A Calling to Serve Children: One Valpo Lawyer’s Story

By Kristin (Jass ’86) Armstrong

Families Thru International Adoption (FTIA).  Those four simple words describe the very complex work to which Keith Wallace ’83 J.D. has dedicated his career: helping parents adopt children from foreign countries. He is both founder and executive director of the organization.

Birla Village orphanage Hanoi, Vietnam. FTIA has not completed any adoptions from this orphanages because it does not participate with adoptions. But, I visited the orphanage on my first trip to Vietnam in 1996 & have visited many times over the years & provided support & assistance to the orphanage.

One of very few international adoption agencies in the United States to be fully accredited by the Council on Accreditation for Children and Family Services (the industry’s standard), FTIA researches countries and conducts background investigation on agencies with which it may become affiliated. 

Wallace and his staff rack up thousands of frequent flyer miles criss-crossing oceans on trips to the countries in which FTIA arranges adoptions (currently Guatemala, Russia, Vietnam, Brazil, India and China). 

Wallace’s entry to this highly specialized field came from melding a number of his passions: his commitment to advocating for children, his Christian faith, and a longtime fascination with China  (the first country in which FTIA arranged adoptions).  Combine these with his legal degree from Valpo Law and it becomes evident that Wallace is, in fact, the ideal person to found an international adoption agency.

Though the road leading to FTIA wasn’t direct, in hindsight, Wallace says all the markers were there.  “Prior to law school I had done lots of volunteer activities that served children, from the learning center at my church to inner city children's ministry.  I’ve just always felt a calling to serve kids.” 

After law school, Wallace returned to his home city, Evansville, Ind., and set up a general practice.  He discovered that the cases he most enjoyed were those dealing with adoptions.  “The joy of seeing a child have the opportunity to find a permanent, loving home with people who had worked very hard to become parents is priceless,” he says. 

The final piece of the puzzle was somewhat more complicated, involving a teaching post in Beijing, China.  “I’ve always had in my heart the idea of living and working in China,” Wallace says with a smile.  Where this desire sprang from, he isn’t entirely certain. But when he was offered a post teaching law in Peking University's international law department, he jumped at it.  He spent 1990-’91 teaching U.S. contract and business law and falling in love with China and its people.

“After I returned from China, I returned to my law practice in Evansville, but I kept thinking about how I could stay in contact with the people I had met in China and with the country itself,” he says.  “Adoption came both to my heart and mind as a possible vehicle for maintaining that bridge.”  His timing was ideal—in 1992-’93 adoptions from China to the United States were beginning to increase significantly, and Wallace quickly built the right contacts.

He took his first adoption cases in 1994, with a focus solely on China (the agency was initially incorporated as Children of China), but by 1996 Wallace’s gaze had shifted.  “In the beginning I had no plans to add additional countries, but I realized we could be serving children from a broader spectrum, so I began traveling to prospective countries to investigate the opportunities.”  Thus FTIA was officially born.

As executive director, Wallace now supervises a staff of 50 with offices in Indiana, Ohio, Kentucky, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and New York.  His work has expanded from case management and oversight of international contacts, to developing programs, creating software, and giving presentations on the international adoption process while still maintaining a challenging international travel schedule.

With its success as an international adoption agency (more than 3,000 children placed), FTIA has branched into other areas of child advocacy.  It has funded health care for children, built orphanages, bought food and school supplies, and much more.  Wallace is concerned about older children who “age out” of orphanages, missing the adoption opportunities.  “We are always looking for ways to help these young people because they often don’t have sufficient levels of education or even life skill experience to get a decent job or take care of themselves.” 

Wallace’s commitment to advocating for these children comes, he believes, at least in part from his Christian faith.  “Over the years many people have asked me if FTIA is a Christian organization.  I reply that besides churches or missionary agencies, I don’t think organizations can be Christian.  The people of the organization must demonstrate that it’s Christian.  I believe true faith is an internal motivation.”

Wallace also credits his time at Valpo Law for his professional success.  “Professors like Al Meyer ’48, ’50 J.D., Charlie Gromley, Bruce Berner ’65, ’67 J.D., and Lou Bartelt ’44, ’47 J.D. were truly committed to the students. It wasn't so much any one course that I took as it was the overall approach to assisting individual students that made a real difference for me. There is no way I could have accomplished what I have been blessed to do without my experience at Valpo Law.”