Dixie van de Flier Davis, Ed.D

With a challenge grant of merely $20,000 in 1983, Dr. Dixie van de Flier Davis founded The Adoption Exchange and later its subsidiary, the Wednesday’s Child Foundation. With headquarters in Denver, the organization now maintains offices in UT, NM, NV, and MO. Every year its Education Center trains over 7,000 families and professionals in all fifty states and abroad.

Adoption Exchange

The Adoption Exchange has collaborated with public and private adoption placement agencies across the country to facilitate more than 6000 adoptions of American special needs children. Adoptive families world-wide and member states of OK, UT, CO, WY, NV, MO, NM and SD utilize the broad range of services of The Adoption Exchange to recruit and sustain families for children in foster care. The Adoption Exchange was one of the first US agencies to begin working with institutionalized children and child welfare colleagues in Romania in 1990. It boasts one of the longest lasting media partnerships (25 years running Wednesday’s Child weekly on the same major TV network news station). It now runs Wednesday’s Child on three major network stations and two Spanish speaking stations. The LDS Church awarded its Family Values Award to The Adoption Exchange in 2007. An innovator, Dr. Davis has contributed to the field in the following ways:

• Current President, Board of the national Adoption Exchange Association
• One of the originating partners and the Principal Investigator of the national Collaboration to AdoptUsKids
• Pioneered the development of a network of collaborating organizations to serve military families and Americans living abroad
• Honorary member of National Association of State Adoption Programs
• President of University Hills Rotary Club, 2006-07
• Member of Lt. Governor Jane Norton’s 2005 Committee to Promote Adoption (Colorado)
• Founding member and Past President of Voice for Adoption, a national advocacy organization
• Served on numerous expert work groups and national advisory committees of Departments of Justice and Health & Human Services, The Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute, American Public Human Services Association, Child Welfare League of America,, National Resource Center for Special Needs Adoption ,and a National Advisory Committee on improving implementation of interstate placement of children
• Speaker and published writer on ethics, technology, and other issues in adoption
• Recipient of the 2007 Child Advocate of the Year Award from the North American Council on Adoptable Children