Long before the tools were easy, Annette was shipping. These are the early ventures she founded and built, one decade at a time, recovered page by page from the Internet Archive and reproduced here as they originally looked. They tell one connected story: a technical founder who kept building, and kept turning what she built into something that helped people.
These pages are historical snapshots. Forms and interactive features are inactive, and personal and third-party contact details from the era have been removed.
Annette's first internet company. A database-driven adoption photolisting she built herself on Allaire's DBML engine (the direct predecessor to ColdFusion), with an admin back-office for agencies to add and manage waiting children. It let international adoption agencies across the US post children for adoption online. Its original program brand, “Precious in His Sight,” later became her Haiti and Ethiopia ministry.
Reproduced pagesAnnette's internet consulting and web-development firm in Waco, Texas, with partner Brad. It built websites, online stores with real-time credit-card processing, hosting, and database integration, and it incubated the adoption photolisting that became Adoption.com. Later rebranded Fifth G Interactive.
Reproduced pagesAnnette's international adoption ministry, running the Maison des Enfants des Dieu orphanage in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, plus orphanages and international adoption programs in Ethiopia and Kenya. The same “Precious in His Sight” brand that began as her 1995 adoption.com photolisting.
Reproduced pagesA recruiting and advice site that placed native-English teachers from seven countries into jobs at hundreds of Chinese schools, bundled with a free 120-hour online TEFL certification.
Reproduced pagesFour ventures, three decades, one through-line. The adoption photolisting she coded in 1995 grew into Adoption.com, was incubated inside her Waco web firm, and its name, Precious in His Sight, became the ministry that ran an orphanage in Haiti and cared for orphans in Ethiopia. Two decades later she was still building, still teaching, still connecting people across the world. The tools changed. The instinct did not.