IBCLC Detailed Content Outline: Clinical Skills / Education and Communication Focused CERPs - Section VII B

Christy Jo has over 25 years of teaching experience. She is passionate about teaching in ways that simplify learning. She has been awarded the United States Presidential Volunteer Award for her community service, the Phyllis Klaus Founder's Award for her contribution to the Mother/Baby bond and the Above and Beyond Award for innovative projects that exemplify the mission of Public Health. She has also been named Lactation Educator Faculty of the Year from Childbirth and Postpartum Professionals Association and earned their Visionary Award in 2015. Christy Jo is the author of Mommy Feeds Baby and co-author of Making Milk. She created the Grow Our Own Lactation Consultant/IBCLC Prep Course which has been used to train hundreds of students to become Lactation Consultants. She currently resides in California with her husband and three children. She continues to serve her community as a birth doula, Private Practice IBCLC, Health Educator for Public Health, and faculty for the CAPPA CLE© and Childbirth Educator Programs.

Lourdes Santaballa is a community activist and organizer, with a background in domestic violence, affordable housing, and economic equity advocacy. A La Leche League leader from 2009-2017 and IBCLC since 2011, she was the founder of the lactation program at sePARE, providing coordinated services to low income families, leading it to receive the ILCA Care Award and received the Wilson-Clay Hoover Award for Research. Lourdes received the notorious Drs. Ruth Lawrence and Audrey Naylor Legacy Scholarship in 2016 by the United States Breastfeeding Committee, the Miriam H. Labbok Award for Excellence at the Breastfeeding and Feminism conference in 2018 and is currently completing her master’s degree in clinical nutrition. In October 2017, following Hurricanes Irma and Maria, Lourdes founded Alimentación Segura Infantil or ASI, an Infant and Young Child feeding program focused on increasing breastfeeding, leadership and training in marginalized communities in Puerto Rico.

Professor Lisa Amir is a general practitioner and has been an International Board Certified Lactation Consultant since 1989. She is the author of over 120 peer-reviewed articles on breastfeeding. She works in breastfeeding medicine at The Royal Women’s Hospital in Melbourne, Australia. She is a Principal Research Fellow at Judith Lumley Centre, La Trobe University and is the Editor-in-Chief of the open access journal, International Breastfeeding Journal.

Diane Wiessinger, MS, IBCLC, is a co-author, with Diana West, Linda Smith, and Teresa Pitman, of La Leche League International’s Sweet Sleep Nighttime and Naptime Strategies for the Breastfeeding Family. She is also a co-author, with Diana West and Teresa Pitman, of the 8th edition of LLLl's Womanly Art of Breastfeeding. Other publications include chapters in Genna's Supporting Sucking Skills in Breastfeeding Infants and Smith's The ABC's of Private Practice, and journal articles and essays on latching, lip ties, D-MER, motherhood in other mammals, and breastfeeding language. Diane self-publishes more than 75 breastfeeding handouts for mothers. She has spoken in over 40 states and provinces and in Europe, Asia, and Oceania.

Christy Jo has over 25 years of teaching experience. She is passionate about teaching in ways that simplify learning. She has been awarded the United States Presidential Volunteer Award for her community service, the Phyllis Klaus Founder's Award for her contribution to the Mother/Baby bond and the Above and Beyond Award for innovative projects that exemplify the mission of Public Health. She has also been named Lactation Educator Faculty of the Year from Childbirth and Postpartum Professionals Association and earned their Visionary Award in 2015. Christy Jo is the author of Mommy Feeds Baby and co-author of Making Milk. She created the Grow Our Own Lactation Consultant/IBCLC Prep Course which has been used to train hundreds of students to become Lactation Consultants. She currently resides in California with her husband and three children. She continues to serve her community as a birth doula, Private Practice IBCLC, Health Educator for Public Health, and faculty for the CAPPA CLE© and Childbirth Educator Programs.

Michelle Pensa Branco MPH IBCLC is a lactation consultant and public health advocate. In addition to her clinical practice, which has included in-hospital, outpatient and private practice settings, she advocates for improved maternal-child health practices at the local, national and global level. She has a particular interest in the impact of trauma to breastfeeding families, models of peer support to improve breastfeeding outcomes and the application of health communication principles to the promotion and protection of breastfeeding. Michelle serves as the Director of Peer Support Programs and provides clinical lactation expertise for Nurture Project International, the only international NGO focused exclusively on infant feeding in emergencies. With Jodine Chase, she co-founded a Canadian non-profit organization, SafelyFed Canada. She is also an active member of the Ontario Public Health Association’s Breastfeeding Promotion Working Group. Michelle has previously served as the Vice-Chair of La Leche League Canada, the Communications Director for the Canadian Lactation Consultants Association as well as the Toronto Coordinator of INFACT Canada. When she is not travelling for work, Michelle stays close to home, living with her family just outside Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

Chauntel Norris is a native of Birmingham, AL. She attended the University of Alabama at Birmingham where she earned her B.A. in African American Studies & her B.S. in Psychology.
Chauntel is a DONA trained Birth & Post-Partum Doula, a Lamaze trained Childbirth Educator and a Certified Lactation Counselor. She is the Co-founder of Baobab Birth Collective and currently serves as the Mother's Milk Initiative Coordinator for the Alabama Prison Birth Project.
Chauntel is the mother of two brilliant children Amaiya and Ozell.

Melissa Cole, MS, IBCLC, RLC is a board certified lactation consultant, neonatal oral-motor assessment professional, and clinical herbalist in private practice. Melissa has been passionate about providing comprehensive, holistic lactation support and improving the level of clinical lactation skills for health professionals. She enjoys teaching, researching and writing about wellness and lactation-related topics. Melissa holds a bachelor of science degree in maternal child health and lactation consulting and her master’s work is in therapeutic, clinical herbalism. Melissa actively conducts research and collaborates with several lactation and health care professional associations. Before pursuing her current path, Melissa’s background was in education and cultural arts, which has served her well in her work as a lactation consultant and healthcare educator. She loves living, working and playing in the beautiful Pacific Northwest with her 3 children.

Jeanette Mesite Frem, MHS, IBCLC, RLC, CCE is an experienced childbirth educator, IBCLC-lactation consultant and retired birth doula. She started her career working with families while serving as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Côte d'Ivoire, West Africa in the early 90s. She loved that work so much she went on to receive a public health masters degree from Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, focusing her studies on nutrition for maternal and child health. Her two children were breastfed for more than 2 years each and Jeanette has experience pumping at work for both children and has supported more than a thousand families with feeding and pumping over the last 20 years.

Jeanette provides prenatal childbirth and breastfeeding classes at her office in Northborough, Massachusetts, as well as providing virtual and office feeding consultations. She also enjoys leading workshops for perinatal health professionals and mentoring those who work with families. If you have questions, feel free to email [email protected].

Dr. Agarwal went to medical school at All India Institute of Medical Sciences, AIIMS, in New Delhi, which is the premiere institution for medical training in India. After which, he came to the United States for his Pediatric Residency at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston. Subsequently went on to join the Pediatric Nephrology fellowship at University of Florida at Gainesville. Under the program, he also conducted bench research at Ohio State University. Dr. Agarwal worked on the Eastern Shore of Virginia for eight years in general pediatrics before moving to Arizona to establish Agave Pediatrics in 2005. Over the years Dr. Agarwal has developed his own style of practicing pediatrics, which is strongly supportive of natural ways of taking care of children and emphasis on breastfeeding. During his practice, he realized that one of the biggest impairments in breastfeeding was the presence of labial and lingual ties. Having performed some procedures during medical school, he re-educated himself about the procedure and started performing them in 2007. In the last 15 years, Dr. Agarwal has performed more than 18000 frenotomies. Now, along with a busy clinical practice, he has made it his goal to spread the awareness about the issues related to labial and lingual ties to pediatricians, lactation consultants, doulas, midwives -everybody who helps mothers with the process of breastfeeding and in taking care of children with feeding and speech difficulties.