Board of Directors
Christiane Bilezikian Potts, Co-Founder
Of Armenian descent and French birth, Christiane immigrated to the United States as a baby, where she has lived with the exception of three years in Beirut, Lebanon. Christiane and her husband Doug adopted their daughter Sophie from Armenia in 2006. Between the difficulties they had in initiating the adoption and then spending time with the 80-plus children at Nork Orphanage it hit home how desperately help is needed, both for adoptive families and for agencies and orphanages who are trying to take care of the orphans. Christiane has been involved with web design and programming for over ten years. She honed her experience as a Senior Project Manager at Stream Technology Group, an Internet services consultancy, and coordinated work with Fortune 1000 companies, including Major League Baseball, The Edison Project, USA Today, the White House Millenium Council and more.
Douglas Lynn Potts, Co-Founder
Douglas hails from the midwest and now resides with this family in Winston Salem, North Carolina. His wife, Christiane, and he co-founded Sophie's Foundation after traversing through nearly two years of an emotional roller-coaster ride that is the adoption process. Sophie has blessed the family so much that it became a dream for her parents to help bring other families together. Doug's background of starting a successful small business and volunteer efforts with other child related organizations will serve the Foundation well.
Sandra Savageau
A native of New Hampshire, Sandra A Savageau, moved to Greensboro, North Carolina at the age of 5. She graduated from Greensboro College in 1996 with a Bachelor of Science in Accounting. In 1992, while still in school, she was employed by Marlowe & Associates. She obtained her CPA license in 1997 and remained employed by Marlowe & Associates as a staff accountant. When Marlowe & Associates merged, she made the move with them and continues to be employed as a staff accountant for Councilman, Farlow, Marlowe & Co. PLLC. Sandra is a member of the North Carolina Association of Certified Public Accountants and the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants. Sandra was married in 2007 to Art Castillero and her pride and joy is her 8 year old daughter Emily.
Robin Sizemore
Robin was a recipient of the "Angel in Adoption" award in 2008, in recognition of her service to children since 1995. She is an adoptive mother and has been an adoption professional since 1995. In addition to placing children in forever families, Robin has been politically involved in issues of child welfare: she has brought educational opportunities to a variety of officials in Georgia and Armenia, spearheaded cooperative humanitarian efforts, and hosted numerous international delegations of through the U.S. State Department and Ministries in other countries which are associated with institutionalized children. Robin has a warm rapport with the wide range of individuals involved with children in need, including government officials, orphanage directors and staff, hospital and humanitarian aid administrators, and adoptive families and children alike.
Robin and her husband James are the adoptive parents of the first internationally adopted child from Georgia and, with their second adoption, of the first direct “birthmother to adoptive mother” international placement in Georgia. In addition to their two beautiful children from Georgia, Robin and James have also been blessed with the surprise birth of their youngest and third child. Robin’s work is well regarded and highly respected in both Georgia and Armenia, and she is considered a valuable resource and thoughtful orphan advocate by U.S. and international officials as the result of her dedication to children and families through humanitarian assistance programs over more than a decade. Most recently Robin has developed two new programs for Hopscotch with highly experienced and reliable partners in Bulgaria and Ghana.
Romeo Vasileniuc
Romeo is a native of Romania but has been in the United States for well over a decade. He started working with Oracle databases in 1994. He has been involved in about all aspects of Oracle database technologies including RAC, ASM, Data Guard and Streams, including designing and implementing many different varieties of high available database environments using RAC on ASM, OCFS2 and Tru64 CFS. He enjoys database and SQL performance tuning. Romeo is also a proficient Perl developer and has developed several portals using F5/Apache/Perl/Oracle RAC. Recently he has been interested in web development using Oracle APEX. In his most current role as data warehouse architect with BB&T, he architected and implemented many business-driven solutions using Oracle and other vendor products to meet critical business needs especially in warehousing area.
Kelly Wright
Kelly is a wife and mother to two girls, one adopted and one biological. She graduated from the Ohio State University and worked in accounting before becoming a mother. Kelly and her husband traveled to China in 2004 to adopt their oldest daughter. They were able to visit their daughter's orphanage and see the children waiting for families. Watching her daughter blossom in her "forever family" has inspired Kelly to try to help other children find their families.