Hollee McGinnis
Hollee A. McGinnis, MSW, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor at Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) School of Social Work.
In addition to being adopted from South Korea at the age of three, Hollee has nearly 30 years of community organizing, policy, and research experience relating to the life course of orphaned and separated children in alternative care, primarily focused on transnational and transracial adoptions from Asia and institutional care (orphanages) in South Korea. Hollee has policy and research expertise on intercountry adoption, transracial adoption, racial/ ethnic and adoptive identity, child and adolescent mental health, complex trauma, parenting across difference, cultural loss and reclamation, and adult adoptee mutual aid groups.
Hollee’s scholarship is grounded in a decolonizing methodological approach to center the lived experiences of people who have been adopted, in foster care, or institutional care, with the aim of addressing historical injustices enacted by the welfare systems. Hollee has numerous published scholarly articles, book chapters, and essays; presents regularly at academic and professional conferences, and organizations; and has been regularly sought for interviews on podcasts, and the news media, including the New York Times, BBC News, and NPR.
Hollee received her doctorate at Washington University in St. Louis, and was the Policy Director at the former national think-tank, the Donaldson Adoption Institute in New York City. She received her Masters of Science from Columbia University School of Social Work, and a post-Master’s Clinical Fellowship at the Yale Child Study Center. In 1996, she founded Also-Known-As, Inc., a non-profit adult intercountry adoptee organization in New York City.
Hollee enjoys time in nature, meditation and yoga practices, delicious food, and healing with our ancestors.