Champlain College alum and adoption advocate Wanda Audette ’84 is highlighted in a glowing, heartfelt Seven Days feature.
Social Services (now named Social Work) graduate Wanda Audette transformed Vermont’s adoption and social services community. As former Director of Adoption at Lund, she oversaw and guided thousands of adoptions, supported women and families in need , and turned the tide on an impersonal and outdated adoption process. In a recent Seven Days feature, families sing her praises as they reminisce on the countless ways Audette showed up.
Long after their adoption dates, families still turn to Audette for advice or to check in, and are met with a smile and open arms. These relationships are in no small part a result of Audette’s efforts to make the process smooth and involved for both the birth parents and the adoptive parents. Through a policy change she made in her first six months on the job, birth parents were given the ability to choose which parents their child was placed with. “I am not God, and I don’t have a crystal ball,” Audette recalled telling the Lund staff.
Champlain’s Educational Impact
Now in retirement, Audette looks back on her time at Champlain College and how Champlain’s focus on practical experience and career-driven education drove her right where she needed to be and set the foundation for a meaningful career and lifetime of fulfillment.
“Champlain College opened the door to a career that became a life of service. What began as an internship [at the Howard Center] ultimately became a 43-year journey of working alongside children and families. I will always be grateful for the professors who believed in me, the experiences that shaped me, and the lessons that have stayed with me throughout my career: when we come together as a community, we don’t ask, ‘Why can’t we?’ We ask, ‘How can we?’”
Read the full article, How Wanda Audette Transformed Vermont’s Oldest Adoption Agency, in Seven Days.
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