Lily Nie

Last updated

Lily Nie (born 1963) is the founder of Chinese Children Adoption International, which has overseen the international adoptions of over 10,160 Chinese children. [1] [2] [3] She was inducted into the Colorado Women's Hall of Fame in 2008. [4]

Contents

Life and education

Lily Nie was born in Yingkou in 1963. She earned a law degree from Fushun University. [1] [2] She moved to the United States in 1987 to marry her fiancé, Joshua Zhong. She and her husband relocated to Colorado from South Carolina in 1988, when her husband received a scholarship to Denver Seminary. [1] [2] [3] In the 1990s, she began working on a master's degree in business administration, and earned it in 1994 from the University of Phoenix. [3] She also has a degree in human resources management from Colorado Christian University. [3] She and her husband also had a baby boy and girl. [2] Both she and her husband became United States citizens in 1999. [1]

Career and activism

Nie became a business law attorney in China after receiving her law degree. After relocating to the United States, she became interested in activism for vulnerable children after being taught English from a couple that was raising four adopted children. [1] [3] When she and her husband had to relocate to Colorado, she enrolled in the Spring International Language Institute and worked as a maid and taught Mandarin Chinese to afford her tuition. [2] In 1992, the laws in China changed to let foreigners adopt Chinese children. She founded Chinese Children Adoption International with her husband. [1] [3] In 1994, she helped adopt 20 Chinese children living in orphanages and relocated them to Colorado homes. In 1995, Nie made five trips to China and facilitated the adoption of 140 children. Chinese Children Adoption International is now the largest China-only adoption agency in the world. [1] The organization has also paved the way for addressing the care of children in Chinese orphanages, and increasing Chinese governmental oversight of orphanages. [2]

Nie created the Chinese Children Charity Fund to raise funds to care for Chinese children living in orphanages. The charity went on to open three orphanages in China, called Lily Orphan Care Centers, and helped to train orphanage care workers. [1] After Chinese policy allowed foster care, the organization began to train foster care parents and families and helped to place children in foster homes in China. [1] [2] The organization actively places special-needs children in American homes, as well. [2] They have also established bilingual Chinese agents in all provinces of China, and they help facilitate adoptions. [2] In 1996, Nie started the Joyous Chinese Cultural School in Littleton, Colorado. [1] The school was started to teach Chinese children the Chinese language and about Chinese culture. She also founded the ChinaRoots program, which helps lead heritage trips to China for adopted children and their families. She also aided in creating the Red Thread Counseling Center, which was the first counseling agency in the United States to help provide counseling and emotional help to adopted children and their adoptive families. [1] [2] Nie and her organization have also established charity programs for children too old to be placed with families. [2]

Further reading

Related Research Articles

Margaret Brown Survivor of the sinking of the Titanic

Margaret Brown, posthumously known as "The Unsinkable Molly Brown", was an American socialite and philanthropist. She unsuccessfully encouraged the crew in Lifeboat No. 6 to return to the debris field of the 1912 sinking of RMS Titanic to look for survivors. During her lifetime, her friends called her "Maggie", but even by her death, obituaries referred to her as the "Unsinkable Mrs. Brown". The reference was further reinforced by a 1960 Broadway musical based on her life and its 1964 film adaptation which were both entitled The Unsinkable Molly Brown.

Orphanage residential institution devoted to the care of orphans

Historically, an orphanage is a residential institution, or group home, devoted to the care of orphans and other children who were separated from their biological families. Examples of what would cause a child to be placed in orphanages are when the parents were deceased, the biological family was abusive to the child, there was substance abuse or mental illness in the biological home that was detrimental to the child, or the parents had to leave to work elsewhere and were unable or unwilling to take the child. The role of legal responsibility for the support of children whose parent(s) have died or are otherwise unable to provide care differs internationally.

Wilma Webb American politician

Wilma J. Webb is an American politician who served as a member of the Colorado General Assembly from 1980 to 1993. She sponsored dozens of bills including school reform and equality initiatives. She is best known for sponsoring legislation that adopted Martin Luther King, Jr.'s birthday as a Colorado state holiday prior to it becoming a national holiday, and for her efforts to educate youth about King's legacy.

Frances Wisebart Jacobs American philanthropist

Frances Wisebart Jacobs was born in Harrodsburg, Kentucky, to Jewish Bavarian immigrants and raised in Cincinnati, Ohio. She married Abraham Jacobs, the partner of her brother Jacob, and came west with him to Colorado where Wisebart and Jacobs had established businesses in Denver and Central City. In Denver Frances Jacobs became a driving force for the city's charitable organizations and activities, with national exposure. Among the philanthropical organizations she founded, she is best remembered as a founder of the United Way and the Denver's Jewish Hospital Association.

Love Without Boundaries Foundation is a non-profit charitable organization centered on providing humanitarian aid to orphaned and impoverished children in China, Cambodia, and Uganda, specifically in the areas of nutrition, medical care, education, and connecting orphans with foster care families. It was founded in 2003 by Amy Eldridge after she visited a Chinese orphanage and helped raise money for their medical programs, and has since grown into a multimillion-dollar charitable foundation impacting the lives of over 50,000 children.

Morley Cowles Ballantine American editor

Elizabeth Morley Cowles Gale Ballantine, known as Morley Cowles Ballantine, was an American newspaper publisher, editor, philanthropist, and women's rights activist. Scion of an Iowan newspaper publishing family, she and her second husband, Arthur A. Ballantine, purchased two Durango, Colorado newspapers in 1952, which they merged into The Durango Herald by 1960. The couple also started the Ballantine Family Fund, which supported arts and education in Southwest Colorado. After her husband's death in 1975, Ballantine took over the chairmanship of the family-owned publishing company, continuing to produce a weekly column and editorials. She received many journalism awards and several honorary degrees. She was inducted into the Colorado Business Hall of Fame in 2002 and was posthumously inducted into the Colorado Women's Hall of Fame in 2014.

Frances (Fran) Natividad Coleman is a former elected state representative from Colorado. Fran Coleman, a Democrat, represented House District 1 in Southwest Denver from 1998 to 2006. Fran has been a resident of the Harvey Park neighborhood since 1977. Fran has two sons Matthew and Mitchell Lopez. She is married to Ben Coleman, who has four adult children, Pam DiMarco, Steve, Craig and Wayne Coleman.

The Gladney Center for Adoption in Fort Worth, Texas, USA, provides adoption and advocacy services. Following its 1880s origins, when it focused on locating homes for orphans during a period of mass migration. It evolved into lobbying, international adoptions, counseling, maternity services, education and philanthropy.

Bertha Marian Holt founded the Holt International Children's Services organization and fought to have the law changed in America to allow for more than two international adoptions.

Maine Childrens Home for Little Wanderers Nonprofit agency

The Maine Children's Home for Little Wanderers is a nonprofit agency in Waterville, Maine that provides education, counseling, adoption, day care, and early childhood education services for pregnant teens and teen parents. Founded as an orphanage in 1899 and incorporated as the Maine Children's Home Society in 1901, it began dealing solely with adoptions in 1915. It merged with the Maine branch of The Home for Little Wanderers of Massachusetts in 1962, creating the Maine Children's Home for Little Wanderers. In 1973 it introduced an "alternative" high school program for pregnant teens and teen parents.

Lena Lovato Archuleta

Lena Lovato Archuleta was a Mexican-American educator, school librarian, and administrator in New Mexico and Colorado for more than three decades. In 1976 she became the first Hispanic woman principal in the Denver Public Schools system. She was also the first Hispanic president of the Denver Classroom Teachers' Association and the Colorado Library Association, and the first female president of the Latin American Education Foundation. She was instrumental in the founding of several political and community advocacy groups for Latinos and served on numerous city and community boards. Following her retirement in 1979, she became a full-time volunteer for the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP). She was inducted into the Colorado Women's Hall of Fame in 1985. In 2002 the Denver Public Schools system dedicated the Lena L. Archuleta Elementary School in northeast Denver in her honor.

Sarah Platt-Decker American suffragist

Sarah Sophia Chase Platt-Decker was an American suffragist. Mostly active in Denver, Colorado, she also served as the national president of the Federation of Associated Women's Clubs from 1904 to 1908.

Genevieve Fiore

Genevieve Fiore (1912–2002) was an American women's rights and peace activist, who was the founder, and served as the executive director, of the Colorado Division of United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). Her UNESCO Club was founded in the year the clubs were first conceived and was the third organization established in the world. In 1967 she was honored as one of the inductees for the Colorado Women of Achievement Award. She was knighted by Italy in 1975 receiving the rank of Cavaliere dell'Ordine della Stella d'Italia. In 1991, she was inducted into the Colorado Women's Hall of Fame for her many years of peace activism and work with women's rights issues.

Fannie Mae Duncan African-American businesswoman, activist, and philanthropist

Fannie Mae Duncan (1918-2005) was an African-American entrepreneur, philanthropist, and community activist in Colorado Springs, Colorado. She is best known as the proprietor of the Cotton Club, an early integrated jazz club in Colorado Springs named for the famous club in Harlem.

Helen Marie Black American business manager, journalist, and publicist

Helen Marie Black was an American cultural and civic leader, journalist, and publicist. She was a co-founder of the Denver Symphony Orchestra and served as its business manager for more than 30 years, being the first female symphony manager in the United States. She was posthumously inducted into the Colorado Women's Hall of Fame in 1991.

Hendrika Bestebreurtje Cantwell is an American retired physician, professor emerita of pediatrics at the University of Colorado Denver, advocate for abused and neglected children, and parenting educator. She was one of the first physicians in the United States to work for a child protection agency, serving with the Denver Department of Social Services from 1975 to 1989. Her work there brought her in contact with an estimated 30,000 cases of suspected child abuse and she testified as an expert witness in thousands of court cases. An author of peer-reviewed journal articles, book chapters, and teaching manuals on the detection and treatment of child abuse, she has also conducted workshops and training programs for professionals throughout Colorado. She was inducted into the Colorado Women's Hall of Fame in 1990.

Virginia Fraser American rights activist

Virginia H. Fraser was an American activist for human rights, women's rights, and elder rights. She was the Long-Term Care Ombudsman for the state of Colorado for more than two decades. She co-wrote several works on nursing home care and eldercare. She was inducted into the Colorado Women's Hall of Fame in 2002.

Elnora M. Gilfoyle is a retired American occupational therapist, researcher, educator, and university administrator. She worked at several hospitals before accepting a professorship at Colorado State University, later serving as Dean of the College of Applied Human Sciences and Provost/Academic Vice President at that university. She is also a past president of the American Occupational Therapy Association. With research interests in child development, developmental disabilities, and child abuse, she has led studies on the state and federal levels. The co-author of two books and many articles, she was inducted into the Colorado Women's Hall of Fame in 1996.

Natalie Sue Miller was an American fashion model, breast cancer survivor, breast cancer activist, counselor, and author. Born in Kansas City, Missouri, she moved to Denver, Colorado at age 19 as a newlywed and started a career in fashion modeling. After being diagnosed with breast cancer at the age of 34 and undergoing a mastectomy, she created a fashion show featuring models who had also had breast cancer. In 1981, she founded the Sue Miller Day of Caring, a non-profit organization for breast cancer education and awareness. In its first 35 years, the Day of Caring has been a resource for over 17,500 survivors of breast cancer, providing educational forums and support services at its annual event, held in nine U.S. cities. Miller earned her bachelor's and master's degrees at age 60 and 75, respectively, and wrote her autobiography, I'm Tougher Than I Look, in 2004. In 2002, Miller was inducted into the Colorado Women's Hall of Fame.

Sumiko Tanaka Hennessy is an American social worker, trauma therapist, academic, and activist for the Asian-American community in Denver, Colorado. Born in Yokohama, Japan, she earned her Master of Social Work degree at Fordham Graduate School of Social Service and her doctorate at the University of Denver. She was a founding board member and later executive director of the Asian Pacific Development Center, which provides mental health services, counseling, education, and youth activities for the Asian immigrant community in the Denver metropolitan area. In 2000 she helped inaugurate the Tokyo University of Social Welfare and is presently a professor emeritus of that institution. In 2004 she and her husband founded Crossroads for Social Work, LLC, a training program for mental health professionals in Japan and the United States. The recipient of numerous awards, she was inducted into the Colorado Women's Hall of Fame in 1989.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 "Colorado Women's Hall of Fame - Lily Nie". Colorado Women's Hall of Fame. Colorado Women's Hall of Fame. Retrieved 10 May 2017.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 Martin, Claire. "Couple's efforts transform system, find homes for thousands of Chinese orphans". The Denver Post. The Denver Post. Retrieved 10 May 2017.
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 6 "A journey of love - Lily Nie, MBA '94, is changing the world, one adoption at a time". University of Phoenix. University of Phoenix. Retrieved 10 May 2017.
  4. Colorado Women's Hall of Fame, Lily Nie