Karen Rotabi

Karen Smith Rotabi is Professor and Chair of the Social Work Department. Her areas of social work research and practice emphasize family support and child protection. She has worked in this practice area, dating back to the early 1990s, in a number of settings to include child protection at the county-level foster care and adoption in South Carolina as well as work with US military families living in Europe, providing prevention outreach programming focused on child abuse and neglect as well as domestic violence. More recently her work has been focused on building child protection systems, social service workforce assessment, and prevention. This work includes social work education and training in countries such as India, Cambodia, Guatemala, Malawi and elsewhere. In her most recent job, prior to joining CSUMB, Dr. Rotabi was the coordinator of the Master of Social Work Program at the United Arab Emirates University where she was so very inspired by the young women and men she taught as the country moves forward with building their social service workforce with trained social workers. Rotabi is an internationally recognized expert in intercountry adoption and ethical standards of practice in a dynamic policy context. Her most recent co-authored book is entitled: From Intercountry Adoption to Global Surrogacy: A Human Rights History and New Fertility Frontiers. This book follows her earlier co-edited book entitled: Intercountry Adoption: Polices, Practices and Outcomes. In her service work, Rotabi assists Guatemalans facing deportation by acting as an expert witness on country conditions in Federal courts, mainly for women facing family and/or societal violence and periodically weighing in on the best interests of the child and child abuse. To carry out this expert testimony, Dr. Rotabi draws upon her own background, having lived in Central America including time as a Peace Corps Volunteer and then later working as a trainer for Peace Corps-Guatemala. Dr. Rotabi has appeared in multiple media outlets, including being quoted on the front page of the Wall Street Journal about adoptions from Ethiopia as well as interviews on National Public Radio (With Good Reason Radio) and other media outlets.