GOLD Learning Speakers

Nadrah Arfizah Arifin (MBBS, MPH, IBCLC) is a medical professional in public health and a lactation consultant who obtained her medical degree from University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur in 2004. Her involvement in breastfeeding support and advocacy started in 2007 as a local breastfeeding supporter at her workplace. She further involved in community-based breastfeeding support voluntarily by joining the Malaysian Breastfeeding Peer Counselor Association (MBfPCA) in 2010. She became the first breastfeeding peer counsellor of MBfPCA who successfully upgraded to become the program trainer in 2011 to 2012, thus making the framework for Train of Trainer program in MBfPCA in effort to further grow the network. She is currently the President of MBfPCA and together with other Core Trainers, they plan for sustainability of breastfeeding support by peer counsellors for Malaysian community. While doing her Doctoral degree in Public Health (DrPH), she is also working on few projects in MBfPCA particularly in capacity building of breastfeeding peer counselors with the interest of maintaining its integrity, reliability and relevancy through monitoring and evaluation of community breastfeeding support program.

Dr. Byatt is a perinatal psychiatrist focused on improving health care systems to promote maternal mental health. She is an Associate Professor at UMass Medical School in the Departments of Psychiatry and Obstetrics and Gynecology. Her research focuses on developing innovative ways to improve the implementation and adoption of evidence-based depression treatment for pregnant and postpartum women. She has federal funding to test interventions to help women access and engage in perinatal depression treatment in obstetric settings. Her academic achievements have led to numerous peer-reviewed publications and national awards. She is also the Founding and Statewide Medical Director of MCPAP for Moms, a statewide program that addresses perinatal depression in Massachusetts by providing mental health consultation and care coordination for medical providers serving pregnant and postpartum women.

After 37 years as an attending neonatologist and 18 years as medical director of lactation services, Nancy retired from clinical practice 2019. She graduated from medical school and did her training in pediatrics at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. She did her fellowships in Neonatal-Perinatal Medicine and ECMO at UCSD Medical Center in San Diego. She has been a board-certified lactation consultant since 1988. Nancy co-founded the San Diego County Breastfeeding Coalition in 1994. She was the Breastfeeding Coordinator for AAP CA Chapter 3 from 1992 until 2020, Board Member of HMBANA 2015-2019 and established the first Donor Milk Depot in San Diego over 25 years ago. Nancy is a past president of the Academy of Breastfeeding Medicine. She wrote, and continues to update, the very first ABM Protocol on Hypoglycemia and Breastfeeding. In 2014 Nancy was awarded the Golden Wave Award by the California Breastfeeding Coalition for her efforts to reduce obstacles to breastfeeding in California, and the WIC Breastfeeding Champion Award in 2017. She received AAP Special Achievement Awards in 1997 and 2021 for her breastfeeding education and promotion efforts.

On a personal note, she is the mother of a (formerly breastfed) archaeology student and lives in San Diego, CA, with her significant other, their dog, Darwin, and a beautiful view of the ocean.

- Nancy Irland, DNP, RN, CNM, is a highly respected nurse, author, and clinical leader. Her obstetrical experience spans more than 44 years. She has enjoyed supporting women through their journey into motherhood as a labor and delivery nurse, certified nurse-midwife, and perinatal clinical specialist in a high risk tertiary care center. She has presented nationally and internationally, most recently at the Royal College of surgeons in Ireland (RCSI). In 2013, Dr. Irland was honored by the Oregon March of dimes as Nurse Educator of the Year. She is the past AWHONN Oregon Section Chair, and has served on the editorial board of Nursing for Women’s Health. In that capacity, she wrote a column titled, “Understand What You Know.”Dr. Irland’s passion is creating materials for other peoples’ success. She incorporates humor and metaphor in her teaching, and is sure to provide you with “Aha!” moments that you can take back to work immediately.

Nancy Mohrbacher was born and raised in the Chicago area, where she lives today. She is a board-certified lactation consultant who has been helping nursing mothers since 1982. Her breastfeeding books for parents and professionals include Breastfeeding Answers Made Simple and its Pocket Guide; Breastfeeding Made Simple(with Kathleen Kendall-Tackett); Working and Breastfeeding Made Simple; and Breastfeeding Solutions and its companion app for Android and iPhone.

Nancy currently contracts with hospitals to improve breastfeeding practices, writes for many publications, and speaks at events around the world. Nancy was in the first group of 16 to be honored for her lifetime contributions to breastfeeding with the designation FILCA, Fellow of the International Lactation Consultant Association.

Nancy Wainer is a Certified Professional Midwife who attends home births and who has been present at over 2100 births. She trains student midwives, teaches childbirth classes, is the author of two (soon to be three) books on Birth in the USA. She coined the term VBAC ( vaginal birrh after cesarean) which is now used internationally. Her work is being archived at Harvard University’s Schlessinger Womens’ History Library. She was selected as one of Mothering Magazines “Living Treasures. She is a preceptor for several midwifery schools and has had women from all over the world who have come to the United States to birth with her.She is an internationally known and sought-after childbirth speaker. She was the first midwife in the U.S. to teach HypnoBirthing and in 2013 became the first childbirth educator in Massachusetts to teach Blissborn Childbirth classes. She has written two books on cesarean prevention. “Silent Knife” won an award for The Best Book in the Field of Health and Medicine by the American Library Association the year it was written. She is currently writing her third book “Birthquake: A Pre and Post Childbirth Book for Strong Women and Women Who Want To Be Strong” ( co-author Raquel Lazar-Paley) which, hopefully, will be out by the end of this year!

Nancy has been providing breastfeeding help and support for 40 years and has been a national speaker for 30. She has been a perinatal educator and consultant since the late 1970’s. Her second career is that of a Marriage and Family Therapist. Her passion is to explore the larger picture of the mother-baby dyad in the context of the breastfeeding relationship.

Dr Nandiran Ratnavel has been a Consultant Neonatologist at The Royal London Hospital, Barts Health NHS Trust for 16 years. He is Director of The London Neonatal Transfer Service and Joint Clinical Lead for North East and Central London Neonatal Services. He serves as joint implementation lead for In Utero Transfer Services in London and has recently taken up a position as Neonatal Clinical Lead for the London Maternity and Neonatal Safety Improvement Programme. Finally he has a role as clinical reviewer for the Independent Maternity Services Oversight Panel for the Welsh Government.

Naomi Bar-Yam, PhD, ACSW, has been working in maternal and child health for over 30 years as an educator, researcher, advocate, and writer. She is the immediate past president of the Human Milk Banking Association of North America (HMBANA) and the founding director of Mothers’ Milk Bank Northeast, which provides safe donor milk to hospitals and families throughout the northeastern US. An expert on access to perinatal health care and policies that support breastfeeding, she has been a consultant to the Centers for Disease Control (on a panel that created “The CDC Guide to Breastfeeding Interventions”), to the United States Breastfeeding Committee (developing an issue paper addressed to CEOs and legislators on breastfeeding and the workplace), and to the March of Dimes (developing educational material for women and families who are medically and socially vulnerable to high-risk pregnancy). She also developed a curriculum for hospital personnel about combining breastfeeding with their work. She reviews articles submitted to the Journal of Human Lactation, Breastfeeding Medicine, and other publications related to breastfeeding, milk banking, and access to perinatal child care. As Executive Director of Mothers’ Milk Bank Northeast, she is thoroughly versed in the technical, procedural, and ethical aspects of milk banking. She often speaks at professional conferences, hospital staff trainings, and grand rounds about milk banking and breastfeeding policies.

Naomi Hull is a Registered Nurse, an International Board-Certified Lactation Consultant (IBCLC) and has a Master of Public Health (Nutrition).

Naomi is mum to two teenage young adults, a Rhodesian Ridgeback and five chickens. Since 2006 Naomi has been a volunteer Breastfeeding Counsellor (Cert IV Breastfeeding Education) with the Australian Breastfeeding Association, and she qualified as an IBCLC in 2010 and has worked in a small Private Practice in Brisbane. While completing her MPH at the University of Queensland (UQ) she focused her dissertation on a qualitative review of stakeholder’s perceptions of the implementation of the Australian National Breastfeeding Strategy (2010-2015).

Since then she has gone on to lead and coordinate a national team in the assessment of Australian breastfeeding policies and programs using the World Breastfeeding Trends Initiative (WBTi) Assessment Tool.

Naomi is the Senior Manager for Breastfeeding Information and Research at the Australian Breastfeeding Association, where she is responsible for the provision of up to date, evidence-based information for the general community and health professionals.

Naomi Sallé is a La Leche League Leader in Amsterdam. She also recently earned her diploma in Jewish education, at the Dutch Jewish Seminary (part of the University of Amsterdam) where she focused on breastfeeding and Jewish law. She lives with her husband and three of their homeschooled children in the small Jewish community of Amsterdam and has the joy of watching her eldest married daughter grow in her mothering and nursing.

Carol Nelson LM, CPM
Ida Darragh LM, CPM
Shannon Anton LM, CPM
Debbie Pulley CPM
Kim Pekin CPM

Dr. Nastassia Harris is a licensed registered nurse with over 15 years’ experience in perinatal nursing and became an International Board Certified Lactation Consultant in 2009.

Nastassia serves as an assistant professor in the school of nursing at Montclair State University. Over her career Nastassia developed a passion for eliminating disparities in black infant and maternal health. In 2018, she went on to found a nonprofit, the Perinatal Health Equity Foundation where she serves as the executive director. Through the nonprofit, Nastassia established Sistahs Who Breastfeed, a breastfeeding support group for black women which operates in several NJ cities.

She is active in several committees and organizations including the Association of Women's Health Obstetrics and Neonatal Nursing and the Black Mamas Matter Alliance. Nastassia's research and clinical interests include implicit bias/racism in healthcare, breastfeeding in the black community, obstetrical violence, high risk OB, and reproductive justice.

Dr. Natalia Varela is a professor at the Externado University of Colombia. She directs the family and children research department. Dr. Natalia´s research experience on child development involved an interdisciplinary approach that enabled her to acquire tools working on an array of projects involving at-risk children and families around the world (Colombia, Canada, India, Vietnam, Indonesia, Burundi). Having worked with United Nations agencies and international NGOs, Dr. Natalia has gained expertise in academic research, as well as international development. Dr. Natalia works closely with the Kangaroo Foundation in Colombia on interesting research about premature birth and fatherhood. She holds a Ph.D. in Psychology from Laval University in Canada.

Dr Natalie Shenker is a former surgeon, scientist, and the cofounder of the Human Milk Foundation, which aims to ensure more babies are fed with human milk. As well as supporting a range of educational and research studies, the HMF aims to ensure assured access to screened donor milk through a network of human milk banks based on the cost-effective innovative model of the Hearts Milk Bank (HMB). Milk banks provide screened breastmilk to premature babies whose own mothers need time to establish breastfeeding, protecting them from a range of life-threatening complications and supporting the mother to breastfeed. The HMB has been operating in the UK for 18 months, and has supported neonatal units as well as families in the community where breastfeeding is impossible or taking time to establish.

Natashia Conner is a graduate in Health and a Lactation Consultant at the University of Cincinnati Medical Center. She is a member of Black Breastfeeding Research, Education, Awareness, & Support Team, Southwest Ohio Breastfeeding Coalition, and Trinity Mother & Baby Outreach. She became an International Board Certified Lactation Consultant in 2015 and has worked with numerous mothers and infants supporting them on their breastfeeding journeys. As a graduate, she is heavily involved in research. Her research interests are: Investigations to improve infant mortality among minority and vulnerable population; Attest racial disparities to eliminate health care biases that systematically oppress breastfeeding equity. In the local community, she has volunteered and served as content expert for the Annual Black Family Reunion, NAACP Annual Conference, First Ladies Health Day. She is a breastfeeding advocate, peer, and a breastfeeding mother

Dr Nathalie Charpak is currently the scientific coordinator and an attending paediatrician at the Kangaroo Mother Care program of the San Ignacio University Hospital. In addition, she is a founding member, senior researcher and director of the “Fundacion Canguro” in Bogotá, Colombia since 1994. Dr Charpak received her M.D. from the “Paris Sud” University and her paediatrician diploma from “Rene Descartes” University in Paris, France. She migrated in 1986 to Colombia where she validated her title as Paediatrician and begin in 1989 to work on the evaluation of the Kangaroo Mother Care (KMC) program. She is now a Colombian citizen. With several colleagues she founded in 1994 the “Fundacion Canguro” in Bogotá, an NGO devoted to research, teaching, training and direct medical care related to KMC method for premature infants that besides conducting large clinical trials on KMC has been actively disseminating the method mainly in low and middle income countries in Latin America, South East Asia, India, Africa and Eastern Europe. In 1996 in Trieste Italy she was among the group of international researchers, physicians and nurses who founded the International Kangaroo Network -INK- an international alliance devoted to collaborating, enhancing and disseminating the KMC method. Dr Charpak continues to work as an attending paediatrician in the KMC program and his current research interest is in integrative methods for summarizing and putting into action what is known about KMC in the form of evidence-based clinical practice guidelines. She is also recently involved as coordinator in conducting evaluations of long term (adolescents and young adults) neurodevelopment outcomes in preterm infants exposed or not exposed to KMC during the neonatal period.

Nathan Riley, MD, is an OBGYN and hospice physician in Louisville, KY. He also works remotely as a telehealth palliative care physician for Resolution Care. He is also the host of the Obgyno Wino Podcast (link to: www.obgynowino.com), and, later this year, he will be launching a biodynamic wellness service to address the multitude of women's health issues for which Western medicine is not equipped to manage (link to: www.belovedholistics.com). When he's not connecting with his patients, you can find him mountain biking, climbing, gardening, or tossing his daughter dangerously high in the air.

Nekisha Killings is an equity strategist, internationally board-certified lactation consultant, and maternal and child health advocate who speaks, teaches, and facilitates on topics related to equity and dismantling bias across various sectors.

When she is not home educating 4 future world changers, she acts as a Director of Equity, Inclusion and Belonging at Lactation Education Resources and consults organizations on creating and implementing strategies to better support marginalized communities.

Nekisha holds a Masters in Public Health and penned the chapter titled Cultural Humility in the latest Core Curriculum for Interdisciplinary Lactation Support text. Nekisha is on a mission to normalize brown breasts and nipples in health education, thereby better equipping healthcare providers to accurately assess and treat people of color.

Nekisha's work is rooted in a compassion and candor that could only have been cultivated in years of supporting new parents during their first days of parenthood. Nekisha is an active duty military spouse who has been awarded the Spouse of the Year designation for her volunteer efforts supporting families.

Nell Tharpe, CNM, CRNFA, MS, FACNM began her journey to midwifery after the birth of her first child. She attended births as a nurse and with home birth midwives, and then obtained her Certificate in Nurse-Midwifery from the State University of New York in 1986. She began active clinical practice in Maine, offering women holistic health care, attending births in small community hospitals, and working in the operating room as a surgical first assistant which is where she honed her suturing skills.

A committed life-long learner, Nell received her Master of Science degree in Midwifery from Philadelphia University in 2003. Nell’s passion is bridging the gap between clinical practice and emerging evidence. Her focus is on teaching midwifery skills to foster excellence in midwifery and women’s health care in every practice setting.

Nell is the original author of the widely used midwifery text Clinical Practice Guidelines for Midwifery and Women’s Health, now in its 5th edition, and sold in over 24 counties. She is an adjunct professor at Thomas Jefferson University, in Philadelphia and provides workshops as an independent Perinatal and Women’s Health Consultant.

Nichelle Clark is an International Board Certified Lactation Consultant (IBCLC), wife, and mother of one residing in Chesapeake, Virginia. She is the owner of SonShine & Rainbows Lactation Services. Born and raised in Upper Marlboro, MD, Nichelle joined the United States Navy in 2010 and served honorably for 7.5 years. In 2020, she founded Black Breastfeeding 365, an organization that seeks to bridge the gap between Black Parents and the Lactation Professionals who serve them. When she’s not spending time with her husband and 4 year old son, she serves as a United States Lactation Consultant Association (USLCA) Advisory Board Member and Clinical Lactation Journal Social Media Editor. In her spare time, she admins multiple online support groups for People of Color, providing breastfeeding support and lactation education to her community. As an exclusive pumping mom herself, Nichelle is a champion for breastfeeding parents to write their own rules and breastfeed their way.

Dr Embleton has worked in neonatal medicine for the past 25 years, completing clinical training and a research doctorate in neonatal nutrition in the UK, and a neonatal fellowship in Vancouver, Canada. He has worked as a Consultant Neonatal Pediatrician in Newcastle, UK since 2002, one of the largest UK neonatal units, caring for sick preterm and term born neonates. He leads a broad portfolio of research focused on nutrition and gut health in preterm infants. Areas of work include determining patterns of early gut microbial colonization, and how these may predict the development of necrotizing enterocolitis (NEC) and sepsis. He is a project team member of large neonatal feeding trials recruiting >5000 infants in the UK, as well as coordinating mechanistic studies using microbiomic and metabolomic analyses. He chairs the multi-disciplinary UK Neonatal Nutrition Network (N3) and is a member of the Committee of Nutrition for ESPGHAN.

Dr. Nichole Fairbrother is an assistant professor with the UBC Department of Psychiatry and the Island Medical Program. She received her Ph.D. in clinical psychology from the University of British Columbia in 2002, and subsequently completed a post-doctoral fellowship in women’s reproductive health through the Child and Family Research Institute and the UBC Department of Health Care and Epidemiology. Dr. Fairbrother’s research is in the area of reproductive mental health with an emphasis on perinatal anxiety disorders and epidemiology. Her current research projects include (1) a CIHR-funded study of maternal postpartum thoughts of infant-related harm and their relation to postpartum obsessive compulsive disorder (ppOCD), (2) a study of maternal perinatal anxiety disorders prevalence, (3) a series of experiments to investigate cognitive and affective responses to infant crying and infant shaking, and (4) an online survey to assess the newly developed Childbirth Fear Questionnaire (CFQ) as a screening tool for specific phobia, fear of childbirth.

After studying biology at Meredith College in North Carolina, Nicola Singletary, PhD, MAT, IBCLC spent the early part of her career sharing her love of science with middle school students. It was not until after the birth of her first child in 2007 and the challenges she faced breastfeeding that she became interested in pursuing a career in breastfeeding support. She enrolled at North Carolina State University to study human nutrition and completed the Mary Rose Tully Training Initiative through the Carolina Global Breastfeeding Institute at UNC Chapel Hill in 2012. In the fall of 2013, she opened Harmony Lactation, LLC with the goal of helping mothers meet their breastfeeding goals. She recently completed her PhD in Nutrition and is a postdoctoral researcher at NCSU; her research focuses on breastfeeding education. She is also co-owner of Next Level Lactation, an educational and consulting company for lactation professionals.

Nikki Hunter Greenaway is a board-certified family nurse practitioner and internationally board-certified lactation consultant in New Orleans, Louisiana. In 2011, she founded Nurse Nikki Family & Maternity Services, a health consulting firm where she educates and counsels women, families, schools and businesses about pregnancy, birth, postpartum, breastfeeding, and new baby care. October 2018 she opened Bloom Maternal Health, a women’s health clinic that provides prenatal counseling and postpartum recovery care. Nurse Nikki is the co-founder of Louisiana’s first free-standing infant feeding clinic, the New Orleans Breastfeeding Center. She also co-created Café au Lait Breastfeeding Circle for Families of Color and Nikki & Nikki Lactation Career Consultants two important resources needed to improve breastfeeding outcomes specifically in the Black community. Nikki is a wife and mother of 3 mini breastfeeding activists.

Nikki started as an LPN in 1971, got her RN and BSN, and a graduate degree. She is an author, a teacher, a holistic lactation consultant, a craniosacral therapy practitioner, and a baby body worker (teaching Infant Massage and TummyTime! She is mother to 2 wonderful (breastfed for a long time) daughters, wife to 3 interesting men, only one of whom was the right one for the past 37 years, Rafe!

Her publications include the books, Complementary and Alternative Medicine in Breastfeeding Therapy and A Breastfeeding Owner’s Manual; the monographs, “Benefits of Breastfeeding and Their Economic Impact” and “Sexuality and Breastfeeding” and the educational pamphlet “How to help yourself through labor”. She has been the reviews editor for the journal Clinical Lactation, and has worked as the lactation consultant for the division of Maternal, Child, and Family Health at the Philadelphia Department of Public Health since 2006.

Starting in 1971 as a LPN, Nikki has worked in clinics, homes, city and county health departments, hospitals, intensive care units, medical schools, and universities. Her focus shifted from intensive care to breastfeeding and public health in 1975. She has worked in person and virtually. She is a nurse, a lactation consultant, a bodyworker, an infant massage instructor, a public speaker, the author of two books and a teacher. Her favorite things now are being a grandmother, learning to grow vegetables, playing old-time and cajun guitar, and walking in beautiful places.

Nikki is mum to 3 wonderful boys, one with significant physical disability. Diving deep into the world of disability, child development and neurobiology due to her son's Cerebral Palsy, Nikki learnt to look beyond standard protocols when seeking interventions for her family to find additional knowledge and understanding that can be incorporated with traditional approaches to enhance and personalise therapy and care. This approach ultimately led Nikki to discover the power of primitive reflex integration.

Nikki deeply believes that life and circumstances, no matter how entrenched they seem, can always be improved. She thoroughly enjoys the opportunity to work with families and individuals to realise the individuality of each family member and discover the increased health, development and ease that's achievable.

Nikki began her journey with Rhythmic Movement Training (RMT) in Melbourne in 2013 and was astounded with the positive changes such an easy and small intervention could make. She has since worked with adults and children, using RMT, to integrate retained primitive reflexes and to ease their associated challenges. She particularly enjoys working with children and delights in seeing them actively participate in the sessions and very quickly own and take control of their sessions. The profound improvements and changes they see and feel in their bodies continues to amaze her.

Nikki balances her RMT work with days in the classroom as a relief teacher, relieving across the years from Reception to Year 12. Being in the classroom is always a fascinating and enjoyable time assisting students and watching reflexes at work. Nikki is also fascinated in the transformative power of epigenetics and is a co-developer of ph360's Parenting360 Course.

In her play time, Nikki loves surfing, reading, pilates and running to keep her body feeling alive and moving and to keep life feeling manageable!

Dr Nils Bergman calls himself a Public Health Physician, and currently promotes and researches skin-to-skin contact on a fulltime basis.

He is an Honorary Senior Lecturer at the University of Cape Town, South Africa, and a research affiliate of the South African Medical Research Council.

Dr. Bergman was born in Sweden and raised in Zimbabwe, where he also later worked as a mission doctor. He received his medical degree (MB ChB) at the University of Cape Town, and later a Masters in Public Health at the University of the Western Cape. During his years in Zimbabwe he completed a doctoral dissertation (MD, equivalent to PhD) on scorpion stings. He has worked in rural South Africa, Zimbabwe and Sweden, and his last posting was Senior Medical Superintendent of Mowbray Maternity Hospital in Cape Town, overseeing 18000 births per year.

He enjoys sharing the wildlife of Africa with his wife and three youngsters.

Nim Tottenham, PhD is a Professor of Psychology at Columbia University and Director of the Developmental Affective Neuroscience Laboratory. Her research examines brain development underlying emotional behavior in humans. In particular, her laboratory investigates the interplay between brain development and caregiving experienced by humans. Her research has highlighted fundamental changes in brain circuitry across development and the powerful role that early experiences, such as caregiving and stress, have on the construction of these circuits. She has authored over 130 journal articles and book chapters. She is a frequent lecturer both nationally and internationally on human brain and emotional development. She is a Fellow of the Association for Psychological Science and of the Society for Experimental Psychologists, and her scientific contributions have been recognized by the National Institute of Mental Health BRAINS Award, the American Psychological Association’s Distinguished Scientific Award for Early Career Contribution to Psychology, and most recently by the National Academy of Sciences Troland Research Award and the Flux Congress Linda Spear Award.

I am interested in the prevention of obesity, type 2 diabetes, and cardiovascular disease from the perspectives of life course, nutritional and microbiome epidemiology. I believe that primordial prevention of lifestyle and environmental risk factors, particularly in high-risk and nutritionally transitioning populations, provides the greatest opportunity to curb the epidemics of metabolic and cardiovascular diseases. As such, my research aims to identify early-life, modifiable antecedents of cardiometabolic disease in diverse populations locally and globally. Most recently my research has focused on understanding the determinants of gut microbiota and how they can be leveraged to prevent metabolic diseases. My research effort is partitioned among the Department of Epidemiology at Johns Hopkins School of Public Health; the Welch Center for Prevention, Epidemiology and Clinical Research; and the Johns Hopkins Food, Body and Mind Institute.