Adam Starks is an author, speaker and child advocate. Adam and I met as freshmen in college at Eastern Mennonite University in Harrisonburg, VA. At the age of 18, Adam had just aged out of the foster care system and with very little resources found himself attending the same Anabaptist college I had traveled across the country to attend. Adam’s first book, Broken Child, Mended Man, a memoir, takes the reader on his journey from being removed from his biological family at the tender age of 8 and his ten years in foster care as well as his journey to success and healing in adulthood. I remember reading his book and feeling so inspired that he would share his story. I was just at the beginning of talking to God about my story and Adam’s vulnerability and courage are some of the seeds planted for me to do the work in front of me. In addition to the publication of his memoir, Adam has earned his PH.D, written and published 5 additional books, written a paper on organizational knowledge transfer that has been quoted by over 40 scholars internationally, and launched into public speaking to advocate for traumatized youth.
In this episode, Adam will share some of his story and the learning he’s gained along the way. We talk a lot about his newest adventure, an app he is launching called MNDYRR. He hopes to see this app available to all youth as a wrap-around tool that will help them find and build the community he knows they need to break the cycles of harm that keep children from finding success in society. Adam is quick to credit public education and his community for helping him make it into the 3% of youth who age out of foster care to have a successful contributing story. He (and I) want to help change that incredibly low and tragic statistic. We hope listening today will inspire you in some way to make a difference too.
You can connect with Adam through a variety of social media locations!
His website is AdamStarks.com
Find his books at booksbyadamstarks.com
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You can find his article here: The Forthcoming Generational Workforce Transition and Rethinking Organizational Knowledge Transfer
