In 1997, Lesli founded The Giving Tree, a non-profit adoption agency for children in foster care. The mission of The Giving Tree is to provide permanent, stable, and loving homes to orphaned special needs children residing in foster care.

Prior to founding The Giving Tree, Lesli was a Social Service Specialist with the Department of Family and Children Services (DFCS) in Atlanta, Georgia, where her job was to legally separate foster care children from their birth families in order to make the children legally eligible for adoption. After a period of time, it became evident to Lesli that while she was removing these children from desperate situations, she had no agency counterpart responsible for recruiting potential adoptive parents.

Rather than watch children languish in foster care, she founded The Giving Tree. She did so on her own, starting with no money, no staff, no board of directors and no physical space - just a vision she made a reality.

Since Lesli started the organization, the team at The Giving Tree has found safe, permanent and loving homes for 100 children under her leadership. This is accomplished by recruiting, training, and developing adoptive families for special-needs children. Further, the agency provides support services to families during and after the adoption process to assist them in raising their children into healthy, productive and responsible adults.

Lesli repeatedly makes a way out of no way: finding an adoptive home for two 15-year old girls; a home for a 12 year old boy who had already been in 22 foster homes and two adoptive homes; another home for a sibling group of four girls and a boy, ages 5 - 15, who wanted to live together; and so on. Lesli believes that every child has the inherent right to a permanent, safe and loving place to call home, and her unwavering commitment to the welfare of the most forgotten children is inspiring.

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