Lactation & Breastfeeding Online Course(s) & Continuing Education

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.

Cecília Tomori is Associate Professor and Director of Global Public Health and Community Health at the Johns Hopkins School of Nursing with a joint appointment at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. She is a Hungarian American anthropologist and public health scholar whose work investigates the structural and sociocultural drivers that shape health, illness and health inequities. Dr. Tomori is an internationally recognized expert on breastfeeding, infant sleep and maternal child health.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, she has supported numerous organizations focused on maternal child health and health equity and advocated for equitable pandemic policies. She has authored three books on breastfeeding and reproduction, and published numerous articles on a range of public health and anthropological topics.

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.

Dr. Diane DiTomasso achieved a Diploma in Nursing from Newport Hospital School of Nursing; a Bachelor of Science in Nursing, a Master of Science in Nursing Education, and a PhD from the University of Rhode Island. She is an Associate Professor at the University of Rhode Island College of Nursing.

Her research focus is human lactation and infant weight. She has multiple publications in journals such as Journal of Gynecologic & Neonatal Nursing (JOGNN), Journal of Human Lactation, Journal of Perinatal and Neonatal Nursing, and Nursing for Women’s Health and has presented her work nationally and internationally.

Dr. DiTomasso has received various honors and awards with the most recent being the 2020 Suzanne Feetham Nurse Scientist Family Research Award by the Eastern Nursing Research Society (ENRS) and the 2020 Best of JOGNN Award as first author of the article, “Systematic Review of Expected Weight Changes After Birth for Full-Term, Breastfed Newborn. She has served as Principal Investigator for a variety of neonatal research studies. Dr. DiTomasso is a member of AWHONN, the International Lactation Consultant Association, the Eastern Nursing Research Society, and Sigma Theta Tau International. She currently serves as a Member on the AWHONN Research Advisory Panel.

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.

Amber Valentine is a Speech-Language Pathologist who graduated from the University of Kentucky with her MS in Communication Disorders. She is a Board Certified Specialist in Swallowing and Swallowing Disorders and an International Board Certified Lactation Consultant. She worked for Baptist Health Systems, Inc for 8 years before moving to Florida where she worked for Wolfsons Children’s Hospital and Mayo Florida. She is now back in Kentucky working for Baptist Health Lexington. She has experience in adults and pediatrics with feeding and swallowing difficulties including: bedside swallow evaluations, Modified Barium Swallow studies, FEES, and pediatric feeding evaluations including NICU. She has provided guest lectures for the University of Kentucky and the University of Louisville on feeding and swallowing topics. She has presented at the hospital level, local, state, national, and international levels on pediatric feeding/swallowing and breastfeeding.

Lillian Scott is a speech-language pathologist and certified lactation counselor employed by Baptist Health Lexington in Lexington, Kentucky. She received master’s degree in Speech-Language Pathology from Gallaudet University. She received dual bachelor degrees in Communication Sciences and Disorders and Special Education from the University of Kentucky. She has worked with pediatrics and adults in the areas of speech, language, and swallowing. She has NICU, Mother/baby, and outpatient clinical experience working with feeding dyads of breast and bottle feeding infants. In the area of adults and pediatrics, she has experience with clinical swallowing evaluations and Modified Barium Swallow Studies. She has experience with adult Fiberoptic Endoscopic Evaluations of swallowing (FEES). Her interest is in successful feeding by mouth for infants with complex medical histories and promoting breastfeeding in cultures that are not likely to receive the supports for feeding difficulties due to knowledge, costs, and/or access.

Dr. Hazelbaker has been a therapist in private practice for over 30 years. She specializes in cross-disciplinary treatment and to that end has taken training in several modalities to best assist her clients. She is a certified Craniosacral Therapist, a Lymph Drainage Therapy practitioner, a Tummy Time™ Trainer, a Haller Method practitioner, A Pre and Perinatal Psychology Educator, a Lactation Therapist Diplomate, an International Board Certified Lactation Consultant and a fellow of the International Lactation Consultant Association.

She earned her Master’s Degree from Pacific Oaks College (Human Development specializing in Human Lactation) and her doctorate from The Union Institute and University (Psychology, specializing in Energetic and Transformational healing.)

People recognize her as an expert on infant sucking issues caused by various structural problems like torticollis, plagiocephaly, brachycephaly and tissue shock-trauma. She invented the Hazelbaker™ FingerFeeder and the Infant Breastfeeding CranioSacral Protocol™ to assist in the resolution of this type of infant sucking dysfunction.

Dr. Jane Morton has had a long, fulfilling career as a general pediatrician, She has also had a long-standing interest in breastfeeding, from understanding its clinical benefits to practical solutions for mothers having difficulty in providing breastmilk to their infants.  Over the years, she has conducted research on human milk and breastfeeding and has designed and implemented systems and policies to help breastfeeding mothers.  She produced award winning videos on this topic, including “Breastfeeding: A Guide to Getting Started”, “A Preemie Needs His Mother: Breastfeeding a Premature Baby” and “Making Enough Milk, the Key to Successful Breastfeeding”.  These have been translated and widely used in thousands of hospitals to train both staff and new mothers. As an executive board member of both the Academy of Breastfeeding Medicine and the American Academy of Pediatrics Section on Breastfeeding, she enjoyed working to enlarge the footprint of breastfeeding, both nationally and internationally.

For a 5 year period, she joined the neonatology clinical faculty at Stanford to develop the Breastfeeding Medicine Program.  In that position, she had the opportunity to design a nationally recognized educational program, conduct and publish original research on milk production and composition in mothers of very low birth weight infants, and publish a study with the AAP on the efficacy of a breastfeeding curriculum for physician residents in training. She was an advisor to the California Perinatal Quality Care Collaborative, and was a key author of the toolkit “Nutritional Support for the Very Low Birth Weight Infant”. She co-authored the book Best Medicine: Human Milk in the NICU.  She has published extensively and presented her original research and educational workshops internationally. She continues to teach at Stanford where she is an Adjunct Clinical Professor of Pediatrics, Emerita.