Session 1

Accountability to Prospective and Current Adoptive Families Overview

Cynthia Mabry teaches Adoption Law, Family Law, Civil Procedure and Pretrial Litigation at Howard University School of Law. Professor Mabry has taught at New York University School of Law, Washington and Lee University School of Law, the University of Florida College of Law, Syracuse University College of Law, West Virginia University College of Law and the University of the Western Cape in Capetown, South Africa. She has made presentations on family law issues throughout the United States. As a member of the International Family Law Society, she has spoken in other countries including China and Amsterdam. She co-authored the legal textbook, Adoption Law: Theory, Policy and Practice and has written several law review articles focusing on a variety of issues, with an emphasis on children's rights. Among her many community service contributions, Professor Mabry serves as a member of the Citizens Review Board for Children for Prince Georges County in the State of Maryland. She holds a JD from Howard University School of Law and a LLM from New York University School of Law.

Adam Pertman, Executive Director of the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute, is also the Associate Editor of Adoption Quarterly and is the author of Adoption Nation, which has been reviewed as "the most important book ever written on the subject." He was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize for his writing about adoption in The Boston Globe, where he was a senior reporter and editor for 22 years before turning his career toward adoption. Pertman's has received numerous honors for his work on behalf of children and families, including the Angel in Adoption Award and recognition from the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatrists; the American Adoption Congress, Holt International Children's Services and the Dave Thomas Center for Adoption Law, which gave him its first award for "the nation's greatest contributor to public understanding about adoption and permanency placement issues." Pertman's commentaries have run in major print and broadcast media nationwide, and articles about him and his book have appeared in numerous newspapers and magazines nationwide, including People. He has been a guest on many radio and television programs, including Oprah and the Today Show. As a leading expert on adoption and family issues, Pertman has delivered scores of keynote speeches, trainings and other presentations in this country and internationally.

Colleen Marea Quinn, who was recognized in 2005 by Virginia Business magazine as one of the state's "Legal Elite" and as a "Super Lawyer" in 2006 and 2007 by Richmond magazine, has provided representation to hundreds of adopting parents, birth parents, adoptees, intended parents, surrogates, gestational carriers and egg donors since 1989. After graduating from the College of William and Mary and the University of Virginia Law School in 1988, she served as a clerk with the Chief Justice of the Virginia Supreme Court. A director and equity owner in the law firm of Cantor Arkema, P.C., Quinn is a Fellow and on the Board of Trustees of the American Academy of Adoption Attorneys (AAAA). She frequently presents and writes on adoption issues on behalf of AAAA. Quinn has served as an expert witness in adoption law in the Virginia court system and is a court-approved, certified Guardian ad Litem. She is a Fellow of the Litigation Counsel of America and a Board member and Chairperson of the Judicial Candidate Endorsement Committee of the Metropolitan Richmond Women's Bar Association.

Jared N. Rolsky, MSW, is the Executive Director of Golden Cradle, a multi-state licensed adoption agency based in New Jersey that offers domestic and international adoption services. Prior to joining Golden Cradle, Rolsky had a private practice with a focus on children and families and divorce mediation; served first as Director of Services for Children and Families and then as Executive Director of Jewish Family Services of New Haven; and was the Chief Social Worker for Children's Outpatient Services at the Crozier Chester Community Mental Health Center. He is a Board member and Treasurer of the Joint Council on International Children's Services and has been the organization's Special Liaison to COA/Hague Approval since 2006. He is the Membership Chair for the Delaware Valley Adoption Council and is a board member of the Association of Jewish Family and Children's Agencies and the Connecticut Association of Family Service Agencies. Rolsky has been a Team Leader for COA since 1986 and Peer Reviewer since 1984.

Session 2

Discrimination in Adoption – Law, Policy and Practice That Restrict Adoptive Parenthood

• When, and on what bases, should adoption professionals be permitted to decide that prospective parents are not "suitable" to adopt (gay/lesbian parents, single parents, religion, disability, age, weight and other restrictions)?
• How can, or should, adoption professionals respond to a country's practices that restrict who may adopt its children?
• What is the role, if any, of preferential policies that favor prospective adoptive parents based on such factors as ethnicity, religion or marital status?

Michael Colberg, JD, LCSW, MFT maintains a private psychotherapy practice in New York City focusing on family systems and adoption. He has served on the Los Angeles Commission for Children's Services and the New York City Task Force on Open Adoption. Mr. Colberg is a founding member of All Children-All Families whose mission is to create opportunities for children in foster care to find permanent families with members of the LGBT community who very much want to parent. Mr. Colberg also was a founding co-director of The Center For Family Connections - New York. He has studied, written about, taught and spoken out on behalf of families touched by adoption in many venues, including the Yale and Columbia Law Schools, the International Conference on the Rights of the Child, and New York City's Village Community School. Mr. Colberg is a parent, through adoption, of a college-age daughter whose adoption has been open since birth.

Melissa Griebel, is the Vice President of Ethica, Inc. and mother of two boys, both adopted through domestic, transracial adoptions. She enjoys open adoptions with both sons' birth families. Melissa has a strong interest in the ethics of domestic adoption, and a special interest in the issues that affect transracial adoptees and their families. Melissa has served on the Foster Care Review Board for Pima County, Arizona and moderates two adoption forums that address domestic adoption issues. Melissa has also worked professionally in the insurance industry for much of the past 20 years. She lives in Tucson, Arizona with her partner and children.

Law Professor Joan Heifetz Hollinger is a leading scholar on adoption law and policy. She teaches family law, child welfare, adoption and assisted reproduction at the University of California, Berkeley, Law School. She is the principal author of the three-volume treatise Adoption Law and Practice (Matthew Bender\Lexis 1988-2006), co-author of Families By Law: An Adoption Reader (NYU 2004), and a contributor to Adoption Quarterly. She served as Reporter for the Uniform Adoption Act and helped draft the proposed Uniform Parentage Act of 2002, and has been involved since 1993 in efforts to implement the Hague Convention on Intercountry Adoption. Professor Hollinger has been amicus curiae on behalf of children in ground-breaking adoption and parentage cases, including decisions by the California Supreme Court recognizing that children can have two legal mothers under state's version of the Uniform Parentage Act as well as under the state's adoption statutes.

Elisa Poncz graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with an honors degree in Economics in 2004 and from Harvard Law School in 2007. While in law school, she was an active participant in the Child Advocacy Program. Poncz currently serves as a law clerk for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. She is the author of "China's Proposed International Adoption Law: The Likely Impact on Single U.S. Citizens Seeking to Adopt from China and the Available Alternatives," published in the Harvard International Law Journal in April 2007.

Session 3

Professional Challenges in Ethical Intercountry Adoption Practice

• What are the components of ethical adoption practice?
• How can licensing and accrediting bodies promote ethical and competent adoption practice?
• What roles can adoption professionals play in improving practice - in the field of adoption as well as in mental health, education, and other service systems?
• How can adoption professionals best balance the important interests of all parties to an adoption (children, expectant parents, adoptive families and businesses)?

Gary N. Gamer became President and CEO of Holt International in 2004, after serving for 10 years at its Vice President of International Programs. Holt International is a pioneer in intercountry adoption and supports programs around the world that ensure children are in permanent, loving families through adoption, family preservation and other family- based, community settings. Gamer's prior work includes directing a multi-service refugee and immigration service organization, Sponsors Organized to Assist Refugees (SOAR), affiliated with the Ecumenical Ministries of Oregon. He also worked for Church World Service and the National Council of Churches of Christ U.S.A., directing programs related to international peace, justice and humanitarian response. He has lived, worked, volunteered and traveled in Asia, Africa, Latin America and Europe. He holds a Master's Degree from Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs, and B.S. in Business Administration from the University of Oregon.

Richard Klarberg has been the President and CEO of the Council on Accreditation (COA) since 2001. COA is a not-for-profit accreditor of more than 1,600 public and private organizations throughout North America that provide a broad array of services, including foster care and intercountry adoption. Prior to his current position, he was the Senior Vice President for the North Shore-Long Island Jewish Health System, a not-for-profit provider of health care, and the Executive Vice President/COO of the American Health Foundation, a not-for-profit medical research organization. Prior to these positions, Klarberg served as a practicing attorney with the firm of Javits & Javits in New York City, a public school teacher in Bedford-Stuyvesant, and a Vista Volunteer in the Ozark Mountains. He is a graduate of Brooklyn Law School and Queens College of the City University of New York.

Elena Langrill is a 1980 graduate of the University of Maryland School of Law. After clerking for the Maryland Court of Appeals, she spent five years in private practice, and then the past 20-plus years as an Assistant Attorney General for the State of Maryland. Langrill is also an adoptive parent and part of an extended family that includes diverse adoption experiences, including domestic and international adoption; single parent, married parents and same-sex couple adoptions; foster care, agency and independent adoptions; second parent, step-parent, and unrelated adoptions; infant, toddler and older child adoptions; special needs and non-special needs adoptions, open- and closed adoptions (and the continuum in between); and family members include all dimensions of the adoption triad.

Barbara J. McArtney is an adoptee and mother of seven, including two internationally adopted children with special needs. She is an attorney and Director of Graham's Gift Children's Foundation, a New York State-authorized adoption agency. McArtney has worked as a custody and visitation mediator and member of the New York State Law Guardian Panel representing children in Family Court, as an advocate in rape and domestic violence cases, and as an Assistant District Attorney. Graham's Gift conducts home studies and specializes in assisting families adopting independently. McArtney has spoken at and submitted materials to the Hague regulatory meetings.