Our Story

Genevieve Uys founded Traveling Donors from a place of lived experience — not only as someone who later faced infertility herself, but as an egg donor who personally experienced how poorly donors were often treated within the industry.

Before founding the agency, Genevieve participated in egg donation cycles both locally and internationally. During that journey, she experienced two deeply mismanaged donation programs — one in South Africa and another through an international agency that brought approximately 20 young women to Mumbai, India for egg donation procedures.

What affected her most was the complete lack of emotional support, compassion, and individual care given to the donors involved. The medical protocols did not prioritize donor safety or wellbeing, and the emotional realities of the process were largely ignored. Instead of feeling valued and cared for, many donors felt like “chickens in a factory” — processed rather than supported.

Those experiences changed Genevieve profoundly.

After searching online for an agency that approached egg donation differently — one built around ethics, transparency, compassion, and proper emotional care — she realized that the kind of agency she was looking for simply did not exist.

So she decided to build it herself.

On the 11th of December 2011, while sitting alone in her hotel room in Mumbai at the end of a donation cycle, Genevieve opened Wix and began building what would eventually become Traveling Donors. That moment marked the birth of the agency.

When the agency overseeing the trip discovered what she was creating, they immediately placed her on a flight home — sending her back earlier than the other donors.

But the vision had already begun.

Genevieve founded Traveling Donors because she believed the fertility journey could — and should — be done differently.

She believes that every person involved in the process matters equally. While intended parents carry the heartbreak and emotional weight of infertility, donors and surrogates also experience deeply personal emotional journeys of their own. Every party deserves to be treated with dignity, empathy, honesty, and respect.

That philosophy remains at the heart of Traveling Donors today.

The agency was built on the belief that all parties should be informed, emotionally supported, included in decision-making processes, and fully aware of what to expect throughout their journey. Genevieve strongly values transparency and compassionate communication every step of the way.

She is also a passionate advocate for known egg donation, believing that openness and human connection can create healthier, more meaningful experiences for everyone involved.

After founding Traveling Donors, Genevieve continued her journey as an egg donor and helped create families around the world:

-A family in Brisbane welcomed two donor-conceived children from her egg cells.
- A family in Malaysia welcomed four donor babies.
- A same-sex couple in New York welcomed three donor babies.
- A family in California welcomed one donor baby.

Beyond her experience as a donor and founder, Genevieve also walked her own deeply painful fertility journey.

Her fertility struggles began with an ectopic pregnancy that resulted in the loss of one of her fallopian tubes — a life-changing moment that marked the beginning of years of heartbreak, uncertainty, and grief. Because of the damage caused by the ectopic pregnancy and the fertility challenges that followed, Genevieve needed to rely on the eggs she had frozen years earlier in hopes of one day becoming a mother.

Wanting to preserve her future fertility, she had frozen her eggs at the age of 29. Years later, at 35, she used those frozen eggs during IVF treatment, hoping they would help her build the family she had always dreamed of.

Along the way, she endured two miscarriages, multiple IVF cycles, and the heartbreak of still not having a child of her own.

Those experiences gave her a rare and deeply personal understanding of every side of the fertility journey — as a donor, as a founder, as a patient, and as someone who understands hope, grief, resilience, and longing firsthand.

Today, Traveling Donors exists to provide the kind of experience Genevieve once searched for herself:
an agency built on compassion, ethics, emotional support, transparency, and genuine human connection.

Because creating families should never come at the cost of forgetting the humanity of the people helping to build them.