Community Highlights: Meet Fonda Royster of Open Arms Transformation Living (OATL) & RESA Solutions (RESA)

Today we’d like to introduce you to Fonda Royster.

Hi Fonda, we’re thrilled to have a chance to learn your story today. So, before we get into specifics, maybe you can briefly walk us through how you got to where you are today?
I started my journey long before I ever had titles, degrees, or organizations attached to my name. Before I experienced homelessness at 14, I had already survived years of neglect, abuse, and the collapse of every system that was supposed to protect me. Family systems failed. Religious systems failed. Education systems failed. Medical systems failed. Legal systems failed. Children services failed. By the time I entered homelessness, I had already learned what it meant to navigate the world without a safety net.

Those early experiences shaped my lens, my resilience, and my commitment to making sure no young person feels invisible the way I once did. As I grew older, I realized two things could be true at the same time. I had survived what should have broken me, and I had a responsibility to turn that survival into purpose.

That clarity pushed me into the human services field, where I spent more than two decades working across youth development, trauma-informed care, violence prevention, and systems change. I earned multiple degrees along the way, not to collect credentials, but to make sure I could sit at any table where decisions about vulnerable youth were being made.

Eventually, I stopped waiting for systems to change on their own. I built what I needed to see.

I founded RESA Solutions LLC, a consulting firm focused on trauma-responsive leadership and sustainable systems. Later, I founded Open Arms Transformation Living in Toledo, Ohio, a program designed to support unaccompanied youth with dignity, stability, and real pathways forward.

My work grew from local to national. I became a speaker, a trainer, and eventually an author, publishing We Do Exist, a book that exposes the hidden world of unaccompanied youth homelessness. My lived experience stopped being a wound and became a platform, not for sympathy, but for change.

Today, I am a survivor-leader, a systems strategist, and a founder who uses both lived experience and professional expertise to help communities, organizations, and young people rewrite their stories. I did not get here because the path was easy. I got here because I refused to let where I started determine where I would finish.

Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
The road has never been smooth. I started life inside instability, neglect, and abuse, and I moved through one failed system after another. Family systems failed. Religious systems failed. Education systems failed. Medical systems failed. Legal systems failed. Children services failed. By the time I reached homelessness at 14, I had already learned how to survive without support, protection, or consistency.

Even after I found safety, the challenges did not disappear. Healing while trying to build a life is not simple. I had to unlearn survival mode. I had to rebuild trust. I had to navigate adulthood without a blueprint. I dropped out of school when everything felt hopeless, then fought my way back and graduated on time. I worked multiple jobs while trying to stabilize my mental health, my identity, and my future.

Professionally, the road was not smooth either. I entered systems that were not designed for people with lived experience to lead. I had to prove myself twice. I had to fight to be heard. I had to learn how to sit at tables where decisions were being made about youth who looked like me and lived like me, even when those rooms were not built with me in mind.

But every struggle sharpened my purpose. Every barrier taught me how to build something better. Every closed door pushed me to create my own.

The road was not smooth, but it was shaping me. It was preparing me to become a survivor-leader, a systems strategist, and a founder who understands both the human side and the structural side of change. The struggle is part of why I can do this work with clarity, compassion, and conviction today.

As you know, we’re big fans of Open Arms Transformation Living (OATL) & RESA Solutions (RESA). For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about the brand?
My work is rooted in two organizations that reflect different sides of my mission: RESA Solutions LLC and Open Arms Transformation Living.

RESA Solutions LLC stands for Resources, Education, Support, and Advocacy. It is my consulting firm that helps leaders and organizations build trauma responsive, people centered systems. I specialize in leadership development, systems strategy, program design, and organizational transformation. What sets RESA apart is the combination of lived experience and more than twenty years of professional expertise. I understand how systems fail and I understand how to rebuild them. RESA is known for practical, real world solutions that strengthen teams, improve culture, and create sustainable change. Brand wise, I am most proud that RESA is trusted because it is authentic, grounded, and rooted in truth.

Open Arms Transformation Living (OATL) is the heart of my work. It is a community based program in Toledo, Ohio that supports unaccompanied youth with stability, safety, and real pathways forward. OATL provides essentials, mentorship, healing spaces, and culturally grounded support for young people who have been overlooked by traditional systems. What sets OATL apart is that it was built by someone who lived the experience. I know what it feels like to be a young person navigating life alone, and OATL was created to make sure no youth feels invisible or unsupported. I am most proud that OATL is a place where young people feel seen, valued, and believed in.

Together, RESA and OATL represent the full arc of my work. RESA strengthens systems from the top. OATL supports youth from the ground. One transforms organizations. The other transforms lives. Both are rooted in resilience, equity, and the belief that people deserve more than services. They deserve dignity, belonging, and opportunity.

What I want readers to know is simple. Whether I am consulting with leaders or standing beside young people, my work is about building systems and spaces that do not fail the people they are meant to serve. RESA and OATL are two sides of the same mission, and both are creating real impact.

Are there any books, apps, podcasts or blogs that help you do your best?
People really do sleep on the Bible. There is this idea that you have to be perfect or “goody good” to even relate to it. Meanwhile the Bible is full of imperfect, complicated people who God still used to make history. That is why it is my number one. It is honest about struggle. It is honest about trauma. It is honest about redemption. It reminds me that God does not wait for perfection. God works through real people with real stories.

Take Moses. He was raised by another family, he struggled with identity, he had a temper, and yes, he killed a man. Yet God still trusted him to lead an entire nation out of bondage. That is not perfection. That is grace and purpose.

Look at Rahab. People judged her based on her past, but God saw her courage and her strategy. She protected God’s people and ended up in the lineage of Jesus. That is legacy.

Look at Paul. He went from persecuting Christians to becoming one of the most influential voices in the New Testament. That is transformation on a level only God can orchestrate.

Look at Mary Magdalene. She carried trauma, oppression, and spiritual battles, yet she became the first witness to the resurrection. The first. God trusted her with the most important announcement in history.

The Bible is not a book about perfect people. It is a book about real people who encountered a real God and were changed. That is why it speaks to me. If God could use them, with all their flaws and all their history, then God can use me too. And He has.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.fondajroyster.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/melanin_esther4/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/chocovashti
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/fondajroyster