Alexandra French, Cancer Survivor, Mother of Two, Including One via Surrogacy, and Co-Founder of The Surrogacy Foundation

"My doctor said if we wanted to expand our family, I could no longer carry," Alexandra French has explained.

A diagnosis that rewrote the plan

Alexandra's story begins with a diagnosis that changed the future she had imagined. In early 2020, at just 31, she was diagnosed with stage III, estrogen-positive, HER2-positive breast cancer and suddenly found herself moving through a compressed medical timeline: scans, treatment decisions, chemotherapy, surgery, and fertility preservation, all at once.

At first, her medical team believed she and her husband, Zach, might still grow their family naturally. Then a second, hormone-positive cancer came into the picture, and the calculus changed. If they wanted more children, surrogacy would be the path.

One of the most important turns in her story came before treatment ever began. Her oncologist urged her to undergo egg retrieval and create embryos first. It was a step Alexandra had not spent years planning for or even fully processed in the moment. It was simply the next urgent thing on a terrifying list. Looking back, she has made clear how life-changing that single piece of foresight was. Without it, her daughter would not be here.

After Alexandra completed treatment and was declared cancer-free, the family learned that carrying another pregnancy would not be safe. Surrogacy became not a backup plan, but the medically necessary path that kept the possibility of family open. As she has shared, the journey brought both beauty and burden: the generosity of loved ones, the emotional complexity of entrusting someone else to carry your child, and the financial reality that makes surrogacy inaccessible for many everyday families.

The moment the idea clicked

Alexandra and Zach had experienced both the miracle and the math of surrogacy. They knew what it meant to be helped and they also saw how many families never even get the chance to begin, because the process is simply too expensive and too hard to navigate.

The idea for a foundation arrived almost by accident. Their surrogacy agency suggested they connect with an organization that ran support groups. Alexandra came home that day and started researchingm, and quickly realized how little existed in the way of meaningful financial help for families pursuing surrogacy. That was the moment it clicked. If the gap was real, they would fill it themselves, with grants that covered the full cost of a surrogacy journey.

They started small, originally as the Gift of Surrogacy Foundation, helping one family at a time. What began at a kitchen table has since grown into The Surrogacy Foundation, with grants, education, and advocacy aimed at widening access to a path that, in the United States, can cost well over $200,000.

Building a village

The Surrogacy Foundation exists for the families the current system leaves behind: cancer survivors, people with medical complications, LGBTQ+ parents, and single parents for whom surrogacy is the only route to a biological child. Rather than chipping away at the edges, the foundation provides $100,000 grants to people who are medically prevented from carrying and could not otherwise afford the journey.

The throughline is access. As Alexandra and Zach often put it, surrogacy shouldn't be reserved for the wealthy, and no one should have to choose between a family and financial stability.

Leading Level Up while building the mission

What makes Alexandra's story unusual is that she does all of this while running one of the most successful real estate teams in Georgia.

An Atlanta native, Alexandra grew up in Buckhead and Sandy Springs, attended Riverwood High School, and graduated from the University of Florida. She first fell in love with the industry while working for a real estate investor abroad, then returned home, earned her license, and joined Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices Georgia Properties in 2011. For nearly a decade she was a standout individual agent, leaning on a lifelong knowledge of Atlanta's neighborhoods and a genuine love for their history and character.

In 2022 she co-founded the Level Up Real Estate Team with fellow agent Chuck MacPhee. The team quickly became one of the company's top performers, recognized as the #1 medium-size team company-wide at Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices Georgia Properties and the #1 team in the Buckhead office, with production placing them in the top half-percent of agents globally across Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices affiliates. Spanning first-time buyers, luxury clients, investors, builders, and new construction, the team has sold well over a thousand homes across metro Atlanta.

Alexandra is not just an agent, but an investor and builder in her own right, owning rental properties around greater Atlanta and developing new-construction homes. This experience that lets her guide clients through both the emotional and financial sides of a transaction. She has been recognized among Berkshire Hathaway's NextGEN leaders through its National ReThink Council and has been featured in industry "Women Who Lead" programming. Running a top-producing team is, by itself, a full-time calling. She treats it as one half of a double life in service of others.

A relentless advocate

Beyond the foundation and the real estate team, Alexandra channels her own experience into advocacy and volunteer work for the causes that shaped her.

As a survivor, she is an outspoken advocate for breast cancer awareness, serving on the conference committee for The Pink Agenda's Atlanta chapter — a community of young professionals who raise money for breast cancer research in partnership with the Breast Cancer Research Foundation. In the surrogacy and egg-donation world, she serves on the marketing committee for SEEDS, the organization devoted to raising ethical standards across egg donation and surrogacy. And she continues to take on major responsibilities for The Surrogacy Foundation itself, from grant-making to events to building the village of supporters the mission depends on.

Her advocacy also reaches into policy. The egg retrieval that made her daughter possible is exactly the kind of fertility preservation that, until recently, many Georgia families had to pay for entirely out of pocket while facing a cancer diagnosis. In 2025, Georgia enacted HB 94, requiring state-regulated insurers to cover medically necessary fertility preservation for patients undergoing treatment for cancer, sickle cell disease, and lupus, with coverage taking effect at the start of 2026. For survivors like Alexandra, that shift turns a life-altering act of foresight into a benefit other families can count on, and it is precisely the kind of access she works to expand.

Where hope survives

Her story reflects a truth that sits at the heart of this campaign: sometimes surrogacy is not about preference or convenience. Sometimes it is the path that remains when illness has already taken so much, and the path that allows hope to survive anyway.

That she carries this work alongside a thriving career and a young family of her own is not a footnote. It is the point. Alexandra French has lived the hardest version of this journey, and rather than closing the door behind her, she spends her days holding it open for everyone trying to walk through.