Madison's Joanna Ivey brings years of experience and an insider's perspective to crafting adoption profiles.
Initiating the adoption process is a challenging time, practically as well as emotionally. How can prospective adoptive parents condense their entire lives into a few printed pages that will make birth parents want to choose them? Now, adoptive families don’t have to navigate this process alone. Madison’s Joanna Ivey and her team at Our Chosen Child (ourchosenchild.com) help families create such profiles. Few understand those needs better than Ivey, who is both an adoptee and adoptive mother herself.
Where do you start with a family looking to set up an adoption profile?
The first step is to get to know them a little bit. I have questionnaires that I have them fill out, and I give them lists of the types of photos I need them to submit. And after they do that we chat on the phone: about what their concerns are for the adoption process in general, what their profile is going to look like. It’s not just graphic design; there’s a big counseling piece that goes along with it.
Our Chosen Child’s well-designed booklets introduce would-be adoptive parents to birth mothers.
How long does the profile creation process take?
On average, I work with clients for about a month. It’s all done over phone, email and using the cloud. I actually rarely see my clients in person. But that means I can work worldwide, with agencies in Canada, in Puerto Rico, in Malta and all over the United States.
What one piece of advice would you give someone starting work on their own profile?
Take a camera with you everywhere you go! People don’t take enough pictures, but photos go a long way toward telling your story. So as you live your life, take a camera with you.
What led you to start Our Chosen Child?
After we adopted our son, I went to work for a local adoption agency. While I was there, I started doing profiles for the agency’s clients. To see people who have waited for years suddenly get chosen right away because they had this new strong profile — that was the turning point when I realized this was something I wanted to do on my own. So I started this business, and it was just me, working out of my laundry room. When my clients called I had to shut off the washer and dryer behind me so I could take the call!
Can you tell me about the challenges you faced when putting together your own adoption profile?
It seemed like an impossible task. You have to explain everything in your heart to a person you’ve never met, and hope that she chooses you to raise her child. How do you put that all together, knowing that a birth mom might be looking at 20 other families at the same time?
Does it help you during profile creation that you’ve experienced the process from both sides?
Not just both sides, but really all sides: I’m adopted too, and I know my birth mother now as an adult. I know that adoption is a sacred process, and I’m here to help couples tell their stories with honesty. That way, a birth mom picks out a family she really knows, that she’s comfortable placing this child with. Knowing my birth mother makes it important to me that we’re not just putting one over on birth parents. We’re helping adoptive parents tell their story in an authentic way.
What is your favorite part about working with adoptive families?
When people come to me, they’re so worried that they’ll never be selected. They say, “I’m so ordinary!” I’m able to show them what’s really exciting and cool about them. The other best part is when clients place and send me birth announcements — that’s pretty special, too.
