A conversation about money, why the adoptee rights movement has so little, and what we could do together if we actually had the funds to do it all.
Join Adoptees United’s Gregory Luce as well as Adoption Mosaic’s Astrid Castro and Shelise Gieseke as we extend a conversation about a question we have been discussing for years now: what could we do with infinite money? We’ll also raise other questions and take questions from you, including:
- What would our movement—and adoption—look like with sufficient funding for adoptee-centered, rights-based work?
- What could we fund, create, and accomplish— and why choose what we choose?
- How do we value ourselves in the first place? And how does that affect securing compensation for our work, much of which is hard, emotional, and surprisingly divisive, inside and outside of the adoptee community?
- And, seriously, what could we do with infinite money?
NOTE: This event has been rescheduled from October 5 to October 12 to avoid a conflict with Yom Kippur. Register now for this event and discussion, which will help determine how Adoptees United and others value their work and begin to move toward a financially sustainable future for adoptee rights.
Join us on October 12, 2022, at 4pm Pacific/6pm Central/7pm Eastern. We hope to see you there. If you require accommodations, such as ASL interpretation, please email Gregory Luce at [email protected].
Registration Closed
The event has ended but the video replay is now available on the Adoptees United YouTube Channel here.
Panelists/Participants
Astrid Castro (she/her/hers)
CEO, Adoption Mosaic
Astrid Castro (she/her/hers) is the founder and CEO of Adoption Mosaic. Adoption Mosaic is a BIPOC woman and adoptee-led business that seeks to build an inviting adoption conscious community by providing innovative adoptee-centered programs and support. Her life-long interest in adoption is rooted in her own adoption at the age of four from Colombia (along with her older sister).
Astrid has been in reunion with her birth family in Colombia since December 2011. Astrid has a degree in sociology with an emphasis in adoption. Since 1992, she has traveled the country to lead adoptee youth groups, present workshops on transracial parenting, talking with children about adoption, and various other workshops focusing on adoption. Astrid has also worked in both the private and public sectors of various adoption organizations. Astrid’s personal experiences as an adoptee, a woman of color, and growing up in a white family and community, fuel her professional path to helping others.
Shelise Gieseke (s/hers)
Head of Operations, Adoption Mosaic
Shelise Gieseke is the head of operations at Adoption Mosaic. Adoption Mosaic is a BIPOC woman and adoptee-led business that seeks to build an inviting adoption conscious community by providing innovative adoptee-centered programs and support. She has worked in the adoption community as an editor, educator, and administrator for over 10 years, including editing and curating the blog Land of Gazillion Adoptees and the online magazine Gazillion Voices.
She is also an intercountry Korean, interracial adoptee who was adopted as an infant by a white family and raised on a farm in Minnesota. She has three siblings who are biological children of her adoptive parents. Shelise has searched for but is not in reunion with her Korean family. Shelise lives in Portland, Oregon, and is parenting two biological biracial children with her husband.
Gregory Luce, the Executive Director of Adoptees United, will moderate the discussion, which will be open for participation from attendees. The session will be recorded and released to those who register for the event.
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