Meet Ayo Kells.She is the woman who started the first black-owned, all-female staffed adoption agency.

It all started during an argument in middle school when a classmate told Kelly Jamison that she was adopted. While this would have otherwise been seen as an innocent jab between the two of her 12-year-olds, it was much more than that for Jamison.

“I remember going home that day and telling my parents about the incident. They just stopped,” she said.

Her parents told her the truth. However, due to the nature of the adoption, I had to wait until I turned 21 to access the files. Nearly 10 years later, I finally started looking for her birth parents.

“I decided that I wanted to know more about who I was and where I came from,” Kells told ESSENCE. “So when I finally got my hands on the records, I found that there wasn’t much detail about my biological father, but enough about my mother to put together a few snippets. ‘,’ she shared, with the information redacted, although the record was overturned by her.

Unfortunately, Kells noted that this was common in closed adoption, especially in the 90s when analog systems were predominantly used by agencies.

Undeterred, Kells enlisted the help of a private investigator, but the experts had little to no clue as the adoption records were empty.

“I was able to find my birth mother’s surname, so I went to Google to see if there were other people in my area who might be related to her,” says the North Carolina native. Told. She lived in a small town, so she used Facebook to quickly track her mother and her siblings where she was born, she said. Through her exhaustive research, she not only found the rest of her bio family, but a new professional passion.

By that point, Aye Yo Kells had found success. PR practice Work with entertainment and small business clients. However, she decided to expand her entrepreneurial footprint and set up her own adoption agency as well.

“Something kept asking me to do it, and I finally answered in 2021,” she said. He said he planned to open an agency staffed entirely by black women early in the year. This is intentional, and Kells wants to focus on putting her at-risk BIPOC children in a loving home.

“All of my agents are fully qualified to work with potential adoptive parents and are trained with compassion as these children require special care due to their background. It is done,” said Kells, acknowledging the importance of cultural competence in the adoption process.

“I am the product of an incredibly successful adoption. My parents are everything to me and I want to help others find the same.”