About: Senior Fellows

In an effort to enhance the quality and impact of its work – and to improve adoption generally – the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute launched a new Senior Research Fellows Program in June 2006. This unprecedented initiative will, for the first time, regularly convene a group of the most accomplished experts in the field to share their knowledge, disseminate their findings, and help to shape better adoption policies and practices.

The Senior Research Fellows enhance and expand the initiatives of the Adoption Institute by contributing their knowledge and expertise, by providing substantive content from their research and experience, by helping to shape and vet Institute products so they achieve the highest possible standards and impact, and by assisting in focusing our efforts on the vitally important issues that affect tens of millions of children and families in our country every day.

The Institute's Senior Fellows are among the most prominent and esteemed researchers, lecturers and writers in the fields of adoption and foster care today. The following are short biographies in alphabetical order. For more information about the program, contact us at info@adoptioninstitute.org

Amanda Baden, Ph.D.
Amanda Baden, Ph.D. is Associate Professor in the Department of Counseling and Educational Leadership at Montclair State University in N.J. She is a licensed psychologist with a clinical practice in Manhattan. Her research and practice focus on adoption triad members, transracial/international adoption issues, racial and cultural identity, and multicultural counseling competence. She is on the editorial board of Adoption Quarterly and co-chairs the Biennial Adoption Initiative Conferences in New York. She is a columnist for Families with Children from China journals across the U.S. and for Mei Magazine, a publication for Chinese adopted children. In 2005, she received an Angel in Adoption award from the Congressional Coalition on Adoption Institute.

Richard P. Barth, Ph.D.
Richard P. Barth, M.S.W., Ph.D. is Dean of the School of Social Work, University of Maryland. He previously held chaired professorships at the University of N.C. and the University of California at Berkeley. He was the 1998 recipient of the Presidential Award for Excellence in Research from the National Association of Social Workers, the Flynn Prize for Research in 2005, the Peter Forsythe Award for Child Welfare Leadership in 2006, and the Distinguished Achievement Award of the Society for Social Work and Research in 2010. He has been a Fulbright Scholar to Sweden and Australia. He is on the editorial boards of several journals, including Adoption Quarterly, Children and Youth Services Review, and the Journal of the Society for Social Work and Research.

Devon Brooks, Ph.D., M.S.W.
Devon Brooks, Ph.D., M.S.W. is an Associate Professor in the School of Social Work at the University of Southern California, where he also serves as the Associate Dean for Faculty Affairs. Much of his work focuses on identifying risk and protective factors related to child and family adjustment and well-being. He has worked on several long-term and large-scale adoption studies, including Building Understanding and the California Long-Range Adoption Study. He has published numerous articles, book chapters and reports on adoption. His publications address a wide range of issues, including adoption and race, transracial adoption, gay and lesbian adoption, identify development, and foster care adoptions.

Naomi Cahn, J.D., LL.M.
Naomi Cahn, the John Theodore Fey Research Professor at George Washington University Law School, has written many law review articles on adoption, reproductive technology, family law and related subjects, and has co-authored several books, including Red Families v. Blue Families: Legal Polarization and the Creation of Culture, the textbook, Contemporary Family Law; Families By Law: An Adoption Reader (with Prof. Joan Heifetz Hollinger); and Confinements: Fertility and Infertility in Contemporary Culture. With the Yale Cultural Cognition Project, she is studying public attitudes toward LGBT parenting. She is also writing a book examining the worlds of donor-conceived offspring.

Abbie E. Goldberg, Ph.D.
Abbie Goldberg, Ph.D. is an Associate Professor of Psychology at Clark University. She received a B.A. from Wesleyan University in 1999, and an M.S. and Ph.D. from the University of Massachusetts in 2001 and 2005, respectively. Her research and teaching interests involve diverse families, sexuality and gender. Her numerous publications include the book Lesbian and Gay Parents and their Children: Research on the Family Life Cycle.

Harold Grotevant, Ph.D.
Harold D. Grotevant, Ph.D., holds the Rudd Family Foundation Chair in Psychology at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Along with Dr. Ruth McRoy, he directs the Minnesota/Texas Adoption Research Project, which examines outcomes for adopted children with birth family contact. His work has resulted in over 100 articles published in professional journals, as well as several books. He is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association, the Association for Psychological Science, and the National Council on Family Relations; member of the Board of Directors of NACAC; and recipient of many research, teaching, and educational leadership awards.

Victor Groza, Ph.D.
Victor Groza, Ph.D. is Grace F. Brody Professor in Parent-Child Studies at the Mandel School of Applied Social Sciences at Case Western Reserve University. He is best known for his adoption outcomes studies, evaluating the effects of pre-adoption history of children adopted from the U.S. public system, as well as the effects of pre-adoption institutionalization and experiences on international adoptees and their families. He has conducted research in Romania, India and the Ukraine. He is on the editorial boards of several child welfare journals, has published numerous articles in peer-reviewed journals, and has authored or co-authored several books.

Dana E. Johnson, M.D.
Dana E. Johnson, M.D. is a Professor of Pediatrics and member of the Divisions of Neonatology and Global Pediatrics at the University of Minnesota, where he co-founded the International Adoption Program in 1986. His research interests include the effects of early institutionalization on growth and development and the outcomes of internationally adopted children. A pioneer in the field of adoption medicine, Dr. Johnson serves on the editorial boards of several publications and has written more than 200 journal articles, book chapters and abstracts.

Penelope (Penny) L. Maza, Ph.D.
Dr. Maza has been working in the child welfare field for over 30 years, primarily as a senior staff member and a manager in the federal government. She has also served as the Research Director of the Child Welfare League of America. She currently works as a consultant to a wide range of adoption, foster care and child welfare organizations. Her career has involved a variety of activities including research, program evaluation and innovation, quality assurance, and analyses of administrative and other data sources. Not only has her work influenced the operation of state adoption programs, but it has also had an impact on and been incorporated into federal legislation. She is a recipient of a 2012 Centennial Adoption Excellence Award and holds a Ph.D. in sociology.

Ruth Gail McRoy, Ph.D.
Ruth Gail McRoy, Ph.D. holds the Donahue and DiFelice Endowed Professorship at Boston College Graduate School of Social Work. She is president of NACAC and serves on additional Boards, including the Society for Social Work and Research. She was Director of the Center for Social Work Research and Director of the Diversity Institute at the University of Texas, Austin. Her recent honors include the 2004 Flynn Prize for Social Work Research from USC, the 2005 George Silcott Lifetime Achievement Award from the Black Administrators in Child Welfare, and the 2006 Distinguished Achievement Award from the Society for Social Work and Research.

Laurie Miller, M.D.
Laurie Miller, M.D. is a Professor of Pediatrics at Tufts University School of Medicine and founder of the International Adoption Clinic at Tufts Medical Center. She has served as a pediatric consultant in 12 countries. Dr. Miller serves on the Boards of Romanian Children's Relief; Families for Russian and Ukrainian Adoption; and the NIH Study Section for Brain Disorders in the Developing World. She has published over 80 peer-reviewed articles and 30 chapters related to pediatrics and international adoption, as well as two books. She is also a board-certified pediatric rheumatologist and directs the pediatric rheumatology training program at Tufts Medical Center.

Ellen Pinderhughes, Ph.D.
Ellen Pinderhughes, Ph.D. is on the faculty of the Eliot-Pearson Department of Child Development at Tufts University. She is a developmental and clinical psychologist who has worked as a therapist and a clinical consultant. Her research focuses primarily on the complex interplay of family dynamics in adoptive and biological families with children at risk for problem outcomes. With 20 years of clinical and research experience in adoption, Dr. Pinderhughes is nationally known for her work on older child adoptions and her more recent research on intercountry transracial adoptions. She has written extensively on adoption-related issues in books and journals.

Scott Ryan, Ph.D.
Scott Ryan, Ph.D. is Dean of the University of Texas at Arlington's School of Social Work and Editor of Adoption Quarterly. He was the Jeanene M. Janes Professor of Child Welfare and Associate Dean for Research at Florida State University's College of Social Work, where he also directed the Institute for Social Work Research. He has published about 40 scholarly articles and eight book chapters, and has received numerous awards for his work.