It All Started With …
It all started about five years ago when a businessman became fascinated with international adoptions. More recently he observed that the number of international adoptions was in sharp decline. At first he assumed there was a demand problem. That assumption was dead wrong — there are plenty of families who want to adopt, but are blocked from doing so. He then found there are two serious problems: One, many nongovernmental organizations oppose international adoption and have created roadblocks in the system. Two, the process of international adoption is extremely inefficient. These discoveries led Craig Juntunen to launch the Both Ends Burning Campaign to stop the free fall in international adoptions and help find permanent families for orphaned and abandoned children. One more important fact about Craig: He and his wife Kathi adopted their three children from Haiti, who provide constant proof that international adoption works to serve children who need families.
Our Team
Our growing team of experts and advocates reflects a unique blend of child welfare expertise and professional business acumen. We are the fresh new voice for orphaned and abandoned children, applying novel thinking to the problems facing international adoption. The campaign will continue to recruit talent with a wide mix of skills and perspectives, bound together by the common pursuit of a lasting solution for parentless children and families who want to adopt them.
Board of Directors
Craig Juntunen, President and Founder
Craig Juntunen is the founder and president of the Both Ends Burning Campaign. A child welfare advocate and a passionate believer in international adoption, Juntunen is the author of Both Ends Burning: My Story of Adopting Three Children from Haiti. Juntunen leads the campaign’s effort to build a social movement to enact real and lasting change for the world’s orphaned and abandoned children. In his early life, Juntunen was involved heavily in athletics, playing quarterback for a total of 14 seasons. He finished his athletic career as a quarterback in the Canadian Football League. He was elected into the State of Idaho Athletic Hall of Fame and the University of Idaho Hall of Fame. His experience as a leader on the football field led to his developing into an entrepreneur. He built and sold a company with a very successful track record and temporarily retired. His experience as a quarterback and as an entrepreneur blended together to form philanthropic passions. He has been involved in many charitable giving efforts, and until recently his most notable achievement was launching the Chances for Children foundation, which supports villages in Haiti and has placed more than 100 children in adoptive families in the last three years. He and his wife Kathi live in Scottsdale, Arizona with their three children, Amelec, Espie and Quinn.
Bobby Shackouls, Board Chair
Shackouls is a past chairman of the National Petroleum Council and a member of the Executive Committee of the US Oil and Gas Association. He is a registered professional engineer in Texas and a member of the Society of Petroleum Engineers. Shackouls led a successful career as CEO and president of several companies, among them Torch Energy Advisors, Inc., Meridian Oil, Inc., and Burlington Resources, Inc. On July 9, 1997, he was elected chairman of the board of Burlington Resources. He retired as Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer of the company upon its acquisition by ConocoPhillips on March 31, 2006. He graduated from Mississippi State University in 1972 with a Bachelor of Science degree in chemical engineering. Shackouls serves on the boards of the Boy Scouts of America, the Texas Heart Institute and the Mississippi State University Foundation. Shackouls is also a director of The Kroger Company, ConocoPhillips and Peter Kiewit Sons’, Inc.
Mahsa Noble
Mahsa Noble is the president and founder of Mahsa Rahmani LLC, an umbrella company she started in 2005. She graduated with a masters degree from Instituto Marangoni in Milan and worked with top industry veterans for over twelve years. Raised in Iran during its turbulent revolution, Mahsa has experienced first hand what it is like to grow up in an oppressed environment as a child – amidst war, poverty and violence. From the age of six until thirteen when she finally left Iran, Mahsa knew what it was like to feel hungry, scared and unsafe, what children experience on a daily basis living in orphanages. The mother of two children, she is dedicated to ensuring that no child will ever have to experience the fear and uncertainty that she once did. As a result of her philanthropic efforts, in 1997, the state of Massachusetts and the American Cancer Society awarded her for her work and commitment in supporting breast cancer research. Along with that, she is a passionate advocate for personal health, working with the Breast Cancer Research Foundation, Morgan Stanley Children’s Hospital at Colombia Presbyterian’s heart foundation, Franciscan Children’s Hospital and the Leslie Fang Foundation in their fundraising efforts. A former executive in the fashion industry, Mahsa currently works as a writer, and is in the process of producing a feature film based on her first novel which will be published this year. She splits her time between New York, Boston and Martha’s Vineyard.
Pat Williams
Williams is the senior vice president of the NBA’s Orlando Magic. As one of America’s top motivational, inspirational, and humorous speakers, he has addressed thousands of executives in organizations ranging from Fortune 500 companies and national associations to universities and nonprofits. Williams is also the author of over 60 books, his most recent title being Bear Bryant on Leadership. Since 1968, he has been in the NBA as general manager for teams in Chicago, Atlanta, Philadelphia—including the 1983 World Champion 76ers—and now the Orlando Magic, which he co-founded in 1987 and helped lead to the NBA finals in 1995. Twenty-three of his teams have gone to the NBA playoffs and five have made the NBA finals. Williams and his wife, Ruth, are the parents of 19 children, including 14 adopted from four nations, ranging in age from 25 to 38.
Elizabeth Bartholet
Bartholet is the Morris Wasserstein Public Interest Professor of Law at Harvard Law School and Faculty Director of the Child Advocacy Program, which she founded in 2004. She teaches civil rights and family law, specializing in child welfare, adoption and reproductive technology. Before joining the Harvard Faculty, she was engaged in civil rights and public interest work, first with the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, and later as founder and director of the Legal Action Center, a non-profit organization in New York City focused on criminal justice and substance abuse issues. Bartholet graduated cum laude from Radcliffe College and magna cum laude from Harvard Law School. She has won several awards for her writing and her related advocacy work in the area of adoption and child welfare. Other awards include a “Media Achievement Award” in 1994 and the Radcliffe College Humane Recognition Award in 1997.
Brad Larson
Brad Larson’s passion for international philanthropy began at the age of 17. Larson traveled with several faith-based organizations to numerous countries including India, Honduras, Peru, Singapore, Russia, Hong Kong, and others, building water wells and serving the impoverished and orphans. Larson played baseball for Cal Lutheran University and studied to serve in Christian ministry at Oral Roberts University. Soon after Brad began speaking and leading in various arenas, bringing a message of hope and inspiring young people to impact their world for the better. Since 2004 Larson has worked with Godaddy.com, shaping the technology industry and domain world. His goal is to use his extensive understanding of new media to bring change to the international adoption system and unite forgotten children with the families who await them. Brad and his wife Noelle have been married for 10 years and have four children. They serve as lead pastors of E3 Scottsdale, a unique non-denominational community that believes that church should be a place where people can be accepted and real while on their faith journey. Brad is dedicated to combining his wide spectrum of talents and passions to bring a much needed revolution to international adoption.
Mike Hamilton
Hamilton is the Director of Athletics at the University of Tennessee. Prior to being named UT athletics director, Hamilton spent 11 years in the university’s athletics development office. During his time there, the department saw donations rise from $5 million in 1992 to $19.5 million in 2003. Hamilton was named National Fundraiser of the Year in 1998 by the National Association of Athletic Development Directors. Hamilton is immediate past chairman of the Knox Area Chamber Partnership and serves on the board of directors of the Tennessee Sports Hall of Fame. He was recently tabbed to serve as chairman of the 2010 United Way Campaign in the Greater Knoxville Area. He also is involved in the Crohn’s/Colitis Foundation of America, Redeemer Presbyterian Church, Smoky Mountain Area Rescue Ministries and Adoption Advocate initiatives. He and his wife Beth have five children, three of whom they adopted from Ethiopia.
Filis Casey
Casey is the Founder and Executive Director of the Alliance for Children, Inc. (the Alliance), a non-profit, international adoption agency located in Wellesley, Massachusetts and established in 1974. The Alliance has helped create and expand over 5,000 families throughout the U.S. and Europe including her own, adopting her daughter Marisa at the age of three from Bogotá, Colombia in 1982. Casey is also founder of the Alliance for Children Foundation, an international relief organization helping the world’s most vulnerable children living in impoverished orphanages in Asia, Eastern Europe, and Latin America to receive the most basic of all needs: food, clothing, shelter, and medical care. She is a frequent lecturer for the Open Door Society Parent Organization regarding various adoption issues and an active member of the Adoption Roundtable, a discussion group of Executive Directors whose main focus is supervising fundraising and relief efforts in an international arena. Casey also is coauthor of Born in Our Hearts, a 2004 collection of essays related to adoption from various perspectives, which she compiled with her daughter Marisa.
Kelly Ensslin
Ensslin is the proud mother of two adopted children. She is also a licensed attorney who practices as part of the litigation and appellate practice groups at Smith Moore Leatherwood in Raleigh, North Carolina. After overcoming her own struggles to bring home her daughter adopted from Vietnam, her legal practice expanded to focus upon assisting clients with immigration issues arising from the international adoptions of children living abroad. Ensslin has successfully represented dozens of families to help ensure that the adoption process was completed and they were able to return home with their children. She has a strong personal and professional passion for international adoption, carried forward in her roles as mother of two adopted children and as an attorney who advocates for families who face challenges during the international adoption process. In addition to case-specific advocacy, Ensslin works hard to promote international adoption as a viable option for unparented children and to identify and implement solutions that would enable more children to find permanent loving homes.
Ann Reese
Ann is a co-founder and executive director of the Center for Adoption Policy (CAP), whose goal is to remove legal, structural and policy barriers to adoption. CAP provides research, analysis, advice and education to practitioners and the public about current legislation and practices governing domestic and inter-country adoption. Ann is a director of Sears Holdings and Xerox, chairs the Board of Overseers at the School of Social Policy and Practice at the University of Pennsylvania, and is a Trustee of Rye Country Day School. Prior to CAP’s formation in 2001, Ann spent over 25 years in a career in finance. Formerly the Chief Financial Officer of ITT, she also worked at Clayton, Dubilier & Rice, Mobil Oil, Union Carbide, and Bankers Trust. She has an MBA from New York University (1982) and a BA from the University of Pennsylvania (1974).
Emron Pratt
Emron Pratt is a manager in the Dallas, Texas office of the consulting firm Bain & Company. Emron’s experience as a consultant spans a range of industries, including consumer goods, airlines, mining, shipbuilding and financial services. During his time at Bain, Emron has led projects in corporate strategy, performance improvement, competitor analysis, and customer benchmarking as well as integrated cost reduction and organization redesign. Within the Dallas office, Emron leads Bain Cares which coordinates the office’s community involvement and social impact activities including pro-bono consulting work, volunteering opportunities, fundraising and green initiatives. Emron has also been a member of Bain’s Mexico City and Johannesburg offices and has led projects in Europe and Asia. Prior to joining Bain, Emron worked at The Dallas Morning News. He holds an MBA from The Wharton School, an MA from the University of Pennsylvania’s Lauder Institute and a BA from Brigham Young University. Emron is married and has 2 daughters.
Executive Staff
Julie Landman, Director of Operations
Landman graduated with a Bachelors of Business Administration from Goizueta Business School at Emory University. She is a Certified Public Accountant licensed in Virginia. Landman worked in the New York and Washington, D.C. metropolitan areas for KPMG, and was a financial and investment analyst for various corporations. Since relocating to Arizona, she has assisted in a high fashion start-up company and was Director of Finance for a local Phoenix company. Julie has been an active participant in local charities and fundraising, has two lively sons and enjoys yoga and fitness.
