About Us

The Pembroke Foundation was founded by Richard and Mary Kay Blair. It was created to provide financial assistance to attend college for disadvantaged students. These students normally wouldn’t have considered going to college because of the cost.

Richard was a first-generation college student. He had no interest in going to college after high school, but he was a huge VCU basketball fan. As an employee at VCU, he found out that if he took classes at VCU he could get free basketball tickets. When he enrolled at VCU, he found out that the classes weren’t hard. He also found that could get free basketball tickets if he took classes. Richard became one of the first students in the VCU Honors program. VCU changed their policy to allow two free classes each semester for employees. Along with the free basketball tickets, it made the likelihood of completing a degree much greater. At VCU, Richard met Mary Kay who later introduced him to the Financial Aid process. He found out that he was eligible for a federal loan which would pay for his computer as a computer science major. Richard was a non-traditional student who took ten years to complete his bachelor’s degree. He took one or two courses each semester to get his basketball tickets. He later went on to get his master’s degree in Information Systems at VCU.

Mary Kay is a Pembroke. Her family was always interested in education. Her mother and sister were both teachers who had a high regard for education. Mary Kay was educated as a teacher and then received her Master’s in Higher Education Administration. Mary Kay’s parents also received their college education in the 1940s and thought that higher education was extremely important.

The foundation’s board is made up of individuals with decades of expertise in financial aid and college admissions. The Board reviews applications for scholarships and uses a strict set of criteria to determine awards each year. Scholarship awards are decided each year around May 1st, and notifications are sent to students and guidance offices before their high school graduation.