“Best Interests of the Child?”
Race, Religion, and Rescue in Adoption
October 18-20th 2012
(Thursday evening to Saturday afternoon)
This Year’s Keynote Speakers & Panelists are as follows:
Subini Annamma
Subini Annamma is currently a doctoral candidate at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Previously, she had been a special education teacher working with culturally and linguistically diverse students with emotional, behavioral, and learning disabilities in a variety of settings. Subini’s research interests include educational equity, racial identity development, transnational and transracial adoption, and the disproportionate representation of culturally and linguistically diverse students in special education and the School to Prison Pipeline.
JaeRan Kim
JaeRan Kim, MSW, LGSW, is the Stability, Permanency and Adoption Coordinator at the Center for Advanced Studies in Child Welfare in the School of Social Work at the University of Minnesota. Ms. Kim is currently a doctoral candidate. Her research is focused on internationally adopted youth with disabilities.
Melanie Chung-Sherman
Melanie Chung-Sherman, MSSW, LCSW, LCPAA has been working in the field of child welfare since 1999 and has served in a number of roles that range from case management, post adoption services, foster care program director, and state director for an international adoption agency. She is a licensed clinical social worker and licensed child placing administrator with the State of Texas. She is now the founder and owner of a private practice that specializes in adoption-centered counseling in the Dallas/Fort Worth metroplex. She is the contributing columnist for Adoption Today’s Reflections, a national column dedicated to the voices of adoptees. She is also an Associate Professor of Social Work at Collin College and co-facilitates an adult adoptee support group through Tapestry’s Adoption and Foster Care Ministry. She is working on her Ph.D. in Family Studies at Texas Women’s University. She has traveled extensively to advocate for children including involving adoption and mental health issues around the U.S. and the world. Through the years she has assisted Korean adoptees and their families back to visit their birth country. She has testified before members of the Korean Parliament to advocate for children’s rights and permanency through adoption. She and her younger brother were from South Korea in the 1970’s. She currently lives in North Dallas with her husband and two young children.
Susan Harris O’Connor
Susan Harris O’Connor is a graduate of the Boston University School of Social Work. She has been employed at Children’s Services of Roxbury since 1997 where she has been the director of foster care and adoption, family services and currently, quality assurance. Susan is also a transracial adoptee who is known throughout the country and internationally for her autobiographical narrative writing. Since 1996 she has used her narratives as tools to educate people on difficult and complicated subject matter pertaining to being human.
Jennifer Satori
Jennifer Sartori is Associate Director of the Jewish Studies program at Northeastern University and Co-Director, with Dr. Jayne Guberman, of the Adoption and Jewish Identity Project. She received her BA from Haverford College and her MA and Ph.D from Emory University. Her research has focused on the shaping of modern Jewish identities, from the education of Jewish girls in 19th-century France through her current work on adoption and Jewish identity in the United States today.
Darron T. Smith
DARRON T. SMITH, Ph.D., holds the doctoral degree from the University of Utah in the Department Education, Culture & Society. He is an assistant professor at Wichita State University in the Department of Physician Assistant. His research focus includes inequalities that pertain to African Americans and other Americans of color—mainly the impact of discrimination on healthcare practitioners, social determinants of health, and White parents adopting Black children. Dr. Smith’s publications comprise several articles including “These House-Negroes Still Think We’re Cursed: struggling against racism in the classroom” in Cultural Studies 19(4), (2005); and “White on Black: Can White Parents Teach Black Adoptive Children How to Understand and Cope with Racism?” in Journal of Black Studies 42(8), (2011). He is co-editor of Black and Mormon, (University of Illinois Press, 2004). His book, white parents, black children: Experiencing Transracial Adoption, (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2011) was recently released in November of 2011.\
Erin Siegal
Erin Siegal is an Ethics and Justice in Journalism Fellow at the Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism, and a Redux Pictures photographer. She was a 2008-2009 fellow at the Toni Stabile Center for Investigative Journalism at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism. Siegal is the author of Finding Fernanda, a book-length narrative investigation into international adoption corruption between the U.S and Guatemala. Her book has won a 2011 Overseas Press Club Award Citation for Best Reporting on Latin America, a James Madison Freedom of Information Award, and a 2012 Independent Publisher Book Award Gold Medal for Best Book on Current Affairs. Siegal is currently based in Tijuana, Mexico. To learn more, please visit www.erinsiegal.com or follow her on Twitter @erinsiegal.
Steve Kalb
Steve Kalb is the director of adoptee services in Holt International’s post adoption department. He holds a master’s degree in community-based social work and has taught in the Graduate School of Social Work at Portland State University, where he is currently pursuing his Ph.D. His current research focus is on adoptee empowerment interventions with the hopes of bringing a community organizing philosophy into post-adoption practice.
Beth Hall
Beth Hall co-founded Pact, An Adoption Alliance, serving adopted children of color. Beth advocates for honesty and authenticity in matters of adoption and as the white adoptive parent to two adults of color, believes it is essential to educate herself and others about the pervasive power of race and racism as they affect children, families and society. Co-author of Inside Transracial Adoption, she received the Outstanding Practitioner in Adoption Award from the Adoption Initiative at St. John’s University in 2010.
Lynn G. Gabbard
Lynn Gabbard has worked in the field of Adoption and Child Welfare for over 30 years and currently serves as Director of Adoption Services for Lutheran Social Services of New England. She founded and directs the LSSNE Post Adoption Resource Center, a statewide resource center designed to meet the ongoing needs of adopted children and their families, as well as provide training for adoption professionals, clinicians, etc. She is a frequent presenter on topics related to child placement and adjustment issues and has testified before Congressional subcommittees regarding various adoption-related issues. Ms. Gabbard is Connecticut representative to the North American Council on Adoptable Children (NACAC), past president of the Open Door Society of Connecticut, a statewide adoptive parent support group, and serves on various state and local adoption-focused committees. She and her husband are parents to seven children, all of whom joined the family through adoption.
David Smolin
David Smolin is the Harwell G. Davis Professor of Constitutional Law, and Director, Center for Biotechnology, Law, and Ethics, at Cumberland Law School, Samford University. Most of his adoption-related articles are available at http://works.bepress.com/david_smolin/. He has presented on adoption throughout the United States and at the Korean Women’s Development Institute in Seoul, South Korea; the Second International Symposium on Korean Adoption Studies in Seoul, South Korea; the Hague Special Commission on the Practical Operation of the Hague Adoption Convention; the State Supreme Court of Sao Paulo, Brazil; the International Adoption Summit in Stratford, Canada; the Federal/Provincial/Territory Conference on Intercountry Adoption in Ottawa, Canada; and the NALSAR University of Law, in Andhra Pradesh, India.
Michael Monroe
Michael Monroe and his wife, Amy, are the parents of four children, each of whom were adopted. Together they lead Tapestry, the adoption and foster care ministry at Irving Bible Church in the Dallas, Texas area. They also partnered with Dr. Karyn Purvis to create Empowered To Connect (empoweredtoconnect.org). Michael is the co-author of Created To Connect: A Christian’s Guide to The Connected Child, and writes regularly for national adoption and foster care publications.
John Raible
John Raible is an Associate Professor (with tenure) in the Department
of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education at the University of
Nebraska-Lincoln, where he conducts research and teaches courses in
Multicultural Education and Family Diversity. John has won several
awards and received numerous honors. The UNL Teaching Council and the
UNL Parents’ Association recognized Dr. Raible for his “contributions
to students.” He was cited for “inspiring critical thinking” and
“conveying a passion for social justice as it relates to teaching.” In
2010, the North American Council on Adoptable Children recognized Dr.
Raible by awarding him the “Friend of the Children Award.” He has
keynoted and presented sessions at numerous conferences, including the
Ethica Adoption conference in Arizona, the Alliance for the Study of
Adoption and Culture conference at MIT in Massachusetts, among others.
Tom Brosnan
Born in 1953, Tom Brosnan was adopted by John and Gertrude Brosnan through the Catholic Home Bureau of New York. In 1981 (with dispensation from the impediment of illegitimacy) he was ordained a Roman Catholic priest of the Diocese of Brooklyn and currently serves as pastor of Sacred Heart Church in Bayside, New York. In 1985 Tom searched and found his birthmother, Catherine, and six half-siblings; his birthfather, Erich, still denies paternity. At that time his birthmother revealed she had named him Thomas, after her brother — a Jesuit priest. In 1999 Tom received the Baran & Panor Award for “Outstanding Contributions to Open Adoption” and, in 2001, the Angels in Adoption Congressional Award. His is one of twenty-four adoption stories featured in Sacred Connections by Mary Ann Koenig (Running Press, 2000). Father Brosnan has often presented on the injustice of sealed records in adoption practice, and the inalienable right of all to know the truth of their origins. He believes that the needs of children, not those of adults, should dictate how we seek to practice adoption.
Ron Nydam
(bio coming soon)