About Us
Where we come from
Our Story
Why we exist
The Ties Foundation exists to answer something adoptees have said for decades: the support that helps after adoption is real, it works, and almost no one can afford it alone.
That isn’t theory. For more than thirty years, adoptees who traveled to their birth countries came back saying the same three things:
“That was the most important thing I’ve ever done.”
“I almost couldn’t afford to go.”
“I need help making sense of it when I get back.”
Those three sentences are our entire blueprint. The journey matters, so we fund it. Cost is the barrier, so we remove it. The journey doesn’t end at the airport, so we fund the healing and community that follow.
We were inspired by The Ties Program, a for-profit organization that spent three decades showing this kind of support changes lives. The Ties Foundation is a separate, independent 501(c)(3), with its own board, its own funds, and its own accountability. We grant directly to adoptees and to the people who travel in support of them. We don’t sell a service, and we answer only to the community we serve.
-
1994 to present
Building the evidence
Origin journeys produce the evidence and data that demonstrate the need for the Ties Foundation.
-
2026
The Ties Foundation
The Ties Foundation is established as an independent Colorado 501(c)(3). This is our present.
-
Early 2027
First grant cycle
Our first grant cycle opens.
-
The road ahead
Making access universal
Making post-adoption support something every adoptee can reach, regardless of cost.
The Ties Foundation’s North Star
Our active values
These active values govern every decision at The Ties Foundation: Hope, Integrity, Kindness, Excellence.
Hope
Does it treat someone as capable, right now — not someday?
Integrity
Is it honest — and delivered with compassion?
Kindness
Does it help someone feel seen and heard?
Excellence
Does it bring the best of what’s known in the world into this moment, for this person?
These four values are always intertwined; none stands alone. But we hold them in this order, because the order matters. Hope comes first, because without it, getting out of bed is difficult. Integrity comes second, because dishonesty is toxic - nothing built on it lasts. Kindness comes third, because humanity is in dire need of more of it, and we intend to supply it. And everything is anchored by excellence, because we do things to the best of our ability - for no other reason than that everyone we serve deserves it.
Values are nothing without a measure and an action. We treat our four values as verbs - things we do, not things we describe. Before any decision, program, or piece of communication goes out the door, we should be able to name and defend exactly how it lives out each of these.
The People
Who runs it
The Foundation is governed by a board of directors that includes intercountry and domestic adoptees, adoptive family members, and professionals from post-adoption adjacent fields - people who have taken these journeys, guided them, and funded them.
We publish our leadership, financials, and grantmaking totals as they grow - accountability is part of the promise. Want to know something we haven’t published yet? Ask us directly.
Executive Director
Ian Forber-Pratt, MSW
Ian came to this work the way most of us come to our deepest callings - through lived experience.
Adopted from India to the United States as a child, Ian has spent 25 years at the intersection of child welfare, identity, and belonging. He has worked across 19 countries, built and scaled organizations from the ground up, advised governments on child protection policy, and spoken at the United Nations. He previously served for a decade as President of Children’s Emergency Relief International (CERI), overseeing teams in Guatemala, India, Moldova, South Africa, and Sri Lanka.
But underneath all of that is a simpler truth: Ian is an adoptee who knows what it’s like to search for where you fit. He has personally led origin journeys to Kazakhstan, Cambodia, and India - not as a program director, but as someone who understands in his bones what it means to stand on the soil of your own origin.
Ian holds a Master of Social Work from the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis. He lives in St. Louis with his partner Nargis and their children, Zane and Inaya.
“The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched - they must be felt with the heart.”
- Helen Keller
Digital Content Advisor
Lauren Sanders Fleming
Lauren was born in Kolkata, India, and adopted into a Wisconsin family at eight months old. Her connection to this community deepened in 2013 when she returned to India for the first time - a journey that changed everything.
Professionally, Lauren works as a Neuroscience Specialty Representative at Johnson & Johnson. She mentors youth through Big Brothers Big Sisters of Metro Milwaukee and brings her whole self to every role she takes on. She is an avid traveler, a dedicated community member, and proof that the adoptee experience, fully embraced, becomes a superpower.
The Board
Board Chair
Ben Kaanta
In 1999, Ben traveled to Korea to visit Tanya, who would later become his wife. Watching her navigate her birth country changed him in ways no book or conversation had prepared him for. Heritage travel isn’t a vacation. It can be a reckoning.
In the years that followed, Ben led heritage journeys across multiple countries as a certified professional coach (CPCC, ICF), walking alongside adoptees and their families at some of the most significant moments of their lives. What those trips made undeniable: the presence of trusted loved ones doesn’t just comfort adoptees. It transforms what the experience can be.
The Ties Foundation exists to close the gap between who needs this experience and who can access it. Ben believes adoptees deserve not just the opportunity to travel to their birth countries, but to do it alongside the people who matter most to them.
His wife, Dr. Tanya Kaanta, is an adoptee from South Korea whose research centers on identity formation in international adoptees. Ben grew up in the mountains, where he developed a love of hiking and spent years on ski patrol. He and Tanya have two children.
Treasurer
Jana McCarthy
Jana McCarthy is an Executive Vice President and Global Payments and Liquidity Consultant at Wells Fargo Bank, where she has worked since 2006. She works with the Emerging Healthcare team, helping early-stage biotechs streamline and centralize their global payments process. Prior to Wells Fargo, Jana managed cash positioning, forecasting, and FX hedging programs for a public company in San Diego, and began her career as the lead Emerging Markets Currency Strategist at Fleet Bank in Boston.
Jana holds an MBA in International Business from Boston University and a Master’s in International Law and Diplomacy from the Fletcher School at Tufts University. After her Bachelor’s from Tufts, she received a Fulbright Grant and spent several years in South Korea.
She serves as President of Wells Fargo’s New England Chapter of the Employee Impact Team and as a member of the Norwell School Committee. Jana lives in Norwell, MA with her husband and son.
Secretary
Remy Nshimiyimana
A seasoned attorney based in Pennsylvania, Remy partners with domestic and international clients on some of the most complex transactions in business - mergers and acquisitions, equity financing, and commercial contracts that shape the futures of Fortune 500 companies and growing enterprises alike. He has worked inside the legal departments of two Fortune 50 companies and regularly advises organizations on how to navigate risk, structure deals, and build agreements that actually hold.
What makes Remy’s presence on this board especially meaningful is the journey behind the credentials. Remy grew up in Rwanda, survived the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi, and came to the United States at age 15 speaking no English. He went on to graduate summa cum laude from the University of Pennsylvania, study international law in Paris at Sciences Po, and earn his law degree from Penn Law - becoming a partner at one of the country’s leading law firms.
Member
Molly Dee Wells
Molly was adopted from India into an interracial, interfaith family in Utah - a childhood shaped by the complexities of belonging across cultural lines. That experience became the lens through which she has approached every role since.
She holds an Associate of Arts in Travel & Tourism from Mountain West College and has traveled to more than 60 countries, including India. Her early career focused on early elementary education, including specialized work with children with autism and developmental needs, and she served as PTA Vice President from 2012–2017. From 2017–2019 she taught reading and writing at Athlos Academy Charter in Herriman, Utah, specializing in bringing students up to grade-level benchmarks. She is currently completing a Teaching Writing Specialization at Johns Hopkins University (expected Fall 2026).
Molly’s work is about turning the complexities of cultural belonging and personal identity - including those that carry traumatic backstories - into expressions of healing, growth, and support. She lives in Stanwood, WA with her spouse of 22 years and their three young adult children.