Moderator, Panel I: The Brave New World of Family Law: Legal Aspects of Science, Technology, and Adoption
Kathryn Webb Bradley is a Senior Lecturing Fellow at Duke Law School, where she teaches in the areas of family law and legal ethics. She previously taught legal ethics and legal research and writing as a member of the general faculty at the University of Virginia School of Law, and constitutional law, federal jurisdiction, and legal writing as an adjunct at the University of Maryland School of Law. She received her B.A. from Wake Forest University in 1979, where she was elected a member of Phi Beta Kappa. She earned her J.D. from the University of Maryland School of Law in 1988, where she became a member of Order of the Coif. Following law school, she served as a judicial law clerk at the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland and at the U.S. Supreme Court before entering practice as a litigator with Hogan & Hartson, L.L.P., where she became partner. She remains of counsel to the firm.
Speaker, Panel I: The Brave New World of Family Law: Legal Aspects of Science, Technology, and Adoption
The Art of the Possible: Assisted Reproductive Law in New York State
Melissa B. Brisman graduated Valedictorian from the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania and graduated with honors from Harvard Law School. Brisman first started helping couples become parents of miracle babies in 1996. As a mother, Brisman is uniquely qualified. She understands the emotion and concern involved in creating a family and is a pioneer and recognized leader in the field. As a lawyer, she has helped hundreds of parents have miracle babies protecting their legal rights while using all available reproductive technologies. Brisman is the first attorney to ever obtain orders allowing the genetic parents to go directly on the birth certificate for gestational carrier arrangements in the States of Maine and New Jersey. She argued and won a landmark gestational carrier case before the Supreme Court of Massachusetts and the State Supreme Court of New York, setting legal precedents for birth orders in those states.
Speaker, Panel II: Ethics of Love: The New World of Embryo “Adoption” and Assisted Reproductive Technology
What Adoption?
Michael Colberg JD, LCSW, is a New York City-based psychotherapist who specializes in working with those touched by adoption—be they triad members or the people who love them. He was founding co-director of the Center For Family Connections in New York, and he has served on the New York City Task Force on Open Adoption and the Los Angeles Commission For Children’s Services. Colberg has lectured on adoption throughout the United States and Canada. Colberg has written a number of articles about adoption that can be viewed at www.relatedbychoice.com. Colberg is a father through adoption. The adoption is open to his daughter’s maternal birthfamily. His daughter will turn 18 this year.
Speaker, Panel II: Ethics of Love: The New World of Embryo “Adoption” and Assisted Reproductive Technology
Legally Speaking: Embryo Donation, Not Adoption
Susan L. Crockin, JD, developed one of the first law practices devoted exclusively to the intertwined legal aspects of assisted reproductive technologies and adoption in 1988, and obtained the first same-sex adoption decree and first gestational carrier pre-birth orders in Massachusetts. Her firm currently represents medical ART and donor programs, institutions, adoption agencies, and individuals nationwide. She writes and lectures extensively on emerging legal issues in the ARTs, including reproductive genetics, embryo law, and fertility preservation. She has published two books, Adoption and Reproductive Technology Law in Massachusetts and Family Building Through Egg and Sperm Donation: Medical, Legal and Ethical Issues (co-editor) and authored numerous chapters, articles, and “Legally Speaking”®, a national legal column she created in 1990 to review court decisions in these unique areas of the law. She has also taught Bioethics, consults to consumer organizations, public commissions, legislatures and courts, and is a member of the ABA’s Executive Committee on Reproductive Technologies and Genetics. Ms. Crockin received her J.D. from Northeastern University School of Law and her B.A. from Tufts University.
Speaker, Panel III: Virtually a Family: The Role of the Internet
Fifty-State Survey of Adoption Law and the Internet
Lowry A. Crook has a diverse litigation and counseling practice. His emphasis is on commercial litigation, Internet, media, and open records law, communications law, environmental law, election law, and criminal and securities investigations. He has represented and advised individuals, partnerships, corporations, nonprofit organizations, and government officials in a variety of forums, including federal and state trial and appeals courts, criminal and Securities and Exchange Commission investigations, administrative proceedings, mediations, and internal investigations.
Speaker, Panel I: The Brave New World of Family Law: Legal Aspects of Science, Technology, and Adoption
Fifty-State Survey of the Law
Marci R. Etter is an associate in the litigation group of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP’s New York office. Her litigation practice focuses on securities litigation and business disputes, and she is also involved in numerous pro bono matters. She is a graduate of Duke University and of University of Michigan Law School. Prior to her legal career, Marci worked as a financial analyst at Goldman, Sachs & Co.
Joan Heifetz Hollinger
Professor of Law
University of California, Berkeley, School of Law (Boalt Hall)
Speaker, Panel I: The Brave New World of Family Law: Legal Aspects of Science, Technology, and Adoption
The Uniform Parentage Act of 2002: Alternative Routes to Becoming a Legal Parent
Joan Heifetz Hollinger is a leading scholar on adoption law and policy and on the psychosocial aspects of adoptive family relationships. She teaches courses on family law, child welfare, adoption, and assisted reproduction at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law (Boalt Hall), is the principal author of the three volume treatise Adoption Law and Practice (Matthew Bender/Lexis 1988-2005), co-author of Families By Law: An Adoption Reader (NYU 2004), the Reporter for the Uniform Adoption Act, and the legal editor of the interdisciplinary journal Adoption Quarterly. She helped draft the new proposed Uniform Parentage Act of 2002 and has been amicus curiae on behalf of children in a number of pathbreaking adoption and parentage cases, including the recent decisions by the California Supreme Court recognizing that children can have two legal mothers under California’s version of the Uniform Parentage Act as well as under the state’s adoption statutes.
Diane B. Kunz
Executive Director
Center for Adoption Policy
Moderator, Panel II: Ethics of Love: The New World of Embryo “Adoption” and Assisted Reproductive Technology
Diane B. Kunz is a historian and lawyer. The author of four books, including Butter and Guns: The Economic Diplomacy of the Cold War, Dr. Kunz holds degrees from Oxford, Yale, Columbia, and Cornell. She practiced law with the firms of White & Case and Simpson Thacher & Bartlett and taught history at Yale University and Columbia University. She is an Executive Director of the Center for Adoption Policy.
Adam Pertman
Executive Director
Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute
Speaker, Panel III: Virtually a Family: The Role of the Internet
Old Lessons for a New World: Learning from Adoption
Adam Pertman is Executive Director of the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute, the pre-eminent research, policy, and education organization in its field; he also is the author of Adoption Nation: How the Adoption Revolution is Transforming America, which has been reviewed as “the most important book ever written on the subject.” He has also written widely in other books, scholarly publications, and the mass media. Pertman was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize for his writing about adoption and has received numerous honors for his work, including from the U.S. Congress’ Adoption Caucus, the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, and the African American Cultural Council of Virginia, among others. He lectures extensively and has appeared on programs including “Oprah,” the “Today” show and “Nightline.”
Panel II: Ethics of Love: The New World of Embryo “Adoption” and Assisted Reproductive Technology
Is Adoption in the “Best Interest” of Embryos? Some Reflections on the Moral Status of the In-Vitro Human Embryo
Vardit Ravitsky, PhD, is faculty at the Department of Medical Ethics and a fellow at the Center for Bioethics, at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. Previously, she was a post-doctoral fellow at the Department of Clinical Bioethics at the National Institutes of Health and at the Social and Behavioral Research Branch of the National Human Genome Research Institute. She received her B.A. in philosophy from the Sorbonne University in Paris and her M.A. in philosophy from the University of New Mexico. Her main research interests focus on ethical aspects of human genetics and reproduction. In recent years, Ravitsky was involved in legislative efforts around bioethical issues in Israel, such as the “Genetic Information Law—2000”. Dr. Ravitsky has been invited speaker to numerous international conferences on topics related to the ethics of human genetics and reproduction and is actively involved within various professional communities, as lecturer to groups of physicians, nurses, and jurists.
Ann Reese
Executive Director
Center for Adoption Policy
Moderator, Panel III: Virtually a Family: The Role of the Internet
Ann N. Reese spent over 25 years in a career in finance. Formerly the CFO of ITT, she also worked with such companies as Mobil Oil, Union Carbide, Bankers Trust and Clayton, Dubilier & Rice. She has an MBA from New York University and a BA from the University of Pennsylvania. Ann is a director of Jones Apparel Group, Kmart, Merrill Lynch and Xerox. She is an Executive Director of CAP.
Panel I: The Brave New World of Family Law: Legal Aspects of Science, Technology, and Adoption
Regulation of Embryo Donation: Lessons from the British Experience
Margaret Foster Riley is Professor of Law at the University of Virginia School of Law, where she teaches in the areas of Bioethics and Public Health Law. Riley is also a Professor of Public Health Sciences at the University of Virginia School of Medicine. Riley is a graduate of Columbia University Law School and was a litigation associate at Rogers & Wells in New York and Pepper Hamilton & Scheetz in Philadelphia prior to joining the faculty at Virginia. Her areas of interest include genetics, reproductive technologies, stem cell research, animal biotechnology, health disparities, and chronic disease. Her recent publications include “Regulating Reproductive Genetics: A Review of American Bioethics Commissions and Comparison to the British Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority” (with Richard Merrill) in the Columbia Science and Technology Law Review and “A Critique of Human Cloning and Human Dignity: The Report of the President’s Council on Bioethics,” in the Journal of Law and Politics.
Speaker, Panel I: The Brave New World of Family Law: Legal Aspects of Science, Technology, and Adoption
The Art of the Possible: Assisted Reproductive Law in New York State
Nina E. Rumbold is a partner in Rumbold & Seidelman, which concentrates its practice in the area of adoption law. Rumbold & Seidelman handles the full panoply of adoptions, including domestic private-placement, foster care, domestic agency, international adoption, step-parent, and second parent adoptions. Nina’s interest in the area of Assisted Reproductive Technology is a natural outgrowth of her commitment to helping individuals form and build families. Rumbold & Seidelman has counseled clients in connection with the emerging law and practices surrounding egg donation, gestational carrier arrangements and embryo donation. Rumbold & Seidelman (together with Melissa B. Brisman) represented the intended parents in a case of first impression in New York State, where the Supreme Court issued an Order of Maternity in favor of the genetic mother without requiring DNA testing and without requiring the intended mother to petition for adoption, Doe v. New York City Board of Health, 782 N.Y.S.2d 180 (Sup. 2004).
Debora L. Spar
Spangler Family Professor of Business Administration
Harvard Business School
Keynote Speaker
The Baby Business: How Money, Science, and Politics Drive the Commerce of Conception
Debora L. Spar is the Spangler Family Professor and Senior Associate Dean at Harvard Business School. She is also the faculty chair of “Making Markets Work,” an executive education program devoted to public and private sector leaders in Africa. Dr. Spar’s current research focuses on issues of foreign trade and investment, examining how firms compete in foreign markets and how government policies shape and constrain their options. She is interested in information-based industries such as media, entertainment, and biotechnology. Her research examines the politics of reproductive science, analyzing how the “baby business” has developed and how commerce, politics, and technology are likely to interact in and affect this market. Dr. Spar is the author of numerous articles that have been published in academic and public policy journals. Her latest book, The Baby Business: How Money, Science, and Politics Drive the Commerce of Conception, was just published by Harvard Business School Press.
Speaker, Panel II: Ethics of Love: The New World of Embryo “Adoption” and Assisted Reproductive Technology
Embryo Adoption: Who Decides?
Ronald L. Stoddart has practiced adoption law for more than twenty years and is a partner in the firm of Schmiesing Blied Stoddart & Mackey. He is also the Executive Director of Nightlight Christian Adoptions, a licensed agency, which is accredited by the Russian Federation. His longtime commitment and involvement in pro-life issues were instrumental in the development of the agency’s Snowflake Embryo Adoption Program. This program has gained national attention as the fate of frozen embryos has captured the attention of the media and Congress. Ron also developed and directs the agency’s international adoption program in Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, Bulgaria, and China. Ron and his wife, Linda, have four children, including one adopted domestically at birth and one adopted from Russia at the age of eleven.
