GOVERNANCE

Literally hundreds of volunteers move the work of FRUA forward.  As an all-volunteer organization, FRUA has no paid staff and functions under the governance of a National Board of Directors, elected for two-year terms of office.  These National officers are supported by region chapters, whose leadership, is also elected/affirmed for two-year chapter leadership terms.

As a 501.(C)(3) national non-profit organization, FRUA's fiscal year runs from July 1 through June 30.  Individual FRUA chapters, which may or may not have state 501.C# designations, have varying fiscal reporting years.

While our national offices are located in the Washington DC area, our National Board is spread across the United States from the east coast and the Midwest, to the Rocky Mountains.  The Board meets six times per year, once in person for the Annual Meeting, typically in July or early August, and via conference call for other meetings.

Board of Directors

The following volunteers fill national board roles for fiscal 2009-10:

Chairman, Sue Gainor:
Chair@frua.org

Vice Chair, Jan Wondra:
Vicechair@frua.org

Treasurer, Lori Zimmer:
Treasurer@frua.org

Secretary, Felicia Dumchuk:
Secretary@frua.org

Advocacy and Outreach, Allison Leet:
Outreach@frua.org

Education, Sandy Davis:
Education@frua.org

Regional Liaison, Cindy Anders:
Chapters@frua.org

Publications Editor, Marjorie Green:
Familyfocus@frua.org

Orphanage Support Adele Raade
Orphanagesupport@frua.org

 
Chairman
Sue Gainor, FRUA National Chairman, is a federal government employee specializing in foreign affairs.  Ms. Gainor is currently the Europe/NATO policy officer in the Defense Technology Security Administration. As such, she focuses on export control and technology security issues involving the U.S. and Europe.  Sue joined FRUA's board in July 2004 when she became Editor-in-Chief of The Family Focus©. She previously served as a contributing writer for The Family Focus©. Past volunteer work includes serving on the Board of Directors of an international school, lobbying and fund-raising work for a national women's organization, participation in a several service organizations and writing  articles in several magazines, newspapers, and newsletters.

Sue and her husband, Scot Murdock reside in Virginia and are the parent of two elementary-age sons, one of whom they adopted from Russia in 2001.


Vice Chair
Jan Wondra, FRUA Vice Chair, is a marketing strategist and writer, with a BS in Journalism and Design.  Her extensive background, as a VP of Marketing and Chief Marketing Officer in Fortune 500 global companies, includes work on financial services, telecom, energy, consumer goods and Silicon Valley technology startups as well as entreprenuer of her own marketing firm.  She has been a FRUA member since 1994, helping to founding FRUA Wisconsin, the second national FRUA chapter.  She and her husband founded the FRUA Colorado chapter in 1997 when they returned to the Denver area, serving as its Chair before became FRUA National Regional Liaison in 2005.  She has led several FRUA national initiatives, including serving on the national media task force, the FRUA Love Letters campaign, starting the FRUA Coffee & Tea for Orphanage Support Program and spearheading the FRUA website resesign and new media project.

Jan and her husband, Mel live in Denver, Colorado and are the parents of two; their biological son, a Fulbright Scholar with the Caucasus Research Institute in the Republic of Georgia and daughter, adopted from Pskov, Russia in 1994, now a college freshmen at Colorado State University.

National Treasurer
Lori Zimmer, National Treasurer has a B.S in Pharmacy and was a practicing pharmacist for 15 years. Her careful fiduciary oversight is critical to monitoring both our Orphanage Support, Education and membership support programs.   Prior to becoming Treasurer, Lori was FRUA’s National Secretary and had previously been a Mentor Program Co-Chair and Chair of FRUA Wisconsin.  She served as Treasurer of FRUA-Kansas City for several years.  Lori has helped with the FRUA Educational Conferences and has held various volunteer positions at her children’s schools.

Lori and her husband, Mike, live in Kansas with their biological daughter and a son and daughter adopted from Russia in 1995.


Secretary
Felicia Fago Dumchuk, FRUA National Secretary, is Educational Services Director for Positive Education Program (PEP) in Cleveland, Ohio. PEP's is the largest non-profit child serving agency in Cleveland, serving over 1,000 children and families thorugh chool and community-based mental health programs.  She developed its Intervention-Based Bibliotherapy Curriculum, a specialized curriculum that combines social-emotional objectives and English/Language Arts academic content objectives into a literacy-based instructional intervention. She holds a bachelor's degree in education and reading from Ashland College and a master's degree in special education from Kent State University.  She is a doctoral candidate at Case Western Reserve University,  conducting research on children adopted from Russia and Ukraine in academic, behavioral, and social-emotional performance.  An expert on the academic impact of prenatal alcohol exposure, Ms. Demchuk has advocated in Washington, D.C. in partnership with the National Organization on Fetal Alcohol Syndrome. She has spoken locally and nationally on this issue, as well as the issues of children who have been institutionalized. In her work and research, she continues to develop innovative programming for children with complex needs

Felicia lives in Brunswick, Ohio with her two school-age daughters, adopted from Khabarovsk, Russia, and  Lviv, Ukraine.

Advocacy and Outreach Chair
Allison Leet, Advocacy and Outreach Chair, has an MBA in Finance and is a business professional with over 25 years of accounting, finance and management experience.  She is currently VP of Business Development at Health Settings Network Inc. in Rochester, NY.  Allison has been an active member of FRUA since 1999 and served as the exhibitor coordinator for the 2007 Educational Conference.  Her focus on outreach is on proactive public relations and relationship building with adoption agencies and other professional organizations.  Her community volunteer work includes  Delta Labs/Adopt-a-Stream environmental non-profit group as Earth Day Event outreach coordinator and service as a board member of VOICE (Victor’s Outreach in Children’s Education) and leading a  VOICE parent support group for parents with children on the Autism Spectrum.

Allison and her husband, Joel Sherman  live in Fishers, NY with their twin son and daughter, adopted from Russia in 1999.


Education Chair
Sandy Davis, National Education Chair, is a regional education advocate, educating parents and professionals locally on the issues related to adopting children from Eastern Europe. As co-founder of Connecting Tomorrow’s Child, she assists adoptive families with locating professional resources specific to their family’s needs as well as promoting more public awareness and education of the importance of early intervention. Sandy has been a member of FRUA since 2000, when she founded  the St. Louis Chapter. In 2003 she moved on to planning roles on the FRUA national level, helping to plan and coordinate annual FRUA National Education Conferences.

Sandy and her husband are parents of three children and reside near St. Louis, Missouri. Their youngest daughter, age 12,  was adopted from Rostov-na-Donu, Russia in 1998.


Regional Liaison
Cindy Anders, FRUA Regional Liaison, fills the critical link between chapter leadership and the National Board. Cindy is the Chief Driver Examiner for the Missouri State Highway Patrol and an instructor for Law Enforcement Training and Resources in Boise, Idaho.  She is a member of the Subcommittee for Elder Mobility and Safety for the State of Missouri and serves on the board of two other non-profit agencies as well as a member of the City Park Board.

Cindy has been a member of FRUA since 2001, when she and her husband, Martin, adopted their son from Bulgaria.  She volunteered on the FRUA Family Focus before taking the FRUA Regional Liaison role.  She had a BS from Truman State University, an MA from Lindenwood University and resides in Bowling Green, Missouri. They also have 4 biological children and 3 grandchildren.


Editor, The Family Focus
Marjorie Green serves as editor-in-chief of FRUA’s quarterly membership journal, The Family Focus. She is a former newspaper and magazine writer and editor, with more than 20 years of experience in those areas and in public affairs offices. Marjorie became editor-in-chief in July 2008, after serving on the National Board for three years as Education Chair. In that capacity, she oversaw the planning of two of FRUA’s national education conferences.

Marjorie and her husband, Bob, live in Arlington, Virginia, with their twin girls, whom they adopted from the Rostov-on-Don region of Russia in 1997 and who now are in 7th grade.


Orphanage Support Chair
Adele Raade, Orphanage Suport Chair, a Ph.D. in speech-language pathology and a Speech-Language Pathology Associate with The Center for Child Health & Development, where she is developing a practice serving internationally adopted children and their families.  She also serves as an Adjunct Assistant Professor at Boston University and has presented nationally on the communication challenges of internationally adopted children as well as two workkshops at previous Annual FRUA Conferences.  In November 2008, Adele was an invited Communication Disorder (CD) delegate on a People-to-People Citizen Ambassador Program trip to Russia to visit professional sites in Moscow and St. Petersgurg, including a special education school, an orphanage, a school for the hearing-impaired, and a university. In her FURA role, she oversees FRUA’s Orphanage Support Program projects, includng our FURA Chapter matching grant program and a variety of orphanage assistance projects and partnerships with non-profit organizations in the U.S. and abroad.

Adele and her husband, Ray have a son adopted from the Rostov-on-Don region of Russia in 2003 and live north of Boston with their adopted black lab.