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Professional Services

Adoption Mosaic supports improving knowledge and education around adoption issues for businesses, professionals, and institutions. We provide services to assist in making the most educated and informed decisions when it comes to adoption. 

Astrid Castro wears a yellow and white flower shirt and smiles at the camera.
Shelise Keum Mee Gieseke

These sessions are perfect for people seeking advice in their professional capacities such as educators, counselors, therapists, social workers and more who would like to increase their adoption competency to better support the adoptees in their lives. They are also perfect for representatives of an organization to receive expert advice from our experienced staff members. 

Meet Astrid and Shelise who will be working with you to fit your business needs. Click on their photos for their bios. 

"Adoption Mosaic is a multi-faceted resource center, that provides training and support for anyone touched by adoption...On a professional level, I have consulted with Astrid to ensure that the educational materials I develop are informed and inclusive of adoption.

Adoption Mosaic is a solid rock, in the midst of a sea of information/misinformation. There is simultaneously not much out there and also so much out there - from movies, TV, social media, websites, etc - so it can be hard to determine which resources are reliable. When I want information, resources, and learning opportunities I can trust, I turn to Adoption Mosaic. I have depended on Adoption Mosaic both personally and professionally, and am grateful for their expertise, perspectives and lived-experiences."
Rachel Ginocchio
Adoptive parent
Astrid Castro wears a yellow and white flower shirt and smiles at the camera.

Astrid Castro

Founder and CEO
(she/her)

Astrid Castro (she/her/hers) is the founder and CEO of Adoption Mosaic. Her life-long interest in adoption is rooted in her own adoption at the age of four from Colombia (along  with her older sister). Astrid has been in reunion with her birth family in Colombia since December 2011. Read about Astrid’s journey of searching and finding her birth mother in The Oregonian Part 1 and Part 2.

Astrid has a degree in sociology with an emphasis in adoption. Since 1992, she has traveled the country to lead youth groups, present workshops on transracial parenting, how to talk with children about adoption, and various other workshops focusing on adoption. Prior to creating Adoption Mosaic, Astrid worked in both the private and public sectors of various adoption organizations such as the Oregon Post Adoption Resource Center (ORPARC), Holt International and Rocky Mountain Adoption Exchange, and VIDA (while living in Italy).

She has also sat on several boards of directors (North American Council on Adoptable Children, Open Adoption and Family Services, Northwest Adoptive Families Association, Spoon Foundation)​ to support the adoption community. 

Astrid has also been featured on many podcasts and contributed a chapter to the anthology, Parenting as Adoptees. She has also helped to develop materials such as Adoption in the Movies, and Adoptive Parent Training: Developing Communication Skills, an innovative, evidence-based, training DVD. 

Astrid’s personal experiences as an adoptee, a woman of color, and growing up in a white family and community, fuel her professional path to helping others. She is aware of the benefit of post-adoption services for individuals and their families and seeks to bring these services to the adoption community. 

When Astrid is not working she loves training for half marathons, firing up her outdoor pizza oven and sharing homemade pizza with family and friends and biking with her little dogs, Guapo and Baci. Her absolute favorite thing is to enjoy the adventures of life with her amazing daughter.

Shelise Keum Mee Gieseke

Shelise Keum Mee Gieseke

Head of Operations
(she/her)

Shelise has been involved with Adoption Mosaic since 2008, as a volunteer and employee of Adoption Mosaic nonprofit. She has been involved in the adoption community for over a decade as an educator, editor, and mentor, including the honor of editing the blog Land of Gazillion Adoptees and the Gazillion Voices online magazine. 

At the end of 2020, Shelise rejoined her friend and mentor, Astrid in building and growing Adoption Mosaic LLC. She loves that her position at Adoption Mosaic allows her to connect with all members of the adoption community and brings opportunities to reframe the adoption narrative.

Shelise is an intercountry, South Korean, interracial adoptee. She was adopted as an infant and raised by a white family in Minnesota. She has three siblings who are her parents’ biological children. She has been to Korea to search for her family, but did not find them. In her free time she likes to watch k-dramas, go to taekwondo with her family, and pretend she is going to learn to speak Korean.