Welcome! Meet:
Jonathan + Austin
Sr. Software Development Engineer / Director, Private Debt Investments
Oregon
Caucasian
None
All About Jonathan & Austin
We are a thoughtful and imaginative pair of soul mates living between the city of Portland, Oregon and the Columbia River Gorge. Our relationship has spanned three university degrees, five different states, two different countries, eight jobs and many, many other adventures. We love each other with all our hearts, and if we were able to adopt we would consider it the greatest blessing of our lives.
We try to live thoughtfully and joyfully, and to give more to the world than we take from it. We both care deeply about our families, though we live on opposite coasts. Our long and wide-ranging journey together has helped us learn to adapt to the unexpected, which we think will be important in these fast-changing times.
Why Adoption?
While there are many ways we can give back to the world, Austin and I are in an especially good position to grow our family and raise a child. We are wealthy enough to give a child many opportunities. At the same time, we recognize that wealth can be both an advantage and challenge in child rearing, and so we lean on our diverse class connections to stay fairly well grounded. And we wouldn’t even be considering adoption if it wasn’t for open adoption. There are just too many abuses in the system for us to trust in a closed adoption. Moreover, Austin and I have only a small community right now in Oregon, and so there is lots of space to grow our family through open adoption and the connections it can bring with the birth family.
We deeply, deeply want a child. And we believe that every child deserves to grow up with the kind of bottomless, unconditional love and stability that we think we can provide. It would be the greatest honor and the greatest blessing of our lives to be able to welcome a child into our home and help them to grow up to become the happiest, healthiest and most fulfilled version of themselves that they can be.
Family & Home
We love our home - after moving around to chase jobs for many years, we feel like we've finally found the little corner of the world where our hearts belong. It is our sanctuary. Austin calls it "Sky House" because of the gorgeous view.
We live in a safe, family oriented area known for its good public schools and many public playgrounds. We are a half hour from Portland and less than an hour from Mount Hood. We get along well with our neighbors, often swapping berries or gardening advice.
We have a close bond with our parents and extended family. Even though we are on opposite coasts, we support and visit each other as much as we can. Whether it's trading recipes, hosting Jonathan's cousin and her kids, Austin answering our parents' financial questions, Jonathan saving their aging computers, or just listening to that story about their cat and the seagulls again, we are there for each other.
How others describe me
Jonathan:
Austin is a brilliant woman with a strong heart and grounded moral compass that allows her to be both kind and effective, a combination that is very rare in people. In seeking to impact the world in the most effective way possible, she found a career in finance of all places and turned it into a vehicle for helping people. By ignoring industry biases, she found ways to invest that could both help people and turn a profit. Her work has kept thousands of families in their homes during the financial crisis, funneled millions of dollars into underserved communities, and kept pensions afloat through the pandemic so that people could pay their medical bills. She helps out and lifts up the women she works with too. Austin could have been more successful by being heartless and lending her skills to the big investment banks. But that is not who she is, and I am in love and in awe of her for that. Every day I want to be a better person for her, and she has helped me to become that better person. For Austin I chose to leave my home in New England and follow her across the country to seize the opportunities that life afforded us. We have been inseparable ever since, and it was the best decision of my life.
Austin:
The cornerstone of my life has been my husband, Jonathan. He is the most wonderful, kind, smart and generally spectacular person who has ever walked this earth. I have been head over heels in love with him for 21 years, and he is the light of my life and the point of everything I do. We have had many incredible adventures together over the years, and we have always inspired and protected each other. I love him with all my heart and soul. He has the kindest, mightiest heart of anyone I’ve ever met, and I cherish every moment that I get to spend with him. He is my coffee-obsessed knight in shining armor. Jonathan is always trying hard to blend in, but whenever there is a challenge or crisis of any kind, he always ends up standing out. Sometimes he’s the guy standing in front of a crowd of 20 people and pointing a bear spray canister at a bear that unexpectedly crashed into our campground. Sometimes he’s the guy making a Thanksgiving turkey for his sick mom even though it’s January, because it’s her favorite food. Sometimes he’s the guy that tells the funniest joke of the night and makes his friends choke on their burgers. But always, at every moment, he’s the guy who is looking out for and supporting the people around him. I think he would make an incredible dad.
How We Met
We met in college in 2001, when a mutual friend introduced us to each other at a game night. We were members of rival martial arts clubs at the time (Jonathan was a black belt in Tang-Soo-Do and Austin was just starting Taekwondo), but in spite of that we went from being friends to dating to falling hopelessly in love with each other. We've stayed hopelessly in love with each other for more than 21 years! On our first date, we explored an abandoned Masonic temple. Many years later, we went on another date inside that same temple after it was renovated and turned into a popular night club. We got married in 2011 as we started settling down (Austin proposed to Jonathan over Skype). It has been a great and wondrous experience to watch the world change by each others' side, and moving through its many seasons together has made our lives joyful.
Advice to Future Child
Discover and embrace the things that make your life joyful and fulfilling. (We believe that helping a child to do this throughout their life is our most important role as parents. We hope we can give our child the skills and education they need to live the life they want, and the experiences to discover what they love. )
Know that you are deeply loved, all the time, every second of your life. Know that community comes from our families, birth families, and any kindred spirits met along the way.
Remember to value bravery more than perfection, and resilience more than fitting in.
Always know that you can turn to us for help and we will always advocate for you. And carry the love and kindness that we show you out into the world to the next generations.
Perspectives on Open Adoption
We believe that an open and flexible relationship with our child's birth parents would be an incredible source of strength and comfort for them - not only as a child, but for their whole lives.
We hope to be a match for the birth parents as well as our child, and that we can share in each other's adventures. We are a relatively small family, so we have plenty of space in our lives and hearts for our child's birth parents and extended family.
We hope that our child and their birth families can forge loving and respectful bonds, and it would be our honor to support those bonds with everything from visits to video calls to making sure that any birth parents who want to be in graduation and wedding pictures can stand by their child's side. We promise that the food at the graduation party will be great!
Favorites
- Favorite Movie: Everything, Everywhere, All At Once
- Favorite Holiday/Tradition: cooking Christmas or Thanksgiving dinner for my family
- Hobbies/Interests: hiking, cooking (I’m a great baker, griller), home barista (I make a fantastic espresso and latte!), technology (if it plugs in, I can set it up or fix it), and roleplaying games
- Dream Vacation: Already did it: watching the rare total solar eclipse from a tent in Madras, Oregon surrounded by enthusiastic eclipse-chasers from across the country
- If I Could Choose a Superpower: I want to be a true empath. I have empathy for people, but I would love to be able to truly read people’s emotional state at all times, no matter what mask is put up, and to always know exactly what my loved ones need and the perfect words to say in any situation.
- Favorite Movie: The Lord of the Rings
- Favorite Holiday/Tradition: On Christmas day, my father will often get out a wide range of random instruments and try to play along to celtic Christmas music. He isn’t very good at it, but I absolutely love it. I think every home should be full of bad, enthusiastic music during the holidays.
- Hobbies/Interests: hiking, cooking and the stock market
- Dream Vacation: hiking the Kalalau trail in Kauai
- If I Could Choose a Superpower: Reiteration - the ability to go 20 years back in time once every 24 hours, and re-do any 10 minutes of the day that I choose
We’re here to help.
AdoptMatch connects expectant mothers to a community of licensed, ethical, and compassionate adoption providers and their waiting adoptive families.
AdoptMatch is an initiative of Ethical Family Building, a nonprofit organization working to safeguard domestic adoptions through education, transparency, and accountability.
- AdoptMatch
- 140 S Lake Avenue, Suite 348
- Pasadena, CA 91101
- (626) 219-6266