reengagement Center Advisory Council. In 2019, Mrs. Eighmy successfully sought funding from the Texas Legislature, the first legislative body in the United States to appropriate public funding to improve educational outcomes for students with a history of foster care. Led by UTSA, The Bexar County Fostering Educational Success Pilot Project (“Pilot Project”) works to improve college enrollment, retention, and graduation rates for students with a history of foster care, and to increase the number of children in foster care who are college aware, expect to attend college, and are emotionally and academically ready to do so. For the first time, partners across child welfare, the Children’s Court, K-12 school systems, and the two-and-four-year public higher education institutions are working together to increase the number of foster alumni who graduate college. Recognizing its success, the Pilot Project continues to receive funding from the Texas Legislature ($7M to date.) The Pilot Project has served 730 foster youth and alumni, including 500 college students with a history of foster care who receive comprehensive services from campus-based support programs established at UTSA, Texas A&M University-San Antonio, and the Alamo College District, and 230 middle and high school students still in foster care who receive pre-college programming, wrap-around services and peer mentoring through the College Bound Docket and the CLIMB Program, a novel pre-college curriculum. The Pilot project is conducting ground-breaking research on the pipeline of educational support for students who have experienced foster care. The scope and the scale of the research is novel and will be critical to understanding how a model of cross-system collaboration may be replicated elsewhere in Texas and across the United States. The Pilot Project addresses housing for foster and homeless youth. In partnership with Child Protective Services, youth still in foster care may live in UTSA dormitories allowing them to enroll in college and develop independent living skills. UTSA is the first university in the country to receive funding ($2.5M through 2024) from the US Department of Housing and Urban Development for its “Housing First” program for young people with a history of foster care who are homeless or at risk of homelessness. Housing First provides educational support, market-rate rental assistance for up to 24 months, childcare stipends, and mental health and legal services. 76 young adults and their dependent children have participated in the program, and 27 participants have received their GED or are enrolled in 2- or 4-year colleges.