Our Adoption Coaches
The Heart Behind G.I.F.T.
Our Founding Coaches
Adoption Is Personal. So Is Our Coaching.
Each of our founding coaches is an adopted person, a birth parent, or an adoptive parent. For them, adoption is personal and real. They have done this work, and continue to do it, within their own families and with each other as colleagues at Growing Intentional Families Together. Every coach has graduated from a coaching academy, and each combines learned mastery with earned wisdom.
Using the TriSpective Approach, our coaches serve adopted people, birth/first parents, adoptive parents, and everyone in the adoption constellation, before, during, and after adoption. They also train adoption professionals through the Adoption Attuned Coaching® and Adoption Attuned Professional Certification courses. When you work with an Adoption Attuned coach, you work with someone who brings their own experience and heart to every session and every training.
Sally Ankerfelt
Triad and role: Adoptive Parent · Adoption Coach · Instructor, Adoption Attuned Coaching® and Adoption Attuned Professional Certification Courses · Presenter
Credentials: AACC · ICF-PCC
Bio: As an adoptive parent, Sally understands the unique aspects of being part of the adoption constellation that may call for skilled knowledge of attachment adaptations, trauma responses, anxiety, grief, and loss. In coaching sessions, she uses a sensitive, non-judgmental approach as she holds people capable of developing and achieving their goals.
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Sally is a co-creator and instructor of the Adoption Attuned Coaching® and Adoption Attuned Professional courses. With Gayle Swift, she wrote Reimagining Adoption: What Adoptees Seek from Families and Faith. She brings her skills as an ICF-PCC coach to the practice of Adoption Attuned Coaching® and to the art of being present with clients in a way that supports their experience and growth. She also works with organizations, offering training and webinars to their staff or clients to increase awareness of adoption complexity. Informing her work are a Certificate in Trauma Studies (University of Minnesota School of Social Work) and the completion of the National Adoption Competency Mental Health Training Initiative (NTI).
Works with: All members of the adoption constellation, with a special focus on adoptive parenting and the parent-child relationship. Sally also creates and presents webinars for adoption agencies and organizations that work with adoption.
Sharon Butler-Obazee
Triad and role: Adopted Person · Adoption Coach · Instructor, Adoption Attuned Coaching® and Adoption Attuned Professional Certification Courses · Presenter
Credentials: AACC · ICF-ACC
Bio: As an adopted person, Sharon brings a lifetime of firsthand insight into the complexities of adoption and its impact on adopted people, adoptive families, and birth families. She is Gallup Strengths Certified, trauma certified, and trained in the core ICF coaching competencies.
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Sharon co-authored the Adoption Attuned Coaching® Certification training with the Growing Intentional Families Together team and serves as a course instructor. Drawing on her passion, knowledge, and experience, she works with adoptive parents, birth parents, and adopted people. Through a comprehensive coaching process, she helps individuals and families identify the obstacles they face and develop practical strategies to move beyond them.
Works with: All triad members, before, during, and after adoption, with a special interest in supporting people who are considering reunion or are in reunion. Sharon also creates and presents webinars for adoption agencies and professionals.
Susan David
Triad and role: Adoptive Parent · Adoption Coach and Consultant
Credentials: AACC · CPC · Relationship Coach · NLP Practitioner
Bio: Susan David is a co-founder of Growing Intentional Families Together. An adoptive parent of three children, she has lived experience of international adoption and private domestic adoption. As part of the adoption triad, she gets it!
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Susan co-wrote the Adoption Attuned Coaching® Certification course and is the co-producer of the podcast Adoption Matters: Real People, Real Life, Real Talk. She earned a law degree from Cardozo School of Law. Her wide-ranging experience and training enable her to coach clients before, during, and after adoption. Susan shares Adoption Attuned strategies with adoptive parents and their families as a roadmap for navigating the adoption journey, and she helps clients create loving, intentional families. Clients particularly like her positive outlook and enthusiastic energy.
Works with: Clients before, during, and after adoption, with a special focus on people considering adoption.
Kim Noeth
Triad and role: Birth Mother · Adoption Coach and Consultant · Podcast Host
Credentials: AACC
Bio: Kim Noeth is a compassionate adoption coach with extensive experience supporting birth parents and adoptive families through their unique journeys. As founder of Birth Moms Today and The Post Adoption Journey, she provides specialized, trauma-informed guidance rooted in personal understanding and professional experience.
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Kim co-authored the Adoption Attuned Coaching® and Adoption Attuned Professional courses with the Growing Intentional Families Together team and hosts Adoption Matters: Real People, Real Life, Real Talk. She creates a safe space where all voices are heard and relationships are nurtured with respect, compassion, and understanding. Her grief coaching extends to mothers who have experienced the loss of a child, offering compassionate support through profound bereavement.
Works with: Birth parents and adoptive families, with a special focus on pre- and post-adoption support for birth parents, adoptive family preparation and education, grief coaching for child loss, and navigating complex relationships in the adoption triad.
Gayle H. Swift
Triad and role: Adoptive Parent · Adoption Coach and Consultant
Credentials: AACC · CPC · NLP Practitioner
Bio: Gayle has more than 20 years of adoption coaching experience. She believes Adoption Attuned Coaching® supports people on their adoption journey by providing information, insights, and tools steeped in the TriSpective Approach. An adoptive parent and former foster parent, Gayle works with adopted people, adoptive parents, and birth families.
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Gayle advocates for Adoption Attuned parenting, truth telling, compassionate witness, and addressing the deep complexities and long-term impacts of the adoption experience. She is a co-creator of the Adoption Attuned Coaching® Certification and Professional courses and the author of award-winning books on adoption: two co-written with her daughter, Casey Swift, Ed.D., and Reimagining Adoption, co-written with Sally Ankerfelt. Her writing has been featured on Adoption.com, AmericaAdopts.com, NACAC.org, and more. She writes most of the Growing Intentional Families Together blog, and with Susan David she co-produces the podcast Adoption Matters: Real People, Real Life, Real Talk.
Works with: Adopted people, adoptive parents, and birth families. Gayle's special focus is blog writing and curriculum development for G.I.F.T.
Meet our Contributors
The Voices That
Add to Our Work
These skilled individuals bring their expertise to specific work from time to time. You may meet them as podcast guests or bloggers, or lending their expertise to special projects.
Anne Peshka
Birth Mother and Adopted Person · Special Projects
Credentials: ICF-ACC
Author, speaker, and coach who has lived adoption as both an adopted person and a birth mother, and who speaks with honesty and compassion about what adoption can hold across a lifetime.
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Anne Peshka is an author, speaker, Certified Professional Coach, adopted person, and birth mother whose work explores identity, belonging, reinvention, and the lifelong impact of adoption. In her memoir, Trauma Recycled, she writes candidly about adoption, abuse, addiction, motherhood, and the choices that shaped her life. Anne brings a rare perspective to the adoption conversation, having lived it as both an adopted person and a birth mother. After reuniting with her birth family in her 50s and building a close relationship with the son she placed for adoption, she speaks with honesty, compassion, and nuance about what adoption can hold across a lifetime.
Jean Widner
Adopted Person · Podcast and Special Projects
Author of The Adoption Paradox: Putting Adoption in Perspective, who writes with clarity and compassion about the love and loss that adoption holds for everyone in the triad.
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Jean is the author of The Adoption Paradox: Putting Adoption in Perspective, a powerful exploration of the complex realities of adoption. Born in 1965 and adopted from birth, Jean lives the paradox she writes about, experiencing both love and loss, belonging and separation. In her book, she shares stories from all sides of the adoption triad, adopted people, birth parents, and adoptive families, alongside insights from mental health experts. Jean brings clarity and compassion to a subject often wrapped in silence and misconception. She also owns a local news and storytelling blog in her hometown, where her love of writing continues to grow.
Find the right coach for your family
Not sure which coach is the best fit? Tell us where you are in your adoption journey, and we will help you choose.
