Monday Evening Speaker Series
Adoption Network Cleveland is pleased to offer a VIRTUAL Monday Evening Speaker Series full of topics that are of interest to a broad audience impacted by adoption, kinship, and foster care. These programs are made possible by donors and presenters volunteering their time and they thrive thanks to the active participation of attendees.
Upcoming Presentations
Monday, May 5, 2025
8:00 PM - 9:00 PM ET
When Love Isn’t Justice: A Black Adoptee’s Note to White Families with Danny Burke
Danny Burke is a Black transracial adoptee who grew up in a White family that loved him—but love alone wasn’t enough to protect him. In this episode, Danny explores what it means to be raised inside Whiteness, navigating the disconnect between familial love and the absence of racial awareness, protection, and accountability.
Drawing from his viral article “What Happens When a Black Transracial Adoptee Realizes That Love Isn’t Protection” and his forthcoming memoir "Passing Notes Through a Glass Wall,” Danny shares personal reflections and structural insights on how race, politics, and silence shape the adoptee experience. This conversation centers the voices of adoptees while inviting adoptive families—especially White ones—to engage in deeper self-reflection, not with guilt, but with accountability. Equal parts invitation and reckoning, this episode is for parents, professionals, and neighbors alike—anyone ready to confront the myth that love alone can shield a child from systems built to erase them.
About Danny
Danny Burke is a Black transracial adoptee and gay Army veteran with a graduate degree in organizational psychology, positive leadership, and marketing strategy. He has been recognized at the state level for his work creating safe, affirming spaces for queer people of color and advancing mental health advocacy. A former leadership fellow with Equality California and the UC Riverside Center for Social Innovation, Danny’s passion lies in truth-telling, systems change, and building community through vulnerability, movement, and voice.
Monday, May 12, 2025
8:00 PM - 9:00 PM ET
From Loss to Legacy: Healing from Adoption Loss and Finding Identity and Belonging through Storytelling with Julie Ryan McGue
Julie Ryan McGue is an adoptee, identical twin and the author of three published works of nonfiction. In her presentation for the Monday Evening Speaker Series on May 12, Julie will talk about the realities of her adoption and unique family dynamics, how she navigated the adoption search and reunion experience, and why those journeys led to penning two memoirs. Julie believes that through storytelling and memoir, adoptees validate their own experiences, challenge cultural myths about adoption, and begin to mend the emotional wounds that adoption’s secrecy and shame have left behind. Each participant who attends the presentation will be entered into a drawing to receive one of Julie’s books.
About Julie
Julie Ryan McGue is an American writer, a domestic adoptee, and an identical twin. She is the author of three published works: Twice a Daughter: A Search for Identity, Family, and Belonging (She Writes Press, 2021), Belonging Matters: Conversations on Adoption, Family, and Kinship (Muse Literary, 2023), and Twice the Family: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Sisterhood (She Writes Press, Feb. 2025). Her work has appeared in multiple journals, anthologies, and online sites, such as Writer’s Digest, Story Circle Network Journal, Brevity Nonfiction Blog, Adoption.com and Severance Magazine. She also writes a bi-weekly blog and monthly column for her hometown newspaper in which she explores the topics of finding out who you are, where you belong and making sense of it. Julie splits her time between northwest Indiana and Sarasota, Florida. If she’s not visiting with her six grandsons, she’s at her computer, or on the tennis court!
