NCFA Announces the 2021 Recipients of the Ruby Lee Piester Award

Dr. and Mrs. Wayne and Linda Sharp have been named the 2021 recipients of the Ruby Lee Piester Award.

The Ruby Lee Piester Adoption Award is reserved for those whose exceptional and extraordinary lifetime achievement has changed the practice of adoption for the better. Since NCFA’s founding in 1980, it has only been awarded four previous times, to Sen. Mary Landrieu (2016), Louis P. Stern and Carol Stern (2015), C. Harold Brown (2010), and Dr. William L. Pierce (2003).

Wayne and Linda have played an integral role in establishing NCFA as the premier adoption advocacy nonprofit in the United States. As an adoptee seeking information about his legal inheritance rights, and those of his adopted sister, Christine Sharp, he first became involved with NCFA in 1984, during which he and NCFA’s co-founder Dr. Bill Pierce developed a close friendship. For the next 20 years, he volunteered his international diplomatic expertise with NCFA co-founder Dr. Bill Pierce on the Hague Convention and other intercountry adoption issues.

After joining the Board in 2007, Wayne forged corporate giving relationships, helped establish NCFA’s planned giving program, and was instrumental in establishing the Foster Care Task Force, growing it into NCFA’s largest and most active Board-driven committee.

Together, Wayne and Linda co-chaired a highly successful 30th anniversary gala for NCFA at the historic Willard Hotel in 2010, and he has served as Treasurer and as a two-term Chairman of the Board. In recent years, his focus has shifted toward using his financial expertise to ensure a sustainable base of support for NCFA in generations to come, leading the investment management task force while continuing to serve as Immediate Past Board Chairman.

We hope to soon be able to announce the date of a rescheduled Families For All Gala, where together we can make the in-person award presentation and celebrate all that Wayne and Linda have done to help advance the vision of a world where all children, everywhere have the chance to grow and thrive in loving, permanent families.