Team Members of Family-Match - Adoption Foster Matching

MEET THE FAMILY-MATCH TEAM

Thea Ramirez, Founder and Chief Sharer, Family-Match and Adoption-Share

Thea Ramirez is the Founder and CEO of Adoption-Share, a non profit organization, designed to bring efficiency and transparency to the adoption process. Family-Match, a program of Adoption-Share, is the first application designed to leverage data and predictive models to better match children in foster care with foster and adoptive families. Thea holds a masters degree in clinical social work and is known for envisioning and implementing big ideas that create collaboration among people and organizations. In addition to being named a "Young Influencer" by Catalyst (catalystspace.com), she has been featured and published on platforms such as CNN, Christianity Today, Parents.com, The Washington Times, and the Wall Street Journal. Her advocacy and innovation in child welfare has brought her to speak at the White House, the European Parliament in Brussels, and the American Enterprise Institute. She is a 2018 Congressional Angels in Adoption Award recipient and had the honor of ringing the opening bell of the New York Stock Exchange in recognition of her work in adoption and child welfare. She is married to Lucas Ramirez and together they have three children.

Lorin Sholander, Chief Operating Officer

Lorin Sholander is the Chief Operating Officer of Adoption-Share, Inc., responsible for overseeing the operations and finances of the organization. Lorin began her career at Deloitte Consulting as a Strategy & Operations Consultant focused on the public sector. Lorin was recruited from Deloitte to LogicSource, a procurement outsourcing start-up, to help clients realize cost savings by improving their sourcing and procurement functions. At LogicSource, she also served as Chief of Staff to the CEO and COO with a focus on strategic projects, internal process improvements and governance. In her most recent role, Lorin served as Chief of Staff for Lenovo’s Consumer Business Segment, a $10 billion business, where she created business strategies, developed corporate partnerships, and crafted executive communications among other business management activities. Lorin is excited to use her skills and experience to advance Adoption-Share’s mission and to help children and families!

Andrew Paulson, Lead Technologist

Andrew has over 25 years of experience designing, developing and implementing web sites and Internet applications for a variety of Fortune 1000, non-profits, and higher education organizations. He started his career as Harvard University’s inaugural Web Master. He was the founder of NewVantage, Inc., an "on-time, on-budget, on-target" web-solutions consulting company that developed applications for companies like Staples, Sapient, Boston.com, Dunkin Donuts, Harvard University, and GE Capital. Andrew led the company for 5 years to a point where it employed approximately 35 people and was doing several millions dollars of business a year. After selling NewVantage, Andrew went on to work with start up companies ranging from small Non-Profits and artists to large organizations such as Harvard University, University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, and New York University. Andrew is responsible for developing Thea’s vision and bringing Family-Match to life.

Amy Simpson, Director of Program Delivery for State of Florida

Amy Simpson has been working to improve the lives of children, families, and communities for over 30 years. She has been involved in the development, implementation, and evaluation of multiple programs serving vulnerable populations in the child welfare, mental health, and juvenile justice arenas. She has worked at the local, state, and national levels to improve systems by increasing efficiencies, collaborating with strategic partners, and utilizing data to optimize outcomes. Amy has extensive experience in management, implementation and replication of programs as well as organizational development. Amy earned her master’s degree in Developmental Psychology at the University of Nebraska and her bachelor’s degree from Pacific University in Forest Grove, Oregon.

Heather Setrakian, M.A. Senior Consultant of Research and Data Analytics

Ms. Setrakian is the co-founder and principle consultant with SGC. Prior to joining SGC she was founder of the market research firm Sigma Research and a Senior Researcher at eHarmony. While at eHarmony, Ms. Setrakian co-founded the eHarmony Marriage Development Study, a unique national four year study tracking engaged couples as they transitioned into early marriage and family. She has spoken both nationally and internationally on marriage and relationship development. Her research has been featured in magazines, newspapers, and TV segments across the globe. She now consults on Adoption-Share research projects in Virginia, Tennessee, and Florida. She holds a BA in American Literature and Psychology from UCLA and a M.A. in Clinical Psychology with an emphasis in Marriage and Family therapy from Pepperdine University. Ms. Setrakian co-created the first iteration of the Family-Match Assessment, a innovative online tool for matching prospective families and children based on scientific research predicting successful long term placements and adoptions.

Dr. Gian Gonzaga, Senior Consultant of Research and Data Analytics

Dr. Gonzaga has over 20 years of experience in research and data science in academia and industry and is the co-founder and principal consultant with SGC. He is currently Director of Data Science for the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI). Prior to joining CZI, Gian was the Chief Data Officer for Earnest where he led all aspects of data collection, storage, processing, and modeling. Gian has also served as the Director of Content Science and Algorithms at Netflix and before that was Head of Research at eHarmony where he was responsible for maintaining the compatibility matching algorithm and eHarmony Labs. He has published numerous peer review articles and had his work featured in national and international press He holds a BA in Psychology from Gettysburg College and a Ph.D. in Social-Personality Psychology from the University of California at Berkeley. Dr. Gonzaga co-created the first iteration of the Family-Match Assessment, an innovative online tool for matching prospective families and children based on scientific research predicting successful long term placements and adoptions.

Elaine Wheatley, Operations and Training Specialist

Elaine is Founder and CEO of Collective Consultants, a consulting services group providing strategic growth, project management, and finance and management services. Elaine began her career with Kaplan University transitioning the University from an on-site school to a fully accredited remote University and then moved on to the virtual English language startup world with Open English as their Vice President of Operations, Academics. With over 14 years of experience in both startup and mature business settings she now helps to provide opportunities for organizations of all types and sizes to accelerate growth, improve efficiency, and build organizational capabilities by assisting in the development of strategic approaches that lead to sustainable and progressive success.

Dr. Vincent W. Slaugh, Research Consultant

Vince Slaugh is an assistant professor at the Cornell University School of Hotel Administration (SHA). He received his PhD in operations management from the Tepper School of Business at Carnegie Mellon University and joined the SHA faculty in July 2016, after spending one year as a visiting faculty member in supply chain management at Penn State University's Smeal College of Business. Slaugh holds a BS and MS in industrial engineering and a BA in history from Penn State University. In his research, Slaugh studies analytical models designed to improve service operations, including online rental businesses, child adoption and foster care matching networks, and staffing for nursing homes. Methodologically, he develops stochastic inventory models traditionally associated with supply chain management and adapts them to new and innovative services. His collaborations include SmartOps, Symmco, the Pennsylvania Statewide Adoption Network, Adoption-Share, Vincentian Collaborative System, and the Passavant Community. His work appears in Manufacturing and Service Operations Management and Interfaces.

Elizabeth "Libby" Sobkowiak, Florida Family Coordinator

Libby is excited to be working at Adoption-Share Inc as Family-Match Coordinator for Florida. This is a role that brings her great joy. Libby's mother was inspirational to her by becoming a foster parent later in life, then adopting her two younger siblings through the foster care system. As the desire to adopt bloomed in Libby and her husband, they adopted Jax and Ava. To facilitate support and nurture relationships for both adoptees and adoptive parents, Libby administrates a local Adoption Family Network of over 300 families, Libby is a graduate of Southeastern University and worked previously at non-profit organizations serving youth and children in urban and suburban neighborhoods. She is passionate about building stable environments where children can thrive.

Niki Anderson, Quality Assurance and Testing Coordinator

Nichole Anderson has been in the Information Technology field for over 15 years with the last 5 in Cyber Security. She started her career in Virginia, worked in Georgia for a few years and now resides back in Virginia. She was born and raised in Newport, RI. and attended the University of Rhode Island. Her passion is spending time with the youth and helping them navigate this thing called life. While living in Georgia she took a break from the corporate world to work with teenage girls fulltime. Those 6 years with the Gathering Place were the most impactful in her life. She joined the team at Adoption Share in 2018 and has fallen in love with the mission. She brings her heart and skills to the team to help place every child with a forever family.

Whitney Zatzkin, Virginia Director for Family-Match Program

Whitney Bowman-Zatzkin, MPA, MSR, is a passionate community architect obsessed with connecting the dots of community care to provoke change for the greater good. Whitney started in healthcare 18 years ago as the manager of a clinical practice, launching its EHR, redesigning the obstetrics patient record, and engaging in state-level advocacy efforts around maternal-infant health and malpractice reform. Moving to DC, she collaborated with policy leaders and advocates to conduct research and enact policy changes around health professions education and health workforce team design. In the past, she has served as the Managing Director of Flip the Clinic, a project of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and Co-PI for Scouting Health, an investigative horizon-hunting effort partnered with Westat. She also led the Great Challenges at TEDMED, producing more than 50 broadcasts on the toughest conversations in health care and expanding the online community to more than 300,000 people.

Selfless Love Foundation and Adoption-Share have built a strategic partnership to yield unprecedented results in helping children find forever families. Through SLF's investment of time, financial resources, and strategic leadership, Family-Match is now positioned to jumpstart the transformation of children’s lives across the country through the gift of family. Thanks to the generosity of Selfless Love Foundation, Adoption-Share is able to pilot the Family-Match application in Florida at no cost to the state and build a roadmap to impacting children and families across the country in the near future.

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