Voices
Heatherly's girls MeiLin and Maiya
Tom's son Gianluca
Allen
Jianni and family
Amanda
Heatherly
This is an awesome responsibility: to explain to complete strangers who I am and why we have launched a company and even more so, why you should care about our company, our product or me.
Let's start with the details you might care most about: I am mother to two lovely daughters, adopted from China. I am wife to an amazing man who has done the laundry without complaint for the last 17 years of marriage. I spent over a decade in the software industry, which doesn't sound too related to MoonRattles, does it? Actually, much of my career has been focused on communication, educational activities and team building across sites, companies and cultures. I grew up an Air Force kid, moving quite often and exposed to a variety of people, cultures, languages and food!
The original idea for MoonRattles started shortly after returning from China with our first daughter. As parents juggling work and family, we wanted to provide our daughter with ties to her first country, but needed time to research and put together information, as China, is of course, not our country. We managed to do it once or twice a year for the big holidays, but what about all the rest? Sometimes I struggle just to get Christmas cards mailed, let alone thoughtfully prepare interactive heritage activities.
As I talked to many other families, I realized they had the same desires, but also the same struggles of time, resources and knowledge. As the idea simmered, we added our second daughter to the family.
With MoonRattles, my hope is to utilize our combined business experience and skill sets to work on a project providing us personal satisfaction. That satisfaction comes from helping other families to communicate, learn, have fun and build bridges between cultures.
Tom has joined me in this journey. We've worked together professionally for a decade and I could not be blessed with a better partner. We desire to be active members in the adoptive community, contributing not only through our product offerings, but also in outreach, resources and support. If you have ideas for us, please contact us.
Tom
My path to MoonRattles is more a random walk rather than a carefully considered, well-planned trip. I am still amazed, though no longer surprised, that I am here.
It is quite easy to find logic in the path after the fact, but I can assure you there really wasn't any. From the time the idea for MoonRattles first came to Heatherly until she had nurtured the idea to the point of reality, I had many conversations with her about what MoonRattles could be and how to make it happen, but I never saw myself as being part of the adventure. After many months of this, Heatherly's sister finally grew tired of the dance and informed us we needed to work together to bring MoonRattles to life. In hindsight, it is rather obvious.
So, here I am at MoonRattles working with Heatherly to make this dream reality. What else should I say? Well, I suppose I should tell you a bit about myself. Anyway, Heatherly has instructed me to fill in this blank space.
I am a pragmatic optimist. While I tend to look on the bright side, I fully expect dark clouds to liven things up. I am married to a loving and patient pragmatic pessimist. We have managed to keep each other grounded for the last twenty years. Our wonderful son continually reminds me of what is really important in life. He makes up the storyline and I tell him the story every night. Well, except for Sunday. On Sunday, I make up the storyline and he tells the story.
Ten years ago, Heatherly and I found ourselves working at a small software company. The fact neither of us are software engineers is another story. Ask us about it sometime. The rest, as they say, is history.
MoonRattles Larger Family
Natasha
A writer/editor with over a dozen years of experience and a background in branding and marketing, Natasha McClain has contributed content for a wide variety of media, including trades, weeklies, print, video/film, collateral materials, websites, and elearning courseware. She's freelanced for companies such as New York Press, Canter/Sylvan, Sunkist, Amgen, Paramount, and MSN/Microsoft. Originally from New York, she works out of the Seattle area.
Most importantly, she is now a member of our extended family, researching and writing content for our Activity Guides, starting with Seventh Eve/Hungry Ghost Festival. Heatherly knew we had found the right person when Natasha exclaimed that she was having so much fun with the research for the first writing assignments that it wasn't like work.
Allen
Allen is our wonderful feet-on-the-ground researcher in China. He lives in Lianyungang, Jiangsu Province. In addition to being an English teacher and part-time fabulous guide for various tourists including adopting families, Allen spends time helping us research holidays, cultural practices and activities for our heritage kits. Allen always gives us the pragmatic view on things and sends us great photo shots to accompany his thoughts.
Jianni
Jianni is our supplier liaison and all around miracle worker in Suzhou, China. She is a Suzuk-method trained violin teacher, mother, sometimes software project manager and marketer and a special part of our extended MoonRattles family.
"I have been very fortunate to have met Heatherly through my first job in China, and as I learned about Moonrattles over time, I became more interested in helping as much as I can in order to educate children around the world about Chinese culture. My family and I immigrated to America when I was 9 years old, and I’m glad I continued to speak Chinese and practice Chinese through writing letters to my friends over the years. During my high school years, I taught Chinese and played various Chinese games with adopted Chinese children from Boulder, Colorado on weekends. I could see that the parents really wanted their children to know more about their beautiful culture.
After almost 20 years of living in the States, my parents decided to move back to China. I also wanted my son (one year old at that time) to be closer to his grandparents. Therefore, my husband and I brought our son back to China in January 2006. I have been having lots of fun searching for the best products and other interesting cultural materials for the children. I also enjoy being a private violin teacher to many students that attend Suzhou Singapore International School. Since I have been a violin teacher for more than 10 years back in the States, it would be a waste if I
Overall, I really hope the children are having fun while learning at the same time with the various products and materials brought to you by Moonrattles. I am also very happy that I can be a part of the Moonrattles’ larger family even though I live all the way in Suzhou, China." J
Amanda
Where would we be without Amanda? Well, first we wouldn't have a cool company name like "MoonRattles." Second, Heatherly would have spent a lonely childhood as an only child--no one to fight with over that last Pixi stick. Third, we'd have more grammar errors, less focus and generally lower quality everything. And, she works for free for the most part--out of the goodness of her heart!