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 regional 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)(3) designations, have varying fiscal reporting years.

While our national incorporation is in the Washington DC area, our National Board is spread across the United States from the east coast to the west coast, with stops in between. 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 2010-11:

Chairman, Sue Gainor:
Chair@frua.org

Vice Chair, Jan Wondra:
Vicechair@frua.org

Treasurer, Lori Zimmer:
Treasurer@frua.org

Secretary, Felicia Fago Demchuk:
Secretary@frua.org

Advocacy and Outreach, Michelle Carey:
Outreach@frua.org

Education, Pat Gerke:
Education@frua.org

Regional Liaison, Lisa Markel:
Chapters@frua.org

Publications Editor, Marjorie Green:
Familyfocus@frua.org

Orphan Support, Sandy Davis:
Orphansupport@frua.org

 
Chairman
Sue Gainor, FRUA National Chairman, is a federal government employee specializing in foreign affairs.  Ms. Gainor currently works in the Defense Security Cooperation Agency. As such, she focuses on security cooperation activities with U.S. allies and partners. 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 parents of two school-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, where sge served 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, reside in Denver, Colorado, and are parents of two children: a bio son, currently attending graduate school in the Washington DC area, and a daughter, adopted from Russia in 1994, now a college student 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 Orphan Support, Education and membership support programs. Before 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 volunteered to support the FRUA educational conferences and has held various volunteer positions at her children’s schools.


Secretary
Felicia Fago Demchuk, 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
Michell Carey spent 20 years in the financial institution industry, reaching the position of Chief Operations Officer. In 2007, she left the paid workforce to focus on her family. Since then, she has dedicated herself to helping her husband's family law business grow, performing office management and marketing while also becoming a certified paralegal.

After attending several FRUA conferences, Michelle volunteered on the National Board’s Education Committee to coordinate speakers for two national conferences. She also worked to start and lead FRUA’s Southern California (SoCal) Chapter.

Michelle and her husband, Bart, began their adoption journey in 2003 and adopted their two children from Kemerovo, Russia, in 2004. They live in Southern California.

Education Chair

Pat Gerke has a Master's Degree in Counseling from Rider College (now University) in NJ. She has worked in the field of Developmental Disabilities for over 25 years in a wide range of specialty areas, including adult services (vocational and residential), healthcare, advocacy and spirituality/inclusion. She teaches two courses each spring related to disabilities, at Rutgers University. In 1991 while in graduate school, Pat participated on an International Support team mission to orphanages in Romania. That experience helped shape her desire to do more for international orphans, which later led her and her husband Jay to adopt both their son and daughter from Ukraine two years apart.

Pat has published articles in a number of publications, including Family Focus and a book printed in the United Kingdom. In the coming year, she hopes to finish another book highlighting the experiences of international adoptive families and their children. Pat and her family live in Cream Ridge, New Jersey, and she considers her two children, Matthew and Iryna, to be fantastic teachers!

Regional Liaison        

Lisa Markel is a licensed Dental Hygienist and co-founder of Connecting Tomorrow's Child, LLC. Prior to becoming Regional Liaison, she filled several volunteer roles for FRUA and assisted with several of our FRUA National Conferences. Lisa resides in Missouri.

Lisa and her husband Mark live in the St. Louis area and are parents of two teenage daughters; one bio and one adopted in Romania at age five. She is particularly proud that she can use her own experiences with her family to help others.

Editor, The Family Focus
Marjorie Green, Editor of the Family Focus, 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

Sandy Davis, Orphanage Support Chair, oversees FRUA’s Orphan Support Program projects, including our FRUA Chapter matching grant program and a variety of orphan assistance projects and partnerships with non-profit organizations in the U.S. and abroad. 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. Her previous Board position was as National Education Chair.

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