Bernice Gottlieb

In later years, she led a residential real estate firm and authored several books, including one on adoption.

In 1969, Gottlieb and her husband become one of the early American families of non-Asian heritage to adopt a Korean child, and the first from one of Korea's major orphanages.

After an extended immigration process, Bernice Gottlieb and her husband formally adopted a 2-year-old Korean orphan in 1969.

Over the next decade, Gottlieb would rise to national and global prominence as one of the leading international adoption advocates.

[6] Father Lee told Gottlieb of the significant stigma and isolation for those living in Korea with leprosy, also known as Hansen’s disease.

[7] From 1974 to 1976, while serving as director of an adoption program, Operation Outreach, as well as the New York State representative to the Committee of One Thousand, a 30,000-member group concerned with children in need, she succeeded in arranging for the unusual adoption of eight children born to patients in a so-called "leper colony" of South Korea by a number of American families.

[15] In 2000, writing to the New York Times, Gottlieb asserted that "[t]he most successful adoptions, in my opinion, are those that gave the children pride in their heritage, but only as a footnote to their new life and identity.