This episode dives into parenting through adoption and the essential role of workplace support.

Joining us is Boomie Odumade, a software engineering leader and adoptive parent. She shares her journey through domestic adoption, from navigating long wait times to the joys of bonding with her son. Boomie discusses balancing work with preparing for parenthood and highlights the importance of inclusive workplace policies, gender-neutral parental leave, and the critical support from her colleagues and HR.

Whether you're a prospective adoptive parent or interested in modern workplace culture, this episode is packed with insights you'll appreciate.

Connect with today's guest:

Boomie Odumade is a software engineering leader, with over 20 years of industry experience in software technology. She is Senior Director of Engineering at MIG, and a career coach. Past roles include engineering leadership roles at NPR, Capital One, Accenture, and more. She was also a co-founder of Nexercise, a mobile fitness startup. She is involved in organizations that mentor youth and/or advise people interested in STEM careers, and previously worked as an adjunct faculty. She holds a bachelor of science in mechanical engineering, a master’s of science in computer science, and an M.B.A. from Wharton. She firmly believes that you can succeed at parenting and your career simultaneously. As a mom-by-adoption, she is passionate about educating others about the adoption process and supporting adoptive families.

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/odumade

Website: https://tinyurl.com/CoachingByBoomie

Adoption Guide from Boomie

Connect with Kortney:

KortneyRoss.com

LinkedIn: @kortneyross

Instagram: @nextgenworkculture

Facebook: @nextgenworkculture

Welcome to the NextGen Work Culture podcast, where leaders learn

to support working parents, because being a family friendly

business isn't just a nice to have anymore. It's

essential for businesses that want to stay competitive, and it is

critical for the next generation and those who are raising them. I'm

your host, Courtney Ross, and I am so glad that you're here.

Welcome back to the NextGen Work Culture podcast. Today

I am here with Boomi, and we are going to talk about the path to

parenting through adoption and how the workplace

can support those who are going through this process. Welcome,

Boomi. Thank you for having me, Courtney.

Absolutely. Thank you for coming on to share your story and

your experiences. So, before we dive in, can you tell the listeners

just a little bit more about yourself? Sure. My nickname

is Bumi, Bumi Odomadeh, and I've been an

engineering lead, a software engineering leader for a while now.

And I was an engineering leader during my path to

parenthood. So right now, I'm senior director

of engineering at a small company, and I'm also a

career coach, sometimes an adjunct faculty. But my favorite title

is mom. Absolutely. That's the best one, isn't it?

Yeah. And you have a son through adoption. And how old is

he now? He'll be six in a few months. Six.

We met him when he was about eight months old, so we

didn't have baby, all the baby parts,

but still remember a lot of it like it was yesterday. And it's also

just amazing how, you know, to see the growth

from when he first came home to now. Yeah,

absolutely. You still got to see a lot of those big milestones.

I feel like about eight or nine months old is when things start moving

so quickly, and they're, like, hitting all of these milestones. They're pulling up, they're crawling,

they're standing, they're walking. It's like all of that happens so fast around that

time. It does. It does. Like, he came home, and we're like,

we gotta start childproofing now. You kind of had to hit the ground

running. So, Boomi, tell us more about the

whole process to go through adoption. What

is that like, and what all does that entail? So, first of all, I

do want to point out that there's multiple different kinds of

adoption. There's international adoption, where you

go to another country and bring the

child back to the United States, and the rules

there differ by country. There's foster care

adoption, where you're adopting a child who's been

in the foster care system but is now legally free to be adopted by a

family that's usually a little bit faster

and sometimes less expensive because

the child is legally free. And there's what the US

calls domestic adoption, which is an interesting name,

but it's basically adopting a child in the

United States that's between the ages of zero and five.

There may be other types as well, like this private adoption

with lawyers if you already know the child,

which sometimes happens with interfamily.

We initially actually started out intending to do

international adoption from Nigeria, where I'm from,

and for reasons I won't get into, we

changed our minds and decided to do domestic adoption

first and maybe do international adoption from Nigeria at a later

date. Okay, that makes sense. So I wonder if

there's a difference in, like, I guess, difficulty level

between domestic or international, or is it just kind of a different

beast? It depends on the country.

First of all, adoption is hard, period. So it's

a matter of differing degrees of hard. One

thing that I think makes domestic

adoption harder, at least at that time. Adoption also

changes with the changing landscapes and

different rules. Like growing up, I wanted to adopt because

I felt like there's all these children who have, who need to be

adopted, and now there are still kids who need to be

adopted. But for domestic adoption, it's

actually more, it's gotten somewhat

competitive. I heard a stat that I don't

know if it's true. That said, for every healthy child, there

are 30 waiting families ready to adopt them.

Once you get into health,

depends on how you define healthy. We didn't ask for,

we were open to certain things and got a healthy child, but you

shouldn't go and expect. And so

domestic adoption's gotten harder from that

standpoint. But international adoption can also be

hard because various countries

have decided not to allow

children born in that country to be adopted

internationally, which is one of the things that I think makes domestic

adoption harder. And also

the rules can change. Used to be able to adopt from

Ethiopia, you can't anymore. I'm not sure what the current

rules are for Haiti.

And also because every country

has its rules, you need to be very

mindful of those rules, and you need to find an agency that can

work with you on the rules. And you also, this

part's very important. You also want to make sure

you're adopting a child who needs a family and not a child

who's maybe been trafficked or been kidnapped.

And so you need to make sure you're doing,

you or the agency you're working with is doing that. Due diligence

I know there was one country, I forget which one,

that was where it would have been like nine months from

start to finish to adopt from that country.

And we considered it, and part of the reason

we chose not to is because we weren't sure that we'd still be

able to give that child the full access to their

culture, which was important to us.

Yeah, yeah, that's an important

consideration. And I wonder if with international adoptions, is

there, I imagine there's more travel. Involved usually,

or there's more travel. And again, every country's

different with some countries. I'll use Nigeria as an

example. And this isn't why we decided to put it on hold. But

if we had decided to adopt from Nigeria, the agency

that we found, which has found the

orphanages that it took us, we would have had to

wait a year before we were even matched. Then we would have had to go

to Nigeria and stay in Nigeria for three or four

months before we could bring the kid back. And other

countries, it wasn't other countries, it was more back and

forth travel. So it. And that's one

of the reasons why international adoption can be more expensive,

because there's just more travel, more accommodation

involved. But I will say that even in the United States, I

mean, we were open to out of state matches and that could still

lead to travel. We,

you know, we considered an agency that was in,

I think it was Louisiana, but it doesn't matter. You know,

it was actually as expensive to

adopt from that state as it would,

as we thought it would have been for international because

of the various, you know, because of the processes and the

travel and things like that.

Yeah. Wow. So once you decided to

adopt, you found an agency you wanted to go through, you've decided you're doing a

domestic adoption, you've ruled out other options. How long did that

process take for you guys? So I want to step back a moment

and say deciding on domestic adoption

is. We actually went to the information sessions for all the options.

So, I mean, I do research, but it was still

recommend that people go to the information information

sessions from multiple agencies and hear it from

people who are doing this. So we decided on

domestic, and thankfully, at the time we decided they

were about to start the classes.

So if we had. So that's part of

it. You have to go through the classes, you have to get home

study approved. And from being home

study approved until we got a match was

almost a year. You know, the classes were a few

months, but home study to the match

was almost a year. And I know this because when our

social worker called to tell us that we were matched, I thought she was calling

to tell us that our home study is about to expire.

She emailed saying, hey, start to get

your renewal for the home study. And usually I'm very

responsive to that kind of thing. And this time I hadn't

responded. So she called, and I, I apologize

that I hadn't replied to the email. And she said, what if

I told you you may not need it? Oh, gosh, that's

great. Yeah. Were you at work when you got that call?

Yes, I was. You know, I

was at work. I went to a private room because this was, you know,

when still working in person. Right. She asked me how

I was, and I said, I'm okay, I guess. She's like, what's wrong? I said,

the waiting is hard, you know, and then, I'm sorry, I haven't, you know,

I haven't sent the paperwork back. And she's like, what if I said you didn't

need it? And I'm like, what? What are you talking about? And, and she

said, um, a birth mother had selected us. And

so I, um, I, after the whole,

then conferenced in the dad and, and she told us

about him and the birth mom, and

I was still, I was being like, okay, don't get your hopes up.

Just, you know, temper your hopes. And then it was a

nice day outside, and my workplace had a

patio, so I could see people looking at me. I was

waving and smiling at me. And then when

I got off the call, I, you know, again, there's a

chance if this works out, he's gonna be home in a few weeks. That's

part of what she shared, that because he was eight months old, they wanted to

have some transition time before he would come. So it'd

probably be a few weeks. And so I had to

balance, like, when do I tell people? Because I need to

start making plans to be out. I also don't want to tell people,

and it doesn't work out. And so I waited until

we'd met him the first time. She said, you can start telling

people it's okay. So I'm cautiously

optimistic. Need to plan for being on parental leave.

So let's talk about parental leave there. So obviously, when

you find out you're pregnant, you usually have a due date,

and unless anything goes wrong, you're pretty sure really close

to that date is when you're going to start your parental leave. It wasn't at

all like that with adoption, right? Because it was kind of

sudden. It can be sudden. And that's

one of the hard things about adoption, is that you

just don't know. I know people who

got the call days after they were home study

approved, and I know people who unfortunately were waiting for

years and some who even more unfortunately never got the

blessing. And so. And

people had also told us that, oh, there's such a need for black parents, it's

going to be fast. And so, yeah, I was a

manager at the time, and so when we

got home study approved, I let my department know

because I said, in case it happens fast, I want

people to be aware that I may need to go on parental leave on short

notice. And like I said, it took a year.

So when it did actually happen, I told

people, yeah, we've been matched. There's a good chance I'm going

to be on parental leave and let's scramble to

arrange the things. And then my boss had actually just resigned at that

time as well. So my boss was leaving, I was going

on parental leave. So I was working with the

other leadership on both things.

Coverage for both things that had happened at that time. Yeah.

Gosh, that was a lot, I guess. So you had,

you said, like, three or four weeks from the time that you knew you were

getting him to bring him home to the time that he actually came home with

you. Yes. So you had a little bit of time to plan there. Is that

pretty, I guess, typical. Do you usually get a few

weeks notice. Also?

One, if you remember nothing else about adoption, is that there's almost

no rules,

because in the state of Maryland, where I live,

even if a pregnant woman chooses you,

the baby, the agency we worked with, the baby's not coming home

for the first month anyway because she

has 30 days to change her mind. And the

adoption agency we use does not want a situation

where the baby's home with you birth mother changes her mind, and then,

you know, and the adoption is disrupted. And

for the record, if a birth mother can parent, I support that. I'm not and

chooses to parent, I support that. But that's hard as an adoptive

parent to and then have the

baby leave other states, it's two days,

three days, and some states is even longer than 30

days. So we had

assumed that we would have a one month old,

the pregnant woman had chosen us. We would have had, like, a one month

notice. Right. If we had adopted from a

different state, we would have maybe had a two or

three day notice, but because of the way interstate works, we probably

still would have been away for two weeks before bringing

so many different rules. So we didn't.

And some other agencies may have said, hey, child's legally free

here, but love that. Our agency said, this kid's

been in an interim home for eight months. Let's have the

kid get adjusted to you all before the kid comes

home. So, so many

things can happen. There's also situations where

a birth mother who has not previously decided

to make an adoption plan delivers and says,

I want to make an adoption plan. I'm not sure what the

positive language for that is. I call it a stork drop, which

I don't like. Yeah, that doesn't sound great.

And so we were open to that as well. Right. We were open

to call from the hospital and having

to go. So there's so many different ways this could have worked

out. Out and three weeks also. The other

thing I'll mention is, in adoption class, I know many

hopeful parents who set up the nursery as a sign of

hope. I didn't do that. I was going to ask.

I'm like, if we get matched, I will scramble. And that

worked out because if we had set up the nursery as a sign of hope,

we would have had things for a one month old and not an 8th. You

would have had, like, size one diapers instead of, like size three or four.

Whatever you needed. Yeah. It's a big difference

between a one month old and eight month old. Yeah.

Yeah. So that's. So they had been in an interim

home, your son, before you adopted. So in a foster

care situation, I guess, or was like a. More of like

a state home, I guess. Not even the

right term agency that we use. They have

families who have agreed that because

in the state of Maryland, the kid is not legally

free to be adopted for 30 days, we will take care of

the kid for the first month until they are legal.

That way the kids in a loving

place and the hopeful parents

aren't dealing with. Okay. Yeah. And

so the, the family he was staying with, they actually were one of

the families that told us their story when we were going through the

classes. And they

do this a lot. After he'd been home with us for a month, they had

a new baby. And by the way, they had five kids of their own, all

who have been adopted. So that there are

people who are willing to do this,

people who love. That first newborn stage a whole lot, I

guess, so much more. Cause it's tough. It's

tough. When they did the session

as part of the adoption classes, they had to hold on taking

newborns because

mom had had so many newborns that something had

happened to her arm and she was recovering from

surgery. Oh, gosh.

Wow. Doing this? Yeah.

That's crazy. So how did you prepare for

your parental leave? Did you kind of start preparing

from the time that you were home study approved, or did you just

wait until you got that tall and then kind of scrambled to figure it

out? Once we were home study approved,

I let my engineering department know. I let hr

know that this might happen. And

when we were, when we got the call, even

before my department knew, I went to HRN because I

wasn't sure how much notice we needed and had the

discussion with them about, okay, there's a chance this might happen

now, so what do I have to do? And they

were, they were great, you know,

and, you know, on the parental leave, like you said,

when you're pregnant, you have an

idea of the date, you have an idea of other

things. And so you're able to give your HR department more

notice with adoption. Sometimes that notice,

we could have been matched the day after we were home study approved.

Right. So it's important for

companies to understand that. And also

my path was adoption. But foster care is

another area where you also may not get much

notice, whether you're parenting the kid until

reunification or parenting the kid as part of

Foster to adopt. Being asked to

foster can also be something that is short

notice that still requires a parent bond with the child,

et cetera. Yeah, one of my good friends actually just started fostering

in the last five or six months, I think. So they've had a couple

of kids now that they've kept for interim care. And, you know,

it's usually pretty short notice. They find out and usually on like

Wednesday or Thursday or something. Hey, we're bringing you a kid this weekend. So

luckily she has, you know, workplace that could be kind of flexible with that, and

her and her husband are able to work it out. And as far as childcare

and everything, because they both work full time, so they have to figure out

childcare and fast.

So that has been interesting to kind of see from the outside, like,

how they're handling that, because it's, it's a challenge, for sure. And

they're, they may do the foster to adopt if, you know, the

right situation comes along, but so far it's just

been interim care. And I remember when they were getting ready, they had

just finished their classes, got their home study. They didn't know what age kid they

were getting. So she's like, trying to get clothes and toys and

stuff for anywhere from an infant to a teenager. I

was like, oh, my gosh, that is so much. So I was giving her hand

me downs for my kids. Like, here's a bag of 18 month clothes, here's a

bag of two tea, here's a bag of three tea. It's all gender neutral.

And she just kind of has it all organized in like a tote or something

so she could pull it out. When they get a child of that size. I

was like, oh, my gosh, I. Will say if I were

her, you know, and I'm not, but I wore her. I

mean, I've been to pleasantly and not

surprisingly impressed with how much support you

get at times like that. When our kid was coming

home, a friend, through a baby shower on short

notice and got the list for the age,

the things that we needed at that age. And because that's

your friend's going through such a range,

if the parents say, okay, we got the call that

we're getting a twelve year old tomorrow, you might be pleasantly surprised

at how many people are able to jump through on short notice.

And like, I try to declutter, so I don't usually have

a lot of, I've either handed the things down or sent them to

charity. But I, for a friend like that would

donate, right? I mean, would whatever their was

and get the things. Yeah. And we have a few, like,

closets for foster families and stuff in the area, too. So

I know I do a big consignment sale where, you know, I sell

my kids stuff every year and then whatever is left over, you can either go

back and pick it up or you could just donate it to the foster closet

for families to come and pick up. And I'm like, yeah, that I don't want

to come back and get it. So there are lots of resources

out there. You're right. And friends and family and churches and whatever that will jump

in and help. Yes. And

so for sure, there was something else you said that I wanted to respond to,

and I forget what it was. I'll come back conversation. Okay. Yeah. So

various states have different rules about foster care. So in

the state of Maryland, the entire point of foster care is

reunification. So if I have a

foster child in Maryland, I need to assume it's

not. I mean, foster to adopt actually doesn't happen. There's

foster care, which is for

reunification, and then there's foster care. Adoption,

which is the child has been, is now legally free.

And I don't know if one

goes into the other, like, if I'm

fostering a child and they become legally free. I don't

know if I get priority to

adopt or not. Interesting. Other states definitely

have foster to adopt. I think California does.

For example, I think I had a friend. I mean, I think

I have a friend who, I don't remember the

exact details, but I think she was fostered to adopt

for her child's biological sibling. And

it didn't happen, but so make

sure with foster care, you're looking at your state schools because not

all states have fostered to adopt. Yeah, our states just have

to make it so complicated having all these different rules, huh? Yes,

it's so complicated. And that's like the same with, like,

paid parental leave or anything like that. You know, it's different by every state.

Yes, yes. Yeah. Speaking of which, did your

organization have, you know, an inclusive parental

leave policy for all these different paths to parenting when you were

adopting? They did. And parental leave, I was

working at NPR at the time, and the parental leave had

just gone from six weeks to eight weeks, and it's now

20 weeks. So connected to people there.

And I'm like, wow. And they, the

rule was it didn't matter how you became a parent.

That was the lead available to you, whether you were the birthing parent,

non birthing parent, whether you were foster.

I don't know about fostering, but whether you were adopting. And

I've seen companies have different rules for birthing parents

versus non birthing parents, for example, and,

or companies have less parental leave for fathers versus

mothers. And so I really appreciated that

at NPR. It was just, here's the leave policy.

So it was very inclusive. And I

think model for, for other

companies. I've seen companies have more as well.

But it's impressive to me that a nonprofit has such an

inclusive policy. Yeah. Yeah. And I think that that

is a great model for other companies. And we are starting to see more companies

lean more towards the inclusive, gender neutral birthing or

non birthing doesn't matter. This is the leave you get.

And I think that's really great. Yeah. Because I just can't

imagine if I didn't have the time to bond with our son

just because I didn't birth him. You know, that

that time was super valuable. And in his

case, especially, he was in a different home for eight

months. So if I had just bought him, like, I don't have leave.

He's here's daycare. I think that transition

for him would not have been as,

I mean, easily, but still, that

sounds like it would. Have been really tough, though. I mean, if you were just

bringing him home over the weekend and then dropping him off at daycare on Monday

morning, you know, that would be. That would be so tough for everybody

involved. So as a manager, you're a manager, and then

obviously you had some people over you when you did, went through this process.

Like, what can a manager do to be really

supportive during the this process? So a

couple of things come to mind. First of all, being

supportive, even if you don't know all the things, you know, I was reporting

to, you know, male boss

Attica didn't know about. I mean, I maybe knew about adoption, I'm

not sure. But what, no matter what I was talking to

my boss about in terms of my goals of being a parent, I felt

it support, and I'll never

forget that. And it's definitely also something

I share with my

directs. Second of all, a

hopeful parent is still

someone who probably cares about their career, and

I really appreciate that. My boss, my

workplace, didn't view me as just someone waiting on a child,

but someone who was still as dedicated to the job

and to my career. Both things can be, too.

And then was able to

have open conversations about what things would look

like if a leave happened. I had that conversation with my boss when I was

first home. Study approved, and he was leaving by the time it happened, but I

was able to have conversations with the leadership about,

here's, you know, here's my leave plan.

Of course, my directs, I had. I think I had 18 directs at

the time, but they were all like, what can we take so that you can

really enjoy? So it wasn't just. It was up,

sideways, down, everybody. I felt the support all

around and was able to have a plan for,

here's how my legal happened. One thing

that I would have done differently, and this, and this shows how supportive the

workplace was. My initial plans was I was going to take a month

off, and then dad would be home, and then I

would, and I'd work, and then I'd come back and take the other month.

I should have taken. I should have realized that when I would take the whole

two months, but when I realized two, three weeks into

the leave that this time's going fast, and I think I want the whole two

months in one bunch. The workplace was very accommodating about

that. That's great. And

so, and then another thing I'll say is, people are

different. So I didn't mind that people

asked me how things were going while I was

waiting. To me, it showed that they cared. But to

other people, it might have been like, I don't want to think about

this, you know, until it happens. So just. I mean,

in general, I mean, that's not just with parenting, you

know, as a leader, that's with world events or news or

any. You know. And

so, I mean, I made sure people knew that. I mean, I didn't mind

asking, but waiting is hard. So you may hear me

say that. You may. I'm not. I'm not gonna put on the boomi happy

face. I'm like, everything's fun. I'm like, you know, it's

hard, and I'm hopeful. Yeah.

And then, of course, we already discussed, just have the inclusive

policy to begin with. You know, don't make a non birthing

parent feel less than a birthing parent. Both.

Now, I mean, to be clear, there are things that are

different. Like, I did not have the physical

recovery of a c section, for example. Right. But, you

know, so you can acknowledge that things are different.

But when it comes to the parenting, the bonding, the

leave, I also need the time to bond. I also,

you know, am adjusting to something I've never done

before that is now part of the rest of my life, you

know, and I had less time

to put people for it. Yeah. And you had a baby

shower thrown together in, like, a couple of weeks. Then you had to put a

nursery together in less than a month. But, yeah, I mean, you had a lot,

too. Yeah. Another thing that, I mean, a

lot of workplaces have a parents channel. And one thing again

that I really appreciate about the NPR parents

channel, which I'm still in as a guest, when

I thought, okay, I'm about to go on leave, I'm gonna. One of my

sisters, a pediatrician, and I can Google things, but I may still ask

you all questions. They're like, do nothing, Google, just ask

us. And they came through, and I had the

questions, and I'm still

a slack guest because I made such connections there,

and we help each other out. Yeah, that's great. Yeah.

Google can be scary when you start googling things. It's always instantly the

worst case scenario. Well, boomi,

before we go, is there anything else that you wanted to share that we haven't

talked about? Yeah, I just, you know, for.

For people thinking about this as a

path, just, you know, it can be.

It can be a lot, emotionally, financially,

etcetera. There's a document that I've written. It's a few years

old. Hopefully it's still mostly up to date. And so I want to

encourage for people who are wanting

to be parents. I encourage you to find the support

for whatever your situation is. That's birthing, foster

adoption, fertility, you know, however that

may be, and also

just because it can be, some paths can be

hard, doesn't need to be a competition.

And remember, if you are taking the

adoption path, for example, that rules

differ by state, by country, and it changes over

time. So make sure you're finding out what

the situation is at the time that you're looking. I do

have a document that I wrote in 2019.

It's hopefully somewhat current, but again, make

sure that you're finding out what the current

rules are for your situation and to

companies, you know, just, you know, be supportive of all the

different paths to parenthood. Absolutely. Well, Bhumi, thank you so

much for coming on and sharing all of this wonderful knowledge about

adoption with us today. Sure.

And for everyone listening. Until

next time, take care.

If you enjoyed this episode, I know you'll love the future. Future ready work

culture framework. Head over to courtneyross.com

framework to download your copy and start building a family

friendly, Future ready workplace today. Don't

forget to subscribe to the NextGen work culture so you never miss an

episode. I'd love it if you'd also take a moment to leave a

review. Until next time, take care.