One of the hardest things about grief is that time marches on. You want the world to stop because yours just did. But it doesn’t. And it’s both heartbreaking and a little cruel to watch everything continue as if nothing changed—as if it never mattered that Alex was here in the first place.

I know that’s not true. I will never forget Alex. Neither will anyone who loved her. But that feeling—that the world keeps moving—has a way of settling in. And the more I watched the world go on without Alex, the more determined I became to remind it that she was here, and that she mattered.

That’s how the The Alex Lebovic Foundation began.

Creating a Legacy for Alex

When Alex died in 2019, I wanted to do something to honor her life.

Something meaningful.

Something lasting.

Something that would make her proud.

Something she might have done herself, given the chance.

I had ideas, but I didn’t have the energy or the resources to make them happen. The ideas felt too big and too far out of reach, so they stayed ideas.

Time passed, and I processed the grief of losing Alex. I watched her friends launch careers, get married, and start families. I saw excited posts from her vet school classmates about their impending graduation. And that sense of the world moving forward without Alex grew into a knot in the pit of my stomach.

We reached out to the University of Florida College of Veterinary Medicine—the place Alex loved—and learned what it would take to establish a scholarship in her name. We researched what it would take to start a nonprofit. We talked through the mission and what we wanted this to become.With the help of our parents, those ideas turned into something real.

We established the Alex Lebovic Veterinary Medicine Scholarship.

We created the foundation.

And in 2022—the year Alex would have graduated from veterinary school—we launched it.

Moving Forward

The purpose is simple—to create something in Alex’s name that continues to make an impact.
The scholarship supports veterinary students—people who have chosen the path she was on, doing the work she cared about. Over time, the foundation will grow to support other causes that mattered to Alex, including animal welfare and childhood cancer research.

So that’s why the foundation exists. We’re reminding the world that Alex was here, that she mattered, and that her story didn’t end—it changed direction.

And if you’ve found your way here, you’re now part of her story too.

If you’d like to learn more about the work of the foundation—or support the mission—you can do that here.