Ellena McConnell — 2016 Fascinating Person #13

The very last in our FP series MIGHT have just been the very first person we asked!

February 24, 2016; 2:37 PM • by Susan Howson

Meet each of the Fascinating People we’ve invited to speak for eight minutes on whatever they want. It goes down tonight!. Learn more here but know that, sadly, we are SOLD OUT! Stay tuned to Twitter, though, because we will surely be enthusing all over the place about the pearls of wisdom they’ll all be casting.

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Ellena McConnell had a tough childhood. No, that’s not doing her justice. She had the kind of childhood that strikes fear into this grown adult, and I’m not afraid of a whole lot.

Ellena was adopted at age 11 (she’s now 19), and she had to consciously learn how to have a childhood–the kind where your main activity isn’t dumpster-diving so that you don’t starve. Adjusting to an atmosphere of love and patience and support isn’t just an overnight process. If you’ve read what she wrote for us during our celebration of National Adoption Awareness Month in coordination with the Children’s Home Society of Virginia, you will understand a little more about what kind of person Ellena is.

She’s now on the board of [FACES}(http://www.facesonline.org/) and represents CHS whenever people like us beg her to. We’re totally prepared for Ellena to inspire us to be better people than we are–or at least to spend the appropriate amount of time appreciating the people who raised us.

Plus, everyone in attendance has the luck of catching Ellena before she’s a household name.

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Read all the stories that feature our 2016 Fascinating People!