List Detail
2024 Founders' Alumni Award for Distinguished Service to the Community
In 2005, a four-and-a-half-year-old boy from Miami Beach was on his way to church with his mother when they stopped at a red light. Through the car window, the boy – Joshua Williams ’18 – noticed a homeless man holding a sign that said he was hungry and needed food.
Williams gave the man the $20 bill his grandmother had given him that morning, a spontaneous gift that launched two decades of generosity. When most kids were in elementary preschool, Williams was establishing the Joshua’s Heart Foundation with his mother’s help. His foundation has since raised more $5.5 million dollars and has assisted over 700,000 individuals and distributed more than seven million pounds of food to those in need.
For his two decades of extraordinary service, Williams received the 2024 Founders’ Award for Distinguished Service to the Community from Head of School Rachel Rodriguez at commencement on May 19, 2024. In attendance with him was his mother, Claudia McLean.
“The founders’ award recognizes alumni who, through service and commitment to the community, have made a service impact at a national level,” Rodriguez said. “It is awarded to individuals who have been deeply concerned about their communities and who have demonstrated honor, courage and leadership, fulfilling the vision of the founders of Ransom and Everglades Schools.”
Williams, who attended the NYU Stern School of Business and currently works with Fiserv in New York City, continues to lead the Joshua’s Heart Foundation. He travels nationally and internationally to speak about hunger and poverty, and has received more than a dozen prestigious awards.
In 2009 he was the youngest speaker at the Young President Global Conference, and in 2012 he became the youngest recipient of the Champions of Change Award presented by the White House, for strengthening food security in the United States. In 2017, he was awarded the President’s Lifetime Achievement Award for his lifelong commitment to building a stronger nation through volunteer service.
In 2020, Williams was named one of the Hero of a Thousand Faces and was recognized by Hormel’s 10 Under 20 Food Hero ambassadors. And, most recently, he was invited by the White House in 2022 to participate in the first National Conference on Hunger, Nutrition and Health and was on a panel with Second Gentleman Douglas Emhoff and Ambassador Susan Rice.
“We have been given such an amazing gift, an opportunity … that comes with a burden of responsibility and duty, to each other, to yourself and to your nation,” Williams told the Class of 2024 at commencement. “It’s really important to band together, to think and to challenge each other to solve the most complicated, intellectually stimulating and challenging questions and problems that humanity has ever faced … Change starts from within, and it starts with each and every one of us.”
Middle School
2045 South Bayshore Drive, Coconut Grove, FL 33133Phone: 305 250 6850
Upper School
3575 Main Highway, Coconut Grove, FL 33133Phone: 305 460 8800
Founded in 1903, Ransom Everglades School is a coeducational, college preparatory day school for grades 6 - 12 located on two campuses in Coconut Grove, Florida. Ransom Everglades School produces graduates who "believe that they are in the world not so much for what they can get out of it as for what they can put into it." The school provides rigorous college preparation that promotes the student's sense of identity, community, personal integrity and values for a productive and satisfying life, and prepares the student to lead and to contribute to society.