Adoption Vanguard Award Recipient
2024 AVA award recipient: Rhonda M. Roorda
Adoption Knowledge Affiliates (AKA) is honored to announce Rhonda M. Roorda as the recipient of our Adoption Vanguard Award for 2024. Rhonda M. Roorda, MA is an Award-Winning Author, Consultant, and Thought Leader on Transracial Adoption. Rhonda was adopted out of the New York foster care system at the age of two and into a white American family with a Dutch heritage. Rhonda has dedicated her life’s work to advocating for children and families and collaborating to create nuanced and authentic mirrors for Transracial adoptees and adoptive families. Rhonda’s latest book, In Their Voices: Black Americans on Transracial Adoption was named by Choice Magazine as a 2016 Outstanding Academic Title.
Rhonda is the recipient of the 2010 Judge John P. Steketee Adoption Hero Award from the Adoptive Family Support Network (MI). Rhonda was awarded the 2017 Friend of Children and Youth Award from the North American Council on Adoptable Children (NACAC). At the Adopt America Network Gala in Toledo, Ohio, Rhonda was bestowed the 2022 Richard K. Ransom Award for her significant contributions to Children and Families and for her work with the Emmy Award-Winning NBC TV Show This Is Us.
Rhonda is the recipient of the 2010 Judge John P. Steketee Adoption Hero Award from the Adoptive Family Support Network (MI). Rhonda was awarded the 2017 Friend of Children and Youth Award from the North American Council on Adoptable Children (NACAC). At the Adopt America Network Gala in Toledo, Ohio, Rhonda was bestowed the 2022 Richard K. Ransom Award for her significant contributions to Children and Families and for her work with the Emmy Award-Winning NBC TV Show This Is Us.
About the Adoption Vanguard Award (AVA)
Adoption Knowledge Affiliates (AKA) is a non-profit organization that has served the adoption community in Texas for 30 years. During the past several years, our impact has grown in reach, now serving the community nationwide and even worldwide. We provide education, connection, and support to the adoption, foster care, and adjacent communities. These include, but are not limited to, adoptees, foster care alumni, birth families, adoptive, foster, and prospective adoptive parents, donor conceived individuals, and individuals with DNA discoveries.
With a goal to create healing and empathetic dialogues, where mutual respect is encouraged, AKA is a leader among educational adoption organizations. AKA has a long history of advocacy that was founded by adoptees and others connected to adoption. At the heart of AKA is respect for the unique needs of all those separated by adoption and a desire to forge from shared loss a more dignified path to wholeness. Our model of bringing together all members in this community in order to encourage empathy and sensitivity around differing perspectives makes our organization unique. Our services extend to the entire evolving adoption continuum and beyond, whether domestic or international, reunited or searching, closed or open, fostered or adopted. We also work to educate adoption professionals, social workers and attorneys, as well as legislators, to promote honesty, transparency, and reform in practices and policy relating to adoption, foster care, and adjacent experiences such as donor conception.
As such, we affirm and appreciate those in the community who embody this vision we uphold.
With a goal to create healing and empathetic dialogues, where mutual respect is encouraged, AKA is a leader among educational adoption organizations. AKA has a long history of advocacy that was founded by adoptees and others connected to adoption. At the heart of AKA is respect for the unique needs of all those separated by adoption and a desire to forge from shared loss a more dignified path to wholeness. Our model of bringing together all members in this community in order to encourage empathy and sensitivity around differing perspectives makes our organization unique. Our services extend to the entire evolving adoption continuum and beyond, whether domestic or international, reunited or searching, closed or open, fostered or adopted. We also work to educate adoption professionals, social workers and attorneys, as well as legislators, to promote honesty, transparency, and reform in practices and policy relating to adoption, foster care, and adjacent experiences such as donor conception.
As such, we affirm and appreciate those in the community who embody this vision we uphold.
Congratulations to all of our past AVA winners!
Thank you for the important work you are doing in our community.
Honorees include:
- Angela Tucker, adoptee, author, podcast creater of The Adoptee Nextdor, and Founder of the Adoptee Mentoring Society, honored in 2023.
- Damon L. Davis, adoptee, author, and host of the podcast, Who Am I Really?, honored in 2022.
- Dawn M. Scott, adoptive parent, who has served on the AKA board in numerous roles, including AKA President, and was a founding and integral member of the Texas Adoptee Rights (STAR), serving as its Vice President and advisory board member, honored in 2021.
- Texas State Representative Gina Calanni, adoptee who carried Texas House Bill 2725 for a 144-1 House passage, honored in 2020.
- Patricia Dorner, adoptive parent, author, therapist, and veteran advocate with a long history of devotion to aiding families in bridging separation by closed adoption, honored in 2017.
- Courtney Jones, Foster care alum, adoptive parent and Founder of change1.org, honored in 2016.