It began when, during an argument at her middle school, a classmate told Kelley Jamison she was adopted. This is able to’ve been considered an innocent jab between the 2 12-year-olds in some other circumstance but for Jamison, it went far beyond that.

“I remember back then going home that day and telling my parents in regards to the incident they usually just stopped of their tracks,” she said, who’s now in her early 30s and goes by the skilled pseudonym Aye Yo Kells.

Her parents told her the reality: she was adopted as a newborn and her birth parents willingly turned her over in a closed adoption, meaning their identities were sealed. The news sent the then-preteen right into a tail spin, enlisting her parents’ assist in checking out the reality about her biological mother and father. Nonetheless, attributable to the character of her adoption, she would must wait until she turned 21 to achieve access to her files. Then, after nearly 10 years she finally began the search to search out her birth parents.

“I used to be determined to learn more about who and where I got here from,” Kells told ESSENCE. “So, I finally obtained my records and located there weren’t many details about my biological father, but enough was included about my mom to place some pieces together,” she shared, declaring that although the records were overturned to her, much of the knowledge was redacted.

Unfortunately, Kells noted that is typical in closed adoptions, especially within the 90s when analog systems were predominantly used at agencies.

Undeterred, Kells enlisted the assistance of a non-public investigator but due to the vacuous adoption records, the expert had little to no leads. That’s when Kells took matters into her own hands.

“I used to be in a position to find my birth mother’s last name and went to Google to see if there have been others in my area that could be related to her,” the North Carolina-native said. She said that because she lived in a small town, she was in a position to utilize Facebook to quickly track down her birth mom and siblings. Her super-sleuthing not only led her to search out the remainder of her bio-family, but a recent skilled passion.

At that time, Aye Yo Kells had built a successful public relations practice working with entertainment and small business clients. Nonetheless, she decided to expand her entrepreneurial footprint and construct her own adoption agency as well.

“Something just kept being calling me to do it, and I finally answered in 2021,” she said. Kells said she’s already secured greater than $2M in funding and laid plans to open the fully Black-woman staffed agency early 2023. This was intentional, as Kells said she wish to give attention to placing at-risk BIPOC children in loving homes.

“All of my agents are fully credentialed to work with potential adoptive parents and are trained to be compassionate because these kids need special care attributable to nature of their backgrounds,” Kells said, acknowledging the importance of cultural competency within the adoptive process.

“I’m the product of an incredibly successful adoption—my parents are every little thing to me and I would like to assist others find the identical.”