Kathryn Rifenbark: Mom of the Month [October 2024]

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The Washington, DC area is full of amazing moms. There are working moms, stay-at-home moms, single moms, moms of multiples, foster moms, adoptive moms, etc. We want to highlight some of those moms like Kathryn Rifenbark. Each month we will feature one special mom as the Mom of the Month. Know a fellow amazing local mom here? Nominate them here!

Mom of the Month Kathryn Rifenbark
Meet our October Mom of the Month Kathryn Rifenbark

Meet our October Mom of the Month: Kathryn Rifenbark

Kathryn Rifenbark is the Director for CyberTipline, Public Reports in the Exploited Children Division (ECD) at the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC), where she has worked for 14 years. In her current position, Kathryn is responsible for enhancing NCMEC’s efforts to improve resources for survivors of child sexual exploitation by liaising with law enforcement, victim service providers, and child serving professionals as well as managing the team who processes CyberTipline reports from members of the public. Kathryn lives in Vienna, Virginia with her husband and two sons: Ben (10) and Luke (1) and she enjoys reading, traveling and family game nights. Recently Kathryn and her husband welcomed home their adopted son Luke.

Here is our Q&A with Kathryn Rifenbark

1. Tell us about your career path

Since I was in high school, I have been interested in working in a field involving crimes against children. I found out about the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) while interning at the Naval Criminal Investigative Service and immediately knew I wanted to work there. I started at NCMEC in 2010 as an analyst in our Child Victim Identification Program and I went on to also be a senior analyst and supervisor in that program.

When NCMEC started increasing the work we do with survivors of child sexual exploitation, I decided I wanted to be a part of the team working to provide support to those survivors by helping with removal of explicit images and videos from the internet and giving them an opportunity to use their experience to improve the response by NCMEC and other professionals to child victims and their families. I went on to serve as the Exploited Victim Project Specialist and then the Program Manager and Director of our Survivor Services Program.

2. How do you deal with the emotional impact of this type of work?

This work can be very impactful and also hard at times. At NCMEC, we have a proactive program designed to provide workplace wellness support for staff exposed to sensitive material that helps us learn how to cope with the difficult cases we see. I’m grateful to work at an organization that cares so much about their employees and recognizes the challenges of the work. When I have hard days, I think about the resiliency and strength I see in all the survivors and caregivers we work with and remind myself that the trauma the child victims and survivors have experienced is only part of their story.

3. As a new mom to your adopted son, tell us how you navigated the conversations to add a new child to your family?

We knew we wanted to adopt years before we had our biological son, Ben, or we adopted our son, Luke. Knowing adoption would be part of how we grew our family far in advance allowed us to have conversations with our extended family over several years and gave us and them the opportunity to grow our knowledge of adoption through reading books, listening to podcasts, and attending trainings.

It can be a challenge for the extended adoptive family, like grandparents, that they likely won’t know all the elements that lead the birthparents to make an adoption plan for the child as that information is part of the adopted child’s story and up to them to share if they feel comfortable. Many adoptive grandparents might also not be educated on adoption and how it has changed over the years. I’d recommend gifting family members the book “In On It: What Adoptive Parents Would Like You To Know About Adoption. A Guide for Relatives and Friends” to help start the conversation about the intricacies of adoption and be open to talking through their questions.

Meet Mom of the Month: Kathryn Rifenbark and her family

Do you know an amazing mom? Nominate a mom of the month here!

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