About

Grace Foster is the Founder of The Inclusion Initiative. 

Grace was born in South Korea. At 3 years old, she was abandoned at the local market and orphaned. 

She immigrated to the US at 5, eventually end up in the foster care system and then adopted into a family with many multi-racial adopted and foster children and white parents. 

Her experiences as an immigrant, former foster youth, person of color in a very white community, and also her very difficult experience as a transracial adoptee, influenced her narrative of self-rejection of her Asian identity. She was in constant pursuit of finding “white belonging” for over 25 years and never achieved it. 

But now she has created belonging for her and those who share her some or all of her intersectional identities. 

Today, she is very proud to be Asian American, a transracial adoptee and a former foster youth. She is committed to creating more inclusion and equity for the transracial adoptee and former foster youth communities.

The Inclusion Initiative was born from our  Founder's lived experience in struggling to achieve the professional and career opportunities that her peers were achieving who do not share her identities and lived experiences. 

Grace, like many transracial adoptees and former foster youth, has experienced bigger hurdles and challenges as a transracial adoptee and former foster youth woman of color in reaching her career milestones, promotions, increased salaries, etc. and reflecting on her 15 years of experience, she realized this created an opportunity gap for her that kept her professionally behind her peers by 5+ years. 

 This cost her in building her wealth, starting her family, and building the life she wanted to build. She was always held back no matter how hard she worked and how excellent her results were. 

That was never going to fix the fact that she was a woman of color and had come from a low socioeconomic household as a transracial adoptee and former foster youth. It did not fix the fact that she was already starting life 10 steps behind those who did not share her experiences. 

The Inclusion Initiative exists to support, elevate, and close the opportunity gap these communities face, especially in their professional lives.

We are a professional platform built for transracial adoptees and former foster youth, built by a transracial adoptee and former foster youth.

Our mission is to close the professional opportunity gap these communities often face due to a lack of an established network because they may never have had a permanent family and/or community, and therefore have never experienced the ongoing benefits of having a network and community since birth. 

Our platform is still in Beta and will be launching in the near future, but it will include: 

Professional Networking

Professional Mentorship

Career Advancement Opportunities 

Media and Storytelling of the Experiences of These Communities

More than 391,000 children and youth are in foster care in the US. 

Various studies state that more than 50,000 children are adopted through foster care annually, and an estimated 100,000 children are adopted annually. 

About 25% of these adoptions are transracial adoptions, and there are nearly 5 million known adoptees in the US. That means there are over 1.2 million transracial adoptees in the US, and that community continues to grow.

According to the Institute of Family Studies, 90% of Asian, 62% of Hispanic, and 55% of African-American adoptees in the US are adopted transracially.