About: Staff

Hollee A. McGinnis Policy & Operations Director Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute 120 E. 38th Street New York NY 10016

Voice: (212) 979-0382 Email: hmcginnis@adoptioninstitute.org

Hollee McGinnis has been a prominent educator, speaker and activist in the adoption community for the past 16 years. She brings unique skills, experience and insight to her role as Policy & Operations Director, derived from a combination of her research and work in the adult adoptee community.

In 1996, McGinnis founded Also-Known-As, Inc., a non-profit adult intercountry adoptee organization. Its activities have included developing post-adoption services and resources for internationally adopted people and their families, a mentorship program for adopted youth, and motherland tour to Korea for adopted adults. The organization was one of the sponsors of the First Gathering of the First Generation of Korean Adoptees, a groundbreaking conference where McGinnis presented a speech on international search and reunion, "Search: 10 Questions to Ask", that has that has been widely disseminated through the internet and printed in Hi Families and The Korean Quarterly.

McGinnis speaks regularly to adoption agencies, adoptive parent support groups, and at conferences, addressing issues of racial and ethnic identity, birth search and reunion, history of Korean intercountry adoptions, and parenting adopted children. She was the founder and editor of Transcultured Magazine, a quarterly magazine chronicling the adoption life journey, and has written for KoreAM Journal . She has been widely interviewed by the media, including by the New York Times, the national weekly PBS program Asian American Voice, Jade Magazine, Radio Korea 1480am and Bloomberg Radio to name a few.

Her published pieces are included in two adoption anthologies, Parents at Last: Celebrating Adoption and the New Pathways to Parenthood, and Voices from Another Place. She has a chapter in Adoption Parenting: Creating a Toolbox, Building Connections, in the Handbook of Adoption: Implications for Researchers, Practitioners, and Families, and the The Praeger Handbook of Adoption. Her essays and commentaries on adoption related issues have also appeared in national publications including Adoptive Families, AdoptionToday, and Christian Science Monitor. She has submitted oral and written testimony on behalf of Asian intercountry adoptees for the White House Initiative on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, and she received the Korean World Leaders of Tomorrow award in recognition of her leadership in the area of social services.

McGinnis completed a Post-Masters Clinical Social Work Fellowship program at the Yale Child Study Center, where she provided therapeutic services for children and families, many of whom were in foster care, and helped to develop and facilitate an adoptive parent psycho-educational group at the Yale International Adoption Clinic. Prior to her current work in the field of child welfare, she was employed as a website developer and technology consultant.

McGinnis graduated cum laude from Mount Holyoke College, where she completed an independent study on ethnic and racial identity of college-aged Korean adoptees, and a paper on the history of Vietnamese intercountry adoptions. She received her masters of science at Columbia University School of Social Work, where she concentrated in social welfare policy practice and international social welfare. During her field work at the Council on Accreditation she authored a white paper on the implications of the Intercountry Adoption Act of 2000 on US adoption practice and provided analysis of various foster care services.

McGinnis, also-known-as Lee Hwa Yeong, was adopted from South Korea and has been united with her birth family.