“This isn’t about feel-good stories. It’s about real change that we can build together, by bringing diverse voices across the constellation.” Melissa Guida-Richards
Organized by Adoptee Thoughts & Paige Knipfer
Get Tickets Here
Hi, I’m Melissa Guida-Richards, founder of Adoptee Thoughts—a platform dedicated to amplifying adoptee voices, advocating for ethical adoption practices, and creating space for honest, necessary conversations around adoption.
Together with Paige Knipfer, an adoptive parent, adoption educator, and former owner of Love Grown Adoption Consulting, we’re hosting a powerful new event:
🗓️ Adoption Changemakers — a one-day conference in November 2025 focused on what we can build together to better support adopted children, adults, and families.
Why We’re Gathering
We are excited that a large portion of proceeds from the event will be donated to the Adoptee Mentoring Society a nonprofit for adoptees and foster youth. Learn about their impact: here.
Adoption Changemakers will bring together a diverse community within our niche, from adoptees, first/birth families, adoptive families, donor-conceived people, professionals, authors and advocates. Who will engage in critical conversations that challenge outdated narratives, share lived experience, and highlight ethical, trauma-informed practices in adoption and the parenting space.
We’re inviting the extended adoption community to collaborate, dream, and take action.
Adoption Changemakers: The conference the adoption industry doesn’t want you to see.
We’ve started the conversation—now we need your help to keep the momentum going and make real change.
What to Expect
We’re curating a lineup of changemakers, storytellers, and advocates committed to reform, inclusion, and centering lived experience. We will be having 2 keynotes, and 2 panels, 1 workshop, as well as a Lunch and Learn with members across the adoption constellation.
All ticket purchases will cover all events on November 8th, 2025. Lunch is not included but water and light snacks will be available throughout the day.
Enhance your conference experience with exclusive add-ons!
We will be adding different levels of bonus content depending on how much support given. Tickets will start at $300 , but depending on extra donations via add ons, we will include Q&A with authors, 1:1 consultations, signed books, access to a special monthly zoom and Facebook groups, and much more.
Speakers
🔹 KEYNOTE
Morning Keynote with April Dinwoodie
A powerful opening from one of the most trusted voices in adoption, identity, and racial justice. April will help us ground the day in truth, personal experience, and what real change-making looks like.
April Dinwoodie is a nationally recognized speaker, podcast host, and DEIB consultant bridging lived experience with systems change. A Black/biracial transracially adopted person, April hosts Born in June, Raised in April, Calendar Conversations, and the AdoptUSKids podcast. She is the founder of AdoptMent, Executive Director of Transracial Journeys, and leads DEIB strategy at where she helped launch Celebrating Fashion’s Future. Her work invites individuals and institutions to explore identity, race, and belonging—with honesty, empathy, and the courage to keep walking into the room.
🔹Panel 1: Adoption and Family Planning In the Media
Speakers: Laura High, Jason Linton, Melissa Guida-Richards, Ashley Mitchell, & TBD
Moderator: Michaela Pereira
This panel explores how social media has helped amplify adoption narratives while also raising urgent questions around consent, monetization, and representation. From viral videos to comedy sets, panelists will unpack the power — and pitfalls — of being "seen" online.
Jason Linton
Jason Linton, known as @DadlifeJason on TikTok, is an adoptive father of three in a biracial family who shares his #DadLife with the world, aiming to promote togetherness, inclusion, and a positive message of love and acceptance. The Deeper parts of his content aims to bring more understanding for all the emotions involved in foster care and adoption for the healthy outcome of all involved.
Ashley Mitchell
Ashley Mitchell, owner of Big Tough Girl and Knee to Knee, set out to seek increased care, understanding, and resources for birth mothers. For almost 15 years, Ashley has been one of the most consistent and sought after birth mother voices in the nation. Well known for her vulnerability and transparency in adoption, her story has touched the hearts of countless members of the adoption community and beyond.
Melissa Guida-Richards
Melissa Guida-Richards is a transracial adoptee, author, and advocate whose work explores child welfare, adoption influencers ethics and reform. She is the author of What White Parents Should Know About Transracial Adoption and she's had her writing and interviews featured on national platforms including NBC, Good Day LA and Tamron Hall. She is currently working on her next book with her agent, Kat Kerr, from Donald Maass Literary Agency. You can find her @adoptee_thoughts or AdopteeThoughts.com.
Abigail Davis
Being an adoptee is never black and white. There are countless layers to process, and every story is uniquely personal. After thirteen years in reunion with her birth mother, she is committed to creating a safe space grounded in intentional education and accessible resources for the adoption community—no matter where individuals are in their journey. When she’s not creating adoption-related content, you’ll likely find her at the beach, jamming to ABBA, or doing her best not to be a bridezilla while planning her wedding. Through it all, she remains passionate about sharing her authentic truth.
Raquel McCloud
This *gestures widely* was never part of the plan ... more of a happy little accident, as Bob Ross would say. Wild how some of our hardest moments can become a catalyst for some of our best. Raquel’s unique experiences as a child raised in kinship care, birthmom and kinship adoptive mom have inspired her to educate through storytelling and to create the kind of tangible resources her younger self would have benefited from. She is passionate about building resilience while acknowledging that grief & gratitude can coexist. When she’s not behind a screen or a mic, she’ll most likely outside in the sunshine, barefoot, and happier than a seagull with a french fry.
Laura High
Laura is a New York based Stand Up Comedian, who travels all around the country headlining. You may also be one of Laura‘s many followers on social media where she is colloquial known as, your donor conceived person of Tiktok. Laura organized the first protest for donor conceived rights. She has helped lobby for fertility fraud legislation. She has helped break many donor conceived new stories with CNN, LGBTQ nation, and USA Today. Answer social media, Laura uses humor to educate her community about how the fertility industry works, and how the fertility industry affects the donor conceived community.
Panel 2: Advocacy & Action: Changing Systems from the Inside
Speakers: Becky Fawcett, Ashley Mitchell, Joanne Bagshaw, & Lisa Chism
Moderator: Michaela Pereira
This solutions-focused panel brings together advocates working at the policy, education, and legislative level as well as a micro level within larger systems (i.e. healthcare). What’s working? What’s performative? How do we build accountability into adoption reform — especially when it comes to protecting vulnerable families?
Becky Fawcett
Becky Fawcett is a mother. She adopted her daughter Jane in 2005 and her daughter Brooke in 2009. She founded Helpusadopt.org in 2007 in her NYC apartment and has grown it into a national multi million dollar adoption grant program. A fierce advocate for change within the adoption community and beyond, she fights for family, equality and inclusion every day of her life. She lives in NYC with her family.
Ashley Mitchell
Ashley Mitchell, owner of Big Tough Girl and Knee to Knee, set out to seek increased care, understanding, and resources for birth mothers. For almost 15 years, Ashley has been one of the most consistent and sought after birth mother voices in the nation. Well known for her vulnerability and transparency in adoption, her story has touched the hearts of countless members of the adoption community and beyond.
Joanne Bagshaw
Joanne Bagshaw, PhD, LCPC is a same-race, domestic adoptee, from the Baby Scoop Era. She is an award-winning professor of psychology and women’s studies at Montgomery College, an adoption competent therapist, an AASECT-certified sex therapist with a private practice in Maryland, and the author of "The Feminist Handbook: Practical Tools to Resist Sexism and Dismantle the Patriarchy. Joanne has been retained as an expert in personal injury cases on adoption and mental health, and writes about adoption on the popular Psychology Today blog, The Third Wave.
Lisa Chism
Dr. Lisa Chism is the clinical director of Oakland Macomb Center for Breast Health. Dr. Chism holds three specialty certifications which include certification as a Menopause Practitioner through the Menopause Society, certification as sexuality counselor through the American Association of Sexuality Therapists, Counselors and Therapists and after 15 years caring for breast cancer survivors and patients at high risk for breast cancer, she became certified in breast care through the Oncology Nursing Society. Dr. Chism has established a dedicated menopause and sexual health clinic caring for the menopausal and sexual health needs of women who have a history of breast cancer or are at elevated risk for breast cancer.
Dr. Chism has authored numerous publications related to women’s healthcare including serving as lead author of the 2023 Menopause Society’s Non hormonal position statement. Dr. Chism is a Fellow of the American Association of Nurse Practitioners and was selected as Menopause Practitioner of the year 2011. She formally served on the Board of Directors at the North American Menopause Society as well as a federal advisory committee with the CDC regarding breast cancer in young women. In October 2021 Dr. Chism was inducted as a fellow of the American Academy of Nursing. Recently, Dr. Chism published her memoir “The Adopted Nurse” and remains passionate about the care of adoptees through a healthcare professional lens.
🍽️ BYO Lunch & Learn: Conversations That Matter (Optional)
Speakers: Kara Masi, Joanne Bagshaw, Lisa Chism, Kate Starks, Charles Richards II, Ashley Mitchell , April Dinwoodie, Michaela Pereira, Paula Guida
During the lunch hour, attendees will have the opportunity to sit down in small group or 1:1 conversations with speakers and community leaders from across the adoption constellation. Whether you’re an adoptee looking to connect with other adult adoptees, or a parent navigating openness, this informal session invites real dialogue in a more personal setting.
🔹 Constellation Chat: Listening Across the Spectrum
Speakers: Kate Starks, Tony Hynes, Alé Cardinalle, Dr. Abby Hasberry, & Paige Knipfer
Moderator: Melissa Guida-Richards
Designed as a roundtable discussion, this session centers diverse voices from across the adoption constellation — adoptees, birth parents, adoptive parents, and professionals — in one shared conversation. The goal: honest dialogue that prioritizes nuance, shared learning, and healing.
Kate Starks:
Kate is an adoptee, writer, advocate, and performing artist passionate about stories, and narrative change. She stays committed to this work through The Opportunity Agenda, where she supports grassroots movements through cultural strategy, research, and training to help communities reshape dominant narratives. Kate uses art and writing to draw on personal experiences of displacement, cultural reclamation, and resistance to craft stories that center joy, justice, and belonging. At the heart of it all, Kate believes that joy is the highest form of care, and the strongest defiance against those that seek to divide us. Whether training organizers or dancing with hula hoops, Kate's work lives at the intersection of story, memory, and movement.
Find her here: socials: Instagram, LinkedIn, Substack
Tony Hynes:
Tony Hynes, Ph.D. was adopted by his parents, Mary and Janet, in the mid-1990s. He has been invited to be a speaker at conferences on adoption and foster care throughout the nation and has a passion for speaking up for children and families touched by challenges in the adoption and foster care system. He writes about his experiences growing up as both an interracial adoptee and as a child growing up in an LGBTQ-headed household in his memoir “The Son With Two Moms“, which has been cited in the DC family court system to inform best practice. Tony’s work and writing have been featured in The Atlantic, and he is a contributing author to books such as Adoption Unfiltered. Tony completed his master’s thesis in Sociology on the psychology of children within the same-sex headed household, and completed his Ph.D. at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. His dissertation focuses on social connectedness among adult, interracial adoptees. As the Training and Content Development Specialist at C.A.S.E., Tony has designed innovative training curriculums that help families and professionals respond to evaluation and assessment tools that encapsulate holistic pictures of adoptees and foster youth.
Alé Cardinalle
From an early age, Alé struggled to relate to peers, often experiencing deep emotions, difficulty with organization, and an inner sense of not quite fitting in. It wasn’t until sixth grade that they uncovered the truth—they were adopted. Clues had always been present: the absence of a birth story, a Brazilian passport, traveling on a green card. But ultimately, it was a somatic knowing—what many adoptees refer to as "body memory"—that led them to ask their adoptive mother, who confirmed it: they had been adopted from Brazil at four months old.
In 2016, she reunited with their biological mother, hearing firsthand the systemic injustices and personal pain that led to the adoption. Through that emotional and revelatory experience, they began to investigate the broader ethical failures of the adoption industry and the coercive tactics often used to separate families.
Today, Alé is committed to equipping adoptees with tools to live full, meaningful lives while navigating the complex realities of adoption trauma. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Education from the University of Miami and a Master’s in Social Work from NYU, combining lived experience with academic training to serve adoptees and adoptive families with depth, care, and nuance.
Dr. Abby Hasberry
Dr. Abigail Hasberry is a transracial adoptee, birthmother, executive leadership coach, licensed marriage and family therapist, and former teacher and principal.
She 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, a Master of Science degree in industrial/organizational psychology, and a Ph.D. in curriculum & instruction.
Dr. Hasberry's research and publications focus on identity development, diversity, and the experiences of black teachers in private, affluent, and predominantly white schools. As a therapist, her practice predominantly serves adoptees and birth parents. She is also actively involved in training therapists on adoption-informed practices and has been a speaker on adoption, identity development, parenting, and trauma for various keynote addresses, podcasts, workshops, and webinars.
Beyond her professional achievements, Abby 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 while shifting the traditional narratives about adoption.
Paige Knipfer
Paige Knipfer is an adoptive parent, adoption educator, and former owner of Love Grown Adoption Consulting, who is hosting Adoption Changemakers with Melissa.
Evening Keynote
Catelynn and Tyler Baltierra
Catelynn and Tyler were among the first reality TV figures to share their adoption journey on a national stage. After speaking with them on their podcast, Cate and Ty: Break it Down, I just knew we needed to collaborate. Their story sparked national conversations around open adoption, birth parent experiences, and the emotional complexity of placing a child for adoption as teenagers.
Their voices bring a raw, firsthand perspective to a conversation that often overlooks the realities of birth parents. We are honored to welcome them into this space, where changemakers across the adoption constellation are gathering to push for reform, healing, and equity.
