Lauren LoGiudice is an accomplished comedian, actor, and author of Amazon Kindle Best Seller Inside Melania: What I Know About Melania Trump by Impersonating Her. Her work has been featured by The New York Times, BBC, Bust Magazine, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, Hyperallergic, among others. Her writing has been called “criminal.” Her TV and film credits include Veep, Brave the Dark and Galaxy360. Moth StorySLAM Champ. In addition to her comedy album, Misfits: A Comedy Album you can also hear Melania Trump’s Rockin’ Right-Wing Christmas Album, available on all major streaming platforms.

Lauren delves into deeply flawed and painfully idiosyncratic characters. She has embodied some of the world’s most mysterious cultural icons, including Greta Garbo, Melania Trump, Mary Poppins, and the women in her Italian-American family.

Currently, Lauren continues to work on creating comedy through the lens of her unique personal experience with videos on every platform that will let her while producing her podcast Reconcile the Aisle on Radio Misfits.

She lives in New York City where she downplays every great thing that’s ever happened to her.

Theresa (Certified Addiction Recovery Coach, Recovery Coach Professional/facilitator) is an LDA, BSE, adopted person in recovery.  She is the owner of BALANCE Recovery Consultation and creator of “Tai Chi 4 Recovery”.  She currently serves as the Senior Director of Recovery Education and Training for Friends of Recovery – New York, and is registered with the ASAP-NYCB trainer registry. 

Theresa has over 30 years of professional experience in addiction recovery.  She has worked as a clinician, program director, recovery coach, peer professional trainer and community educator and was a clinical supervisor when she developed TCR.   Theresa co-facilitated Adoptee Paths to Recovery peer support meeting for NAAP with David B. Bohl from 2022-2023.     

She earned her BA in psychology at UAlbany in 1984 and completed holistic medicine and Tai Chi training at Green Mountain Institute; College of Oriental Medicine in 2000.  She is a former substance use disorder counselor in New York (CASAC; 1997 – 2014) and Arizona (CADAC; 2014 -2017). Theresa is a daily practitioner of meditation and has been teaching self -awareness, self-care, meditation, and Tai Chi since 2001.  TaiChi4Recovery@gmail.com; Facebook , Instagram , LinkedIn, YouTube; WEBSITE. 

Kara was born and raised in Seattle, Washington. She married her high-school sweetheart and together they traveled for a number of years before attending college. Kara went on to receive a BA, MA, a law degree from the George Washington University, and later a LLM from the University of Washington. Her husband and sons constantly keep her on her toes. Any moment of free quiet time she can find is spent designing, reading, and cooking; but storytelling is her passion. 

In January 2018, she wanted to see where in Africa her father’s family came from. Her over-the-counter DNA test revealed she was 50% something, but she had zero African DNA. This meant the man on her birth certificate couldn’t possibly be her genetic father. She lost her bi-racial identity with the click of a mouse. Kara discovered she was 50% Jewish. The DNA pandora’s box she opened led to an identity crisis. Because there were few resources for people with misattributed parentage experiences, she co-founded Right to Know, a nonprofit organization dedicated to advancing the fundamental human right to know your genetic identity through education, mental health initiatives, and advocacy. 

Kara is leading advocate for genetic identity rights and people impacted by misattributed parentage. She has appeared on many podcasts, in multiple television interviews and articles, and has been a frequent speaker on her DNA surprise, the right to know, and the complex intersection of genetic information, identity, and family dynamics. She recently published the “My Re-Birthday Book: This is My Story: for adoptees, donor conceived, and people with an NPE, who are misattributed, or who’ve had a DNA surprise” and “Cinematic Roots: Explore Assisted Reproduction, Adoption, NPE, and DNA Surprise Terms Through Movies.”

Angela Tucker is a Black woman, adopted from foster care by white parents. She has heard this microaggression her entire life, usually from well-intentioned strangers who view her adoptive parents as noble saviors.  She is grateful for many aspects of her life, but being transracially adopted involves layers of rejection, loss and complexity that cannot be summed up so easily. Tucker centers the experiences of adoptees through sharing deeply personal stories, well-researched history and engrossing anecdotes from mentorship sessions with adopted youth. These perspectives challenge the fairy-tale narrative of adoption giving way to a fuller story that includes the impacts of racism, classism, family, love and belonging. She is the Executive Director of The Adoptee Mentoring Society.

Where do I come from? For some, the question has a simple answer – for others, the truth can be much more complicated. With the rise in popularity of at-home DNA tests, it’s now easier than ever for people to uncover their family history and, sometimes, things their parents wish would stay buried. Interested in learning more about his family heritage, director Jon Baime took an at-home DNA test and uncovered a family secret that has been hidden for half a century. Featuring in-depth interviews with Jon’s siblings as well as a treasure trove of family photos and films spanning 70 years, FILLING IN THE BLANKS takes audiences on a journey as Jon explores the meaning behind his discovery and expands on what it means to be family.

Shirley Muñoz Newson is a Gillette, Wyoming wife, mother, and grandmother who courageously wrote her memoir, The Little Dark One: A True Story of Switched at Birth to inspire others and show anything is possible with faith.

Shirley’s life was flipped upside down on April 7, 2001, one day before her 43rd birthday, when she received the DNA test results that would change her life forever. Everything she knew about herself wasn’t true.

Thanks to years of therapy, her unshakable faith in God, and the encouragement of her family, Shirley found the strength to tell her story and continue her own healing journey.

A baby-scoop era black-market “adoptee,” Patricia was sold along a curb outside a Texas hospital and grew up with no legal identity, date of birth, legal adoption, or court appointed guardian. Thus, despite one shady attorney’s best laid plans, at 18 she set out to unravel her mystery and obtain a legal birth certificate. At 40, she reunited with both biological parents, and she is currently seeking representation for her memoir, in which she shares how she uncovered the dirty deal that drove a life of deception, fueled her “adoptive” parents’ life-long addictions and stole her true identity.

Born with a love of writing, she earned a Journalism degree from the University of Texas, has been published in numerous newspapers and magazines, and dedicates her life to inspiring creativity in others. Active in adoption and writing communities, she blogs about her reunion experience at MyAdoptedLife.com and administers the Adoption Constellation Search and Reunion Facebook support group. She is a member of the National Association of Memoir Writers, the Adoption Knowledge Affiliates, and The Writers’ League of Texas. Bouncing between the Texas Hill Country and New Orleans, she works as a book publicist and content strategist, and attends an annual writing retreat in Costa Rica. A video of her reunion with her birth father has almost 300,000 views on YouTube.

Marylee MacDonald is the author of Surrender, a memoir about growing up adopted and the surrender of her first-born child.  While raising her other four children, she worked as a carpenter and co-owner of Working Women Construction and as a freelance editor for Old-House Journal, Sunset, and Better Homes & Gardens. When her youngest graduated from college, she was able to quit her day job and write full time. Her short stories have won the Barry Hannah Prize, the American Literary Review Fiction Prize, the Jeanne M. Leiby Memorial Chapbook Award, the Matt Clark Prize, and the Ron Rash Award. Her novel, Montpelier Tomorrow, won a Gold Medal for Drama from Readers’ Favorites International Book Awards, and Surrender was a winner in the Wishing Shelf Book Awards. In her free time, she loves to visit historic sites, do detective work in European archives, and spend time with her family.

Hello! My name is Lorah Gerald. I am a same race, domestic, Baby Scoop Era, preRoe adoptee. I post as The Adopted Chameleon on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, Patreon and Pinterest. I started these pages after reunion with my biological family. Reunion was a rollercoaster of emotions. It opened up feelings I had suppressed. I found writing and being creative was therapeutic. My pages connected me with others that were experiencing adoption trauma. Since that time I have been educating people on the trauma of adoption and how we can help heal ourselves. 

To better deal with my own trauma, I became a certified Kundalini yoga instructor, TIYT-Trauma Informed Yoga Therapy instructor, and Reiki Master.  With my training in trauma, yoga therapy and energy healing, I share these tools online and in person in my weekly yoga classes and workshops. Working with these techniques, I have learned to better understand my own trauma and how to help others in their path to be the best version of themselves.

When we heal ourselves, we heal the world.

Annette L Becklund is a therapist for over twenty years, specializing in Developmental Disabilities, a Mental Health Consultant, writer, and workshop facilitator. Originally from New Jersey, and now in Florida, she is a person who found out her dad was not her biological father. Annette is an NPE (Not Parent Expected) woman who is a professional member of The MPE Counseling Collective, and a member of several support groups with approximately 10,000 members. Annette and her colleagues published a professional study in the Journal of Integrative Medicine, published an article on NPEs in In Focus, a magazine for therapists in Florida, and has spoken on Ancestry Discoveries and related treatment. She facilitates a Facebook page called Ancestry Discoveries and has been a guest on a podcast on the same topic. Author of “Ancestry Discoveries: What Happens Under the Sheets Doesn’t Stay There” available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble. Annette self-published Warren is Wonderful, a children’s book for children with autism. She loves spending time with her husband, Ray, a talented artist, her three pups: Abbie, Zeva, Rafiki and cat, Spirit.

For more info: AnnetteLBecklund.com and AncestryDiscoveries.com.

In July 2021, Alexis Hourselt received her Ancestry DNA kit results. To her shock, she discovered that the man she’d called “Dad” for 35 years was not her biological father. 

Alexis also learned through her DNA test results that she is not a multi-ethnic Mexican woman, as she’d believed, but African American. These two discoveries caused a complete upheaval of her identity. 

Alexis created the DNA Surprises podcast to provide a space for NPEs, donor-conceived people, and adoptees (and their families) to find comfort in the stories of those who are on similar journeys. She also aims to raise awareness of DNA surprises and ultimately create more openness and honesty around parentage. Since her discovery, Alexis has become a prominent voice in the DNA surprise community, advocating for truth, transparency, and healing.

In 2022, she founded the DNA Surprise Retreat with Debbie Olson of the DNA Surprise Network. The Retreat serves as a bridge to healing for the DNA surprise community.

Lauren LoGiudice is an accomplished comedian, actor, and author of Amazon Kindle Best Seller Inside Melania: What I Know About Melania Trump by Impersonating Her. Her work has been featured by The New York Times, BBC, Bust Magazine, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, Hyperallergic, among others. Her writing has been called “criminal.” Her TV and film credits include Veep, Brave the Dark and Galaxy360. Moth StorySLAM Champ. In addition to her comedy album, Misfits: A Comedy Album you can also hear Melania Trump’s Rockin’ Right-Wing Christmas Album, available on all major streaming platforms.

Lauren delves into deeply flawed and painfully idiosyncratic characters. She has embodied some of the world’s most mysterious cultural icons, including Greta Garbo, Melania Trump, Mary Poppins, and the women in her Italian-American family.

Currently, Lauren continues to work on creating comedy through the lens of her unique personal experience with videos on every platform that will let her while producing her podcast Reconcile the Aisle on Radio Misfits.

She lives in New York City where she downplays every great thing that’s ever happened to her.

Bill has been a healer, teacher and facilitator for 40+ years. He has been leading small and large groups, ranging from short term personal growth and structured groups, through long term abuse survivor groups. He believes in our inherent capacity to grow throughout life and become more of ourselves. His first career was in psychotherapy in residential treatment, inpatient hospital, outpatient mental health and private practice. He served individuals children & adolescents and families. His second career was teaching/facilitating communication classes in the North America, Central & South America, Europe, the Middle East and South Asia. The principles of change and growth were equally effective in both careers. Helping people to grow, whether challenged by difficulties or aspirations are the most gratifying and fulfilling experiences.

Dr. Michelle Tullier is an NPE and nationally certified career counselor with more than 30 years’ experience helping people navigate the practical and emotional sides of career development and job search for more fulfilling and successful work lives. She served as Executive Director of the Georgia Tech career center, as one of Monster.com’s first online career coaches, and in regional leadership roles with a global outplacement firm serving clients from individual contributors to executives. She holds a PhD in Counseling Psychology from UCLA and BA from Wellesley College.

Michelle is the founder of Careers Uncomplicated, a full-time career coaching practice that serves clients remotely across the U.S.(www.careersuncomplicated.com). In 2023 she earned one of the highest honors in her profession, the Outstanding Career Practitioner Award from the National Career Development Association. Since learning of her NPE status in 2016, Michelle has done deep and difficult work to process her new identity and has developed a special interest in how MPE experiences can impact career choices, career identities, and attitudes toward work. (Tullier is pronounced “tool-yay.”)

Leslie Pate Mackinnon has maintained a private psychotherapy practice for four decades. She resides in Atlanta and presents both nationally and internationally on issues that impact families conceived through adoption and third-party reproduction. She’s been on GOOD MORNING AMERICA w/ Robin Roberts, and on CNN discussing the impact of the internet on adoption. She was featured in DAN RATHER’s investigative report; ADOPTION OR ABDUCTION and was most recently on the Katie Couric show along with her oldest son Pete.

Leslie’s story is included in the book; The Girls Who Went Away, and the documentary A GIRL LIKE HER. Drawn to the field by placing her two firstborn sons for adoption when she was a teenager, her passion today is to educating as many therapists as possible, before she drops! She currently serves on the Evan B. Donaldson’s Board of Directors. For fun she reads voraciously, listens to jazz and sings in a gospel choir.

For more information about Leslie, please visit www.lesliepatemackinnon.com.

Lena (Eileen) Skahill is an adjunct professor of Sociology at the University of Colorado Colorado Springs. She has been teaching courses in Adoption and Family Studies and Environmental Sociology which are available to students in the School of Social Work, Women’s and Ethnic Studies and The Humanities departments.  Lena is also adoptee (1966) and engaged in reunion with both of her first families. She has volunteered in varying capacities with adoption non-profits over the last decade and dedicated her academic career toward the pursuit of teaching and sharing the unique lived experiences of all members of the adoption constellation.

Lena has conducted research in adoption studies over the course of her career. Her early research, On the Outside Looking In: Adoptee Perspectives on Reunion Relationships explored the evolution of long term reunions between adoptees and their first families with outcomes of the study shared at academic conferences across the country.  Her current qualitative/photo essay-based research study titled, Nurtured by Nature: Adoption and Foster Care Experiences and the Healing Power of Nature is meant to shine a light on the adoption and foster care journeys and the ways in which nature serves as a modality for healing, growth, and joy for all impacted by these lived experiences.  Research for the study has been completed and Lena anticipates data to be published in 2024.

Debbie Olson is a Certified Life Coach, founder of DNA Surprise Network and co-founder of DNA Surprise Retreat, and a member of the Right to Know board. She helps others navigate life’s path after having a DNA Surprise, having experienced her own. Debbie is a former paralegal with over 20 years of experience in that field.  Possessing skills of empathy, understanding, and great communication, she is an ideal person to work with. She believes no matter where you are now, it is where you desire to be that is most important. 

Debbie was raised believing her biological father did not want her, and eventually she was told he was deceased. After taking an over-the-counter DNA test, she matched with an unknown half-sister in 2019. With this connection, she learned her biological father was alive, and had in fact looked for her.  

Debbie is an advocate for animals serving on the board of East Idaho Spay Neuter Coalition and is a key player in the Snake River Animal Shelter’s biggest yearly fundraiser. Both are nonprofit 501(c)3 organizations that help save animals lives. 

Debbie can be found on Instagram and Facebook at DNA Surprise Network or at DNASurpriseNetwork.com.  

Michele Kriegman, was born, relinquished, and adopted in New York City. She graduated from Wellesley College and received a Japanese Ministry of Education graduate scholarship to Sophia University’s Department of Mass Communications in Tokyo. There she began a journalism career at ABC News, followed by multi-year assignments with Nippon TV’s top-rated morning show, among others, and was a producer on a Gabriel Award-winning documentary on Peace Studies in Boston and Hiroshima.

Although she is a storyteller by nature, like many adoptees she was missing her own backstory well into adulthood. Finding her birth-father in New York before the state opened its records helped complete it. Most recently, a DNA test kit that came as a Chrismukkah present revealed an unknown adoptee sister!

Having worked in a second career as a cybersecurity professional for over fifteen years, Michele now devotes herself to writing full time, focusing on two genres: cybercrime mysteries, and search and reunion novels. Her birth-father’s complex effort at redemption later in life inspired the 2022 novel Finding Faith: The Birth-Fathers’ Club Series. Other novels in the series are ROCK MEMOIR and From a Desert City by the Sea. She reclaimed her birth-name, Suzanne Gilbert, to write her 2014 debut novel Tapioca Fire.

Website: https://reunionlandpress.com/

eBookshop: https://www.amazon.com/author/michele

Beth Syverson is an adoptive mom of a 20-year-old son Joey, who has been struggling to find his healing path for the past several years because of addiction and suicidality. They created the Unraveling Adoption podcast together in 2021 to help other families struggling with similar issues. Beth also runs a free support group for adoptive parents called APtitude, and she recently became a Certified Coach, working primarily with adoptive parents. Through the podcast, support group, coaching, and events, she hopes to help adoptive parents become more self-aware and to work on their own issues so they can become more emotionally attuned parents. And she hopes to raise awareness about adoption trauma to the wider community. Beth speaks out on the topics of addiction, adoption, mental health, and parenting in order to help families heal. Find out more at UnravelingAdoption.com. Contact Beth at Beth@UnravelingAdoption.com.

Unraveling Adoption

Chief Executive Officer and inventor of the patent-pending panel utilized by Wired For Addiction™, Dr. Evelyn Higgins is a recognized international expert in the epidemiology of addiction. With 34 years in clinical practice, Dr. Higgins has dedicated over 16 years to Research and Development in the science of addiction recovery. A panelist at the 2022 International Society of Substance Use Professionals Annual Conference in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, the 2022 International Gambling Conference in Auckland, New Zealand, the International Society of Addiction Medicine 2022 Congress in Valletta, Malta, and 2021 Nominee for Modern Healthcare’s Top 25 Innovators in Healthcare, Dr. Higgins finds herself at the nexus of epigenetics, neuroscience, and addiction.

During her career as a Doctor of Physical and Function medicine, Dr. Higgins had the honor of advising the U.S. Surgeon General, being an Olympic torchbearer, as well as serving as a 1996 Olympic team doctor. The host of a nationally syndicated, Gracie Award winning radio program, Dr. Higgins has interviewed the Executive Director of the World Health Organization, Director of the United Nations Entity For Gender Equality & the Empowerment of Women, as well as others from various health, wellness and equity backgrounds. An author, speaker, clinician, Dr. Higgins is a graduate of the State University of New York. Her postgraduate studies at Harvard Medical School in Body, Mind, and Spirit medicine have an emphasis on resiliency. She is a Diplomate of the American College of Addictionology and Compulsive Disorders, a Diplomate of the American Board of Disability, specializing in pain management, a graduate of New York Chiropractic college, as well as a Certified Addiction Professional.

Dr. Abigail Hasberry is a transracial adoptee, executive leadership coach, and licensed marriage and family therapist associate. With a background in education as a former teacher and principal, she has experience in private, traditional public, and charter schools. Dr. Hasberry holds a Bachelor of Science degree in African American studies and sociology, a Master of Arts in teaching, K-12, a Master of Education in counseling and development, and a Ph.D. in curriculum & instruction. In addition, she is currently completing a Master of Science degree in industrial/organizational behavior.

Dr. Hasberry’s research and publications focus on identity development, diversity, and the experiences of black teachers in private, affluent, and predominantly white schools. She is also actively involved in training therapists on adoption informed practices and has been a guest speaker on adoption, identity development, and trauma in various podcasts and webinars. She is in the process of publishing her memoir, Adopting Privilege.

Beyond her professional achievements, Dr. Hasberry is married and has raised three children. Her personal journey as an adoptee and birth mom fuels her dedication to supporting adult adoptees and birth mothers in their own paths of healing and growth.