Meet Lisa Chiya of The Genesis Group

Today we’d like to introduce you to Lisa Chiya.

Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
I never expected to end up in the fertility industry. It wasn’t a field I even knew about until I found my first job out of college working at an egg donor and surrogacy agency. But as I reflect on my life, it all makes sense to me how I ended up where I did.

I grew up without a mother. My mom passed away from a brain aneurysm when I was two and I didn’t come from a big family, so growing up I built my own surrogate family members through friends and motherly figures in my life.

When we started The Genesis Group in 2003, I had seen a gap in representation and clear options for parents navigating the path to parenthood with the help of a donor. Most donors were labeled by rigid, vague categories: White, Black, Hispanic, Asian, Other.

As a Japanese woman, I wanted to expand representation and provide parents of diverse backgrounds the ability to connect with donors that reflected their heritage. Providing clear details and expanding ethnic background information for donors became a core mission in building The Genesis Group. I wanted parents, donors, and donor-conceived children to have a clear connection to and understanding of their biological identity, and our efforts towards inclusivity only expanded from our founding.

Since 2003, I am so proud to have built such a caring, dedicated staff of women who have all been touched by this industry in some way. We’ve grown countless LGBTQ+ families in the U.S. and across the world, given cancer survivors and couples facing infertility the chance to start their families alongside generous surrogates and donors, and helped older and single parents by choice realize their dreams of parenthood. I’ve meant some of the most incredible moms and dads whose unwavering love for their kids began years before they were finally able to hold them in their arms.

I am not only the president of The Genesis Group, but a happy client, too. I personally relied on IVF and surrogacy to build my own family. After carrying my first son and subsequently struggling with secondary infertility, I am so grateful to have found 3 wonderful surrogates that helped me carry my three other children.

My own team became my matching support, case managers, administrative assistants, and coordinators that were crucial in the safe delivery of my two younger boys and my three -month-old daughter! My journeys were not easy, in fact at times they were scary and even disheartening. But seeing how the group of incredible women we built at Genesis supported my husband and me and gave us hope through every obstacle was beyond inspiring. I have the deepest gratitude, appreciation, and faith in Genesis through firsthand experience, and I’ve become even more dedicated to assisting parents through a transparent, ethical, and trusted process.

I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
Building families is never a straight line. It’s best described as a rollercoaster. We work in the realm of miracles, which means the highs are extraordinary, but the lows can genuinely shake you to your core.

The most profound challenge we ever faced was a case where the intended parents chose not to come for their twins after receiving a diagnosis suggesting the babies would be born with physical and mental disabilities. These children arrived far too early, and their parents never came. It was the first time we had encountered anything like it, and it nearly broke us—not just as a business, but as human beings. Our entire mission is to bring families together, so to witness innocent children face the world without the parents who had pursued them was devastating. We had to bring in mental health professionals to help our team process the trauma.

Our team refused to give up on those babies. They rallied every contact, colleague, and connection in our network. We were driven purely by love and determination, and eventually, we found them a beautiful, loving home. Most importantly, the twins were kept together.

That outcome reminded us exactly why we do this work. What began as the darkest moment in our company’s history became one of our greatest testaments to what is possible when people refuse to stop fighting for the most vulnerable among us.

From a business standpoint, COVID presented an existential threat. At our lowest point, we weren’t sure we would survive it. But the old saying proved true: “What doesn’t break you makes you stronger.” What I witnessed from our team during that time still moves me. Team members voluntarily took pay cuts, forewent raises, and gave up benefits so that a colleague wouldn’t lose their job. Not one person was let go. That kind of sacrifice isn’t something you can manufacture. It reflects who people truly are. We came out of that period leaner, more resilient, and more bonded than ever. Our team is a family, and I don’t say that lightly.

Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know?
The Genesis Group is a premier egg donation, sperm donation, and surrogacy agency, and at our heart, we are so much more than that. We specialize in finding high-caliber and sometimes hard-to-find donors and surrogates, and matching them with incredible people who are ready to welcome a child into their lives.

Genesis was founded long before I ever imagined I would one day need the very services we provide. What began as a calling to help others build their families became something far more personal when my husband and I found ourselves navigating our own fertility journey. We are now parents to four children, all born via IVF, surrogacy, and egg donation, and that experience gave us a depth of understanding that no training ever could. Since 2003, we have had the privilege of walking alongside families on this path, and we take that privilege seriously.

We serve individuals facing infertility, LGBTQ+ couples, and single parents by choice across the United States and internationally. Representation in the fertility space matters deeply to us and has been a cornerstone of our mission from the very beginning.

Our team is something we talk about often, and with a lot of love. The people who make up Genesis are not just professionals. They are experts, advocates, and many are former intended parents, donors, and surrogates themselves. They understand this journey in a way that goes beyond training or experience, and it shows in every interaction.

We are a founding member of the Society of Ethics in Egg Donation and Surrogacy, one of the first ethics organizations of its kind in the fertility industry, and we use the American Society of Reproductive Medicine as a guideline in our matching process as well. We hold ourselves to a high standard because the families we serve deserve nothing less.

One of the things we are most proud of is how personalized the Genesis experience is. No two fertility journeys are the same, and we never treat them that way. Our donors and surrogates set their own compensation, work with one dedicated case manager from start to finish, and receive benefits packages built around their actual lives.

Our intended parents receive that same individualized attention, from navigating our private database of qualified candidates to coordinating with attorneys, clinics, and escrow companies every step of the way, right through the birth of their child and beyond. At the end of the day, we help bring families to life. That never gets old, and it never feels routine. It is simply the greatest honor of our work.

We’d love to hear about any fond memories you have from when you were growing up?
My favorite childhood memories take me back to a simpler, freer time, and when I say simpler, I mean it in the most beautiful way.

We had about twenty to twenty-five kids on our block alone. Nearly every home had children in it, and from the moment school let out, the street belonged to us. We played block tag and hide-and-seek, games that spanned entire yards, driveways, and homes. And I mean that literally. Front doors were left wide open. There were no fences, no gates, no boundaries between neighbors. You could run straight through someone’s living room, out the back door, through the yard, and into the next house without a second thought, and nobody minded. That was just life.

I remember climbing trees until my arms ached, racing my bike down the street with no particular destination, and spending entire summer days outside from sunup until the streetlights came on. And if you grew up in that era, you know the streetlights coming on were the universal signal to go home.

What I treasure most about those memories isn’t any single moment. It is the feeling. A feeling of complete freedom, of belonging to a community, of being held by a whole neighborhood rather than just a household. We didn’t have much in the way of technology or structured entertainment, but we had each other, and somehow that was more than enough.

I think about that time often, especially in the work I do today. There is something profound about a child growing up feeling safe, seen, and surrounded by love.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://genesissurrogacy.com
• Instagram: https://instagram.com/eggdonationandsurrogacy
• Facebook: https://facebook.com/genesiseggdonation
• LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/company/genesis-group-egg-donation-and-surrogacy-agency/
• Youtube: https://youtube.com/@the.genesisgroup
• Yelp: https://yelp.com/biz/genesis-egg-donation-and-surrogacy-group-pasadena

Image Credits
Personal Photo: Irmina Hamilton