Also Known As 30th Anniversary Conference in New York City (April 16-19) [part 1]
- shaunkwak
- 7 days ago
- 9 min read
New York City is a very special place to me.
When I attended my first ever adoptee-centred conference, the 2019 IKAA Gathering, the most new friends I made were from the NYC area. 5 years later I was able to visit some of them in person while attending the inaugural Adoptee Leadership Exchange hosted by Also Known As and IKAA in NYC. On the same trip I met some biological relatives for the first time ever. These were key life events.
So when I heard Also Known As were celebrating their 30th anniversary in 2026, this became the anchor of my Churchill Fellowship application. And aside from my personal affinity with the NYC adoptee community, Also Known As are considered an example of global best practice for consistency, continuity and growth when it comes to fostering adoptee-led community. They offer events twice a month, one social (happy hour/drinks) and one informative (delving into an adoptee-related subject or activity). Every 5 year milestone is typically celebrated with a larger-than-normal affair and 30 years was set to welcome 200+ guests across a four day program.
Thursday: April 16, 2026 - Film Screening & Reception
Friday: April 17, 2026 - Choose Your Own NYC Adventure: Morning Edition
Friday: April 17, 2026 - Choose Your Own NYC Adventure: Afternoon Edition
Friday: April 17, 2026 - Evening Edition: Welcome Reception and Party
Saturday: April 18, 2026 - Choose Your Own Sessions: Day Programming Edition
Saturday: April 18, 2026 - Evening Edition: Banquet Dinner & Afterparty
Sunday: April 19, 2026 - Early Afternoon Edition: Brooklyn Bridge Walk and Lunch
Their 30th anniversary showcased everything that shines bright in NYC's adoptee community. A rich blend of film screenings, insightful panels, lively parties, and opportunities to explore some NYC sights together. Here’s a look back at programming I attended, this blog post will cover the "what". My interviews and insights from current and past leaders will be covered in a separate post.
Thursday: Film Night at the Korean Cultural Centre
The conference kicked off with a film night at the spectacular Korean Cultural Centre in Manhattan. The short films screened explored themes of identity, belonging, and the complex emotions tied to adoption stories. Watching these stories unfold on screen alongside fellow adoptees created a powerful sense of shared experience.
🎥 Tasting Heritage directed by Emily Strong ft. Emily Flynn
A coming of culture story about reclaiming heritage through food
🎥 What Remains directed by Dariun Robinson ft. Elizabeth Berkman
Explores the meaning of family during cognitive decline
🎥 CHOPSTICK directed by Leah Xiuzhen Ratha
A clever animation about a chopstick trying to find their place amongst forks
🎥 Stranger’s Reunion directed by Liz Sargent
The intersection of emotional/language barriers between an adoptee and mother
This opening night set the tone for the weekend, a showcase of exploration through unqiue adoptee experiences and facilitating a space where adoptees could connect authentically.
Friday: Daytime Tour
Friday offered a chance to explore New York City with our adoptee peers. The daytime tours offered a broad program where each attendee could select one morning and one afternoon session.
Breakfast Food Crawl through the East Village
Grounded: A Yoga Gathering for Adoptees
Jogging Tour of Central Park and NYC Bagels
Cooper Hewitt Museum Tour
Writing Workshop
Chinese Dumpling Making Experience
Museum of Chinese America + a Taste of Chinatown
Hana Makgeolli Tour and Tasting
I chose to join the Cooper Hewitt Museum tour, led by my good friend Katherine who I co-facilitated an age-breakout session with at the 2023 IKAA Gathering. She was in her element (also her workplace!) and I had a great time learning about the building that was originally the residence of Andrew Carnegie but now home to the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum. Some crazy audio/sound things in there.
After the tour I was able to stay with some others for a side-mission tulip garden tour!
A community requires more than just people to people connections, it's also about what we experience together in life and society. There was something nice learning about a small piece of NYC's history with 11 of my peers.
Friday Evening: Welcome party
The evening session showcased a seriously impressive market of trinkets and goods made by adoptees, as part of a 90s-themed party and talent show. Unsurprisingly, there is no shortage of talent in NYC. In between sets there was some fun adoptee-related trivia and my favourite intermission segment was "is it a real movie or AI".
There was some real energy and emotion in the room, I could see how much this milestone meant to people. A lot of folks here have been coming to these events on and off over the span of decades which is a pretty special. It seems like there were a particularly high number of attendees who also made it to the 20th anniversary!
Saturday: Day programming
This was a main conference day of informative sessions, with attendees picking from 2-3 concurrent sessions across three time periods throughout the day. It made for some tough choices but necessary to showcase as many panels, presentations or workshops as possible. For me, the Founder's Panel was almost the centrepiece of the weekend's programming to hear from some very influential past and present leaders about why they formed their groups, including some insights into the how. I'll unpack this at a latter point, it's certainly going to be a highlight of my 8 week research.
I also attended the Adoptees For Justice session covering their long-term efforts to guarantee all adoptees in America have the right to citizenship. Due to some gaps in process, some intercountry adoptees never gained American citizenship and currently face genuine risk of deportation back to their birth country. This has happened to some adoptees already and they've had to leave behind partners and children. Absolutely insane. We don't this issue in Australia however I was interested in their approaches to government lobbying, policy change and seeking bipartisan support.
Founder's Panel
Facilitator: Emma Fujuan Roberts-Vaurio
Panelists: Hollee McGinnis (Also-Known-As), Joy Lieberthal Rho (IAMAdoptee), Charlotte Cotter (China’s Children International), José Stark (Alianza of Colombian Adoptees)
This panel will be a discussion with adoptee founders to talk about their journeys towards creating and founding adoptee organizations. These leaders will discuss topics such as what led them to start their organization, what needs in the community they were hoping to meet, how have they and their organization navigated growing pains, evolved with time and the ever-changing landscape of technology, and the complexity of adoptee and community needs, what current needs/challenges they are seeing in their communities now, and what tips or insights they have for the next generation of adoptee leaders.
Adoptees for Justice and Alliance for Adoptees and Families Presents: Protecting Adoptees and American Families (PAAF) in the 119th Congress
Presenters: Amanda Cho, Nicholas Greene and Alisha Bennett
Join our partners, Amanda Cho, Nicholas Greene and Alisha Bennett on behalf of A4J and AAF for an important conversation on adoptee rights, citizenship, and family protection. This event will highlight the urgent policy needs facing adoptees and their families, examine how gaps in citizenship and legal protections continue to impact lives, and explore how the Protecting Adoptees and American Families (PAAF) framework can advance justice in the 119th Congress. Together, we’ll learn, connect, and mobilize in support of a future where adoptees and their families are fully protected, recognized, and supported.
Other sessions I wasn't able to attend:
Racial Identity Storytelling
Multiple brave adoptees will share their stories in a storytelling format about their own personal experience with racial identity as a transnational adoptee. Participants will be invited to listen, learn and reflect on the ways race, culture, and belonging shaped all of our personal narratives.
False Histories Panel
As adoptees, we and our families have all been told stories about our origin and our past, and that became a foundation for our self-understanding. What happens when these details turn out to be false? Recent developments have officially confirmed what many of us have known for years: that our documents and stories are often rife with fraud, cover-up, and errors. In this session, speakers will discuss how they discovered their personal history was false, and the impact it had on their lives and identities.
Art, Adoption and LGBTQIA+ Panel
This session will focus on how artistic expression shaped self-discovery at the intersection of queerness and adoptedness. In this discussion, panelists will share how art helped them name their experiences, challenge the dominant narratives, and build a sense of belonging. They will reflect on the practices that supported their journey and allowed them to become who they are today.
Evolution of Birth Search
Birth family search has changed over the past decades, evolving from door-to-door searches and letter writing to now include DNA and social media. Come hear and share stories covering the wide variety of methods and outcomes of searching for birth family, and the sometimes wild ride in between.
Adoptee Therapists and Different Modalities
Join a group of adoptee therapists as they explore the healing power of different therapy modalities through the lens of the adoptee experience. From Psychedelic Assisted Therapy and EMDR to brainspotting and Internal Family Systems, our panelists will share how diverse approaches can help adoptees. This open and compassionate discussion offers a welcoming space to learn, reflect, and discover what healing can look like, and the strengths and limitations of various mental health approaches.
Feel Better Than Before: A Somatic Regulation Workshop
In a time marked by collective stress, uncertainty, and emotional fatigue, this interactive somatic regulation workshop offers a supportive space to reconnect with their bodies in gentle, accessible ways. Grounded in trauma-informed care and somatic practice, the session is designed to help participants feel more regulated, grounded, and resourced than they were upon arrival.
Drawing from neuroscience, movement, sensory awareness, and nervous system regulation, this workshop invites participants to engage at their own pace and comfort level. Practices will be invitational, adaptable, and rooted in choice, honoring the diverse lived experiences within the community.
Saturday: Banquet Dinner
The largest of celebrations was reserved for Saturday evening, hosted at a brilliant Chinese venue. I felt the venue choice was a fitting acknowledgement of the emergence of Chinese adoptees entering their 20s and seeking to build their community, as many Korean adoptees in Europe and America started doing 30ish years ago at a similar age.
For the first 27 years of AKA, they were lead by Korean adoptees at the President and Vice President levels. However, in the last changeover of leaders they welcome their first ever Chinese adoptee senior leaders in Lindsay Geier as President, and Sara Crayne-Dedrick as Vice President. In an exciting announcement made on the night, Sara will transition into the President role later this year.
The evening then welcomed Hollee McGinnis to the stage. Founder, spiritual leader and role model to many, she delivered a memorable speech to acknowledge AKA's history and evolution.
An excerpt from Hollee's speech that moved me and sits with me still:
"In many ways Also Known As also started in a selfish way, I needed you. And then I realised that you all needed each other...
To be standing at this point 30 years since that moment when I was 24, and had an idea and a hope, that was sparked and caught the kindling in others who were waiting to be lit on fire. What I have learned from this 30-year experience is that we cannot build wondrous things by ourselves. Such wondrous things happen because it's not about any one person. Rather, it's a recognition that each of us have a part in something bigger...
So what I would like to have us do tonight is just take a moment to contemplate a question that has been foundational to my life.
What will you do with this life you have been given?
Not the life you wish you had, or the life you were taken from, or the life you want to change or correct or make right. The life you have as it is. And all of its injustices, ugliness, imperfections, hurts, pain and suffering. A life of contradictions and paradoxes, a life where you have often had the fight to survive, to be seen and treated with dignity. This is the life we have.
Now, what will you do with the life we have been given?
Some of us have taken the life we have been given and chosen to fight, correct, and right the sufferings and injustices. Many of us have been simply left questioning who are we, feeling hurt and victims by those who don't understand. But you are not called to this life to only suffer or fight. We are meant to not just survive our lives. We are meant to live it. Fully. Wholly."
Wow. It still gets me as I listen to the playback two weeks later, as I take myself back to that moment of still, reflective energy filling the room. Let's pause here.
what a gift to have you document the anniversary in this way! on top of coming all the way to NYC to join the community! will look forward to your subsequent posts along your journey across borders.