International Representative
Abby was adopted from Colombia and grew up outside of New York City, USA. Her educational background includes a Bachelors of Science in Human Biology from the State University of New York at Albany and a Masters of Science in Medical Anthropology from University College London.
In 2009, Abby first became involved in intercountry adoptee-centric networks by joining and becoming active in the Facebook group Adopted from Colombia! Since reuniting with her Colombian family in 2012, Abby has become an advocate in the Colombian adoptee community. Her two main goals as an advocate for adopted people are to create a space/platform for the adoptee voice to be heard and reuniting families.
In early 2017, she co-authored, edited, published and the first Colombian adoptee anthology, Decoding Our Origins: The Lived Experiences of Colombian Adoptees, along with 16 other Colombian adoptees raised around the world. All profits from the book are used to provide free DNA kits to Colombian mothers of adoption loss and discounted DNA kits to Colombian adoptees in the hopes of reuniting as many Colombian families as possible. Their website is here.
Additionally, Abby is passionate about the rights of all adopted people and in sharing the knowledge possessed by the intercountry adoptee community with prospective adoptive parents as well as governmental policy makers. To achieve this goal, Abby has done radio interviews, a TEDx talk, and she works with fellow intercountry adoptee leaders worldwide to help create awareness about issues caused by current intercountry and transracial adoption practices.