Jeff Acheson has had many titles in his career as a retirement plan adviser and industry leader. Managing Partner. President. CEO.

But in May of 2023, he found himself with a title that he never wanted: broken-hearted father.

It was then, after a long struggle with mental health issues and alcohol addiction, that Acheson’s 37-year-old daughter, Amber, passed away.

Acheson, CEO of Advanced Strategies Group, says that his daughter had struggled with emotional and societal pressures as a young girl that reverberated through the rest of her life in negative ways, including health issues related to alcohol.

After Amber died, Acheson and family found her journals that documented many of the lows in her life. When it came to those tough times, Acheson says he “missed a lot of signs” and wished he had done things differently. But, as he says by way of experience: “There’s nothing you can do—death is permanent. That door is shut.”

Acheson’s family and he were left with a great deal of grief. And while he saw family members channel that sorrow in different ways, he knew his only choice was to act on it.

“The energy of that grief I either had to use it or keep it and internalize it, in which case it was going to eat my soul,” he says. “I knew I had to set up something … to help young girls with these mental health and development issues.”

Amber’s ACES for ROX

To take that action, Acheson reached out to the Columbus Foundation in Columbus, Ohio, which supports various charities. Through them, he seeded a donor-advised fund, and then sought advice on an appropriate organization to partner with.

The foundation steered Acheson to a nonprofit called Ruling Our Experiences, or ROX, which helps young girls in middle school and early high school with issues around confidence, self-esteem and self-awareness.

In response to the alarming rates of emotional distress among teenage girls, ROX offers resources and programs to schools for them to “succeed in relationships, academics, careers and life,” with partnerships in over 400 schools around the U.S. It also produces the annual Girls’ Index report to provide an update on the well-being of young girls, with statistics such as 79% of respondents agreeing with the thought that they may “explode” from the pressure in their lives.

Once connected to ROX, Acheson started raising money from friends, family and peers in the retirement industry. That has led to fundraising of more than $100,000 in just a year, which will go toward funding the $100 per teenage girl that ROX needs for a 10-week program run by trained counselors.

“Our goal is to impact 1,000 girls a year and put them through this particular program,” Acheson says.

But that’s just the start. Acheson is now working on a program called Amber’s ACES for ROX, which stands for Advocates and Champions for Expansion, that will help the ROX organization expand its footprint into more schools and communities.

“We’ve got to get preventative, and we’ve got to get to these girls before they hit that on ramp to that highway of pain,” Acheson says.

Not Alone

As part of Acheson’s fundraising, he is speaking about Amber’s ACES for ROX at conferences and organizational meetings whenever he gets the chance. In a video he made about the project, he notes that girls’ self-esteem is “rooted back in those early formative years of high school and middle school.”

He says that the response to his speaking and outreach has been overwhelming, with people coming up to him afterward to describe similar experiences. He also notes that many women “immediately understand” the gravity of the effort and have been very supportive—including many leaders in the retirement industry.

The three areas Acheson says Amber’s ACES for ROX will focus on are: 1) raising funds to put as many young girls through the program as possible 2) raising awareness of the issues that are “destroying the psyche of young girls” and 3) introducing ROX to people in the retirement industry because “they care, they support, and they act.”

The effort, he says, is also keeping him close to his daughter. One story in particular has resonated with Acheson and is part of the theme of his charitable work.

In the story, an old man comes down to a beach at low tide; the beach is full of starfish that will soon die in the hot sun. He sees a young girl picking up starfish and throwing them back in the water to survive. He says to her: “Why you are you bothering? There are too many to make a difference.” But she continues with her task, throwing another starfish into the water and returning with: “It mattered to that one.”

“We’ve taken the mindset of one starfish at a time,” Acheson says. “If I can impact through this work 1,000 girls a year, then what my daughter couldn’t find in life, she is now making possible in the afterlife.”