In 2012, Russian President Vladimir Putin abruptly banned Americans from adopting Russian children. Impending adoptions were halted, leaving children to languish inside bleak orphanages. When I first heard of this news, I imagined it as a series of blinds being closed. I imagined lights shutting off and doors closing. I imagined it all as a series of worst-case scenarios; children being stripped of their right to a good life. You can imagine my pain –there was now, among other things, this to contend with. I had even more reason to reach a breakthrough and use my legal knowledge to make an impact. I wanted to help pave a way into solving these problems - not just out of need or passion, but out of the depth of an inescapable truth – this was my calling. Diving further into law was what I wanted. I had created this dream for myself, as all of us do when we decide that we are made to do something. You see, for the past 15 years, I had dedicated all my time, blood, sweat, and tears to the adoption agency where I worked. I ripped myself apart repeatedly – throwing myself into the sea of work that was the business I owned. It was there that I developed the desire to work with foreign countries and to utilize legal mechanisms to develop effective policies -policies that would protect children from the fluctuating adoption legislation that compelled me to move.
My own story in law takes shape with a unique set of problems; I was facilitating adoptions from within the African country of Ethiopia. Ethiopian orphanages are understaffed and financially insecure. The effect of this depravity is that workers there grow increasingly anxious for more adoptions. Children are “groomed” to present themselves as subservient and docile, a strategy that, while initially designed to attract rich American families, eventually leads to trouble if completed without proper guidance and knowledge - and you would be surprised to know how little knowledge some parents can have. For a time, I had dealt with a case that appeared to me as though it were straight from a movie: this was the case of two girls I knew, ages 6 and 8, who were adopted by a client of mine. The client went by the name of Alfred. While they had presented themselves as submissive and easy-going children at first, over time, they became unruly. Immediately, in America, they began to disobey. Naturally, this caused unexpected problems. Despite these problems and complaints, the client refused my request for post-placement visits. Naturally, this bothered me. What could I do? I felt that I could do nothing to bridge the gap in communication. What I wanted was to change the system. I wanted to make helpful visits mandatory because I knew it would improve things. My goal was to create solutions and implement change.
I grew frustrated and saddened by my inability to address the issue with the girls’ parents. I wanted them to understand the complex transitional issues that were going on. I wanted them to understand that the insubordination the girls were displaying was a common phenomenon that could be addressed and eased with the help of post-placement visits. The visits were not, however, required by law. For further understanding, I turned to US law. On Domestic soil, adoptions cannot be finalized until a series of post-placement visits are completed. This is not a requirement for Ethiopian adoptions, which are finalized in Ethiopia and not the United States. The international laws, or lack thereof, conflicted with my vision for a better future. Post-adoption visits, on the other hand, facilitate the process and close the gap. They foster the respect and communication that the children deserve, and I wanted to make improvements by working with the law to push for post-placement visits. It was clear to see that there would be a need for change within international adoption.
What I knew was this: completing international adoptions required an understanding of the complex culture behind everything. It involved an understanding of the laws that shaped foreign adoptions. From this point on, my story gets a little more involved. As a business owner, I helped facilitate adoptions in Ethiopia, Russia, and Ukraine. It was there that I understood the value of my entrepreneurial spirit and learned how to solve problems with creativity and logic. As the story goes, before adopting a child, prospective parents had to successfully complete the Home Study process. During this process, parents were screened and essentially “tested” for their level of appropriateness. Naturally, the entire thing could be daunting and stressful, because if the parent failed, he or she would not be allowed to adopt. To make the entire process easier for future parents, I decided to complete a project of my own and authored a book. I called it The Homestudy Boot Camp. I wrote this to prepare the owners for the process and, in turn, ease their anxiety and boost their confidence. I wanted to help adoptive parents, and through my own grit, I sat down to compile and assemble the notes that would eventually become my first book. Although it took eight months to complete this project, the information disclosed in the text would be invaluable to the parents. It was a labor of love, and through it, I learned that I could solve any problem with enough effort.
Yet it was not just the problem of passing this test. Parents who passed had other hurdles to jump- one being the problem of time. It took an average of two years for parents to be matched with newborns, a timeline that was the result of ineffective and outdated matching methods still in use by agencies and pregnancy crisis centers. While the system relied on snail mail delivery methods, I was thinking of methods to expedite this process. As I sat at my desk to think, I turned once again to my entrepreneurial spirit. I had my lightbulb moment and created an online adoption connection site called Adoptionality. This niche social networking site would eliminate the geographical limitations that had once hindered the matching process. It would change adoption as I knew it. I spent months conducting research, drafting designs, and testing versions until I finally settled on the blueprint for the website. Through painstaking detail, I used all the knowledge I had to develop a website that was psychologically astute, professional, and practical. I also went through the process of hiring others to help me along the way, spending an impressive and exhausting 6 weeks finding the perfect developer whose history, portfolio, and client reviews suggested to me that he had what it would take to help me build the website. Through a variety of interactive features, the completed work brought birth mothers and adoptive parents together at a much faster rate - it was a major success and reduced the matching time from two years to three months.
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