Lactation & Breastfeeding Online Course(s) & Continuing Education

Joanna Nawfal is a board-certified lactation consultant, a childbirth educator, a hypnobirthing instructor, and a certified baby massage instructor, with 15 years of experience in the field of maternal child health and a Masters of Science in Nursing. Joanna is passionate about helping mothers and babies in their breastfeeding journey, and was inspired to start this path after having difficulties 10 years ago, breastfeeding her first child, Adam. She loves teaching expecting parents about the beauty of birth, normal newborn behavior, and is exceptionally passionate about nutrition for mothers as she believes that we can always find cure in food.

Joanna enjoys doing home visits and clinic consultations for breastfeeding. She also offers birth preparation classes in her country, Lebanon, where she lives with her husband and two children. Her favorite activity is getting lost in Lebanon’s bountiful nature where the mountains and the sea are in close proximity. To Joanna, Lebanon, is the most beautiful country in the world.

Evelyne Ruf is a family physician from France, and an International Board Lactation Consultant (since 1993). More than 25 years ago, she shifted to the United Arab Emirates (UAE), working for the Ministry of Health, in Sharjah MCH Center. She opened there the first Lactation Clinic in the UAE, with the support of volunteers from Breastfeeding Friends (BFF), which she had co-founded. Five years ago, the Lactation Clinic has been shifted to the Family Health Promotion Center, where it continues to offer, to a very cosmopolitan population, skilled lactation support as well as assessment and release of tethered oral tissues.

A member of the National Breastfeeding Committee, Evelyne has been involved in the Baby-Friendly Hospital Initiative as a lecturer, trainer, adviser and assessor. Her workplace became the first Baby-Friendly Health Center in the UAE and received the IBCLC Care Award (community category) in 2015.

She has also been actively involved in the Sharjah Baby-Friendly Emirate Campaign, a multi-sectorial initiative launched in 2012, and presented its achievements during Gold Lactation 4 years ago.

With her husband of 34 years, she is the proud and grateful mother of 5 grown-up breastfed children and the grandmother of 4 breastfed little ones.

Tamara Drenttel Brand holds an MA in Near Eastern Studies from the University of Arizona and a Master’s in Public Health (MPH) from the American University of Beirut. She spent 10 years in the Middle East, where she worked as a public health practitioner, infant and maternal health consultant and an IBCLC. She has supported breastfeeding dyads from all over the world both in private practice and as a volunteer. In 2011, she founded and still actively facilitates “Mama 2 Mama Beirut Breastfeeding Support,” the largest breastfeeding peer support network in the Middle East (currently at 25k+ members). Additionally, she founded Galactablog, a professional group for lactation specialists and those aspiring-to-be (currently at 4.7k+ members) and has authored several articles for La Leche League’s monthly leader publications in both the Middle East and Ireland.

She is currently an international speaker on the topics dealing with breastfeeding in the Middle East, innovative lactation teaching strategies, working in resource-scarce settings, providing culturally sensitive lactation support, developing and implementing peer counselor training programs, mast cell disease and other related topics. Due to her own chronic health conditions, she has a special interest in educating others about mast cell disease and supporting those with chronic illnesses. She currently resides in a seaside village in Ireland with her family.

Andrea Herron, is one of the first and longest continuous certified pediatric nurse practitioners in the United States. After more than 40 years working with breastfeeding mothers and their babies and teaching parenting classes, she is among one of the most experienced consultant in the field of lactation. Regardless of the issue or concern, Andrea has guided thousands of mothers to meet their breastfeeding and early parenting goals through support groups, lactation consultations, and childrearing education. After receiving a Master's in pediatric nursing from UCLA, Andrea became an early pioneer in the back-to-breastfeeding movement, and educated health professionals as an instructor in the UCLA lactation educator course, all over the United States. Her private lactation practice, Growing with Baby in San Luis Obispo, California, was used as the national model for private practices by Women Infant and Children (WIC), the federally funded health and nutrition program. One of her favorite and most popular topics she teaches through her Growing with Baby parenting groups is, Understanding Your Infant’s Temperament. This topic and many of the other topics she teaches are included in her newly released book, Suckle, Sleep, Thrive: Breastfeeding Success Through Understanding Your Baby’s Cues. Co-written with Lisa Rizzo.
Andrea has been married to Larry Herron, an orthopedic spine surgeon, for over 35 years. They are the proud parents of a grown son, two Labradors, and a cat. The couple reside in Shell Beach, California.

Lori has worked with high-risk infants/children and their families for 30 years. She graduated from Colorado State University with a degree in Occupational Therapy. In 1996, she became certified in Pediatric Neuro-developmental Treatment. In 2004, she acquired an Advance Practice Certification in Feeding, Eating, and Swallowing.
After graduation, she worked at Simi Valley Hospital, Child Development Center. In this setting, Lori provided occupational therapy services to children age birth to 16 years old with a variety of diagnoses and needs. For the past 17 years she has been providing occupational therapy services to high-risk babies/children in their home and community as a consultant for Tri-counties Regional Center and through her private practice. Her focus has been on feeding difficulties and treating infant developmental delays. In addition, she sees patients privately and jointly with Andrea Herron RN, MN, CPNP, IBCLC, in the Growing With Baby Center. Recently, Lori has joined the NICU team at Sierra Vista Regional Medical Center as a feeding specialist. Lori lives with her teenage son and husband in beautiful Morro Bay California.

Lyndsey is an experienced paediatric nurse, children’s public health nurse, International Board Certified Lactation Consultant, Holistic Sleep Coach, researcher and responsive parenting advocate. She has worked in hospitals, clinics, the community and within clients’ homes for 20 years, serving within the UK NHS, in private practice and voluntarily.
The co-founder and clinical director of the Holistic Sleep Coaching program, Lyndsey regularly teaches internationally, as well as providing mentorship for newer sleep coaches. She is passionate about responsive feeding, gentle parenting and promoting parental confidence and well-being.
With Professor Amy Brown, she is the co-founder of Thought Rebellion – an education and publishing company seeking to inspire, challenge and equip professionals and writers in the parenting, lactation and perinatal space with an evidence based revolution.
Lyndsey is currently a PhD researcher at Swansea University, exploring the needs and challenges of medically complex breastfed infants and children. In 2019 she set up the Breastfeeding the Brave project to raise awareness of the unique breastfeeding needs of chronically, critically, and terminally ill children in the paediatric setting. The mother of a childhood cancer survivor, she often talks about the impact of chronic serious illness on families, and seeks to support other families living through a serious childhood illness.
Lyndsey is a respected international speaker and teacher, and regularly speaks out against the dominant sleep training culture, as well as advocating for the rights of families to receive high-quality, compassionate and expert support. She is the author of Holistic Sleep Coaching (2018), Let’s talk about your new family’s sleep (2020), Still Awake (2021), Breastfeeding the Brave (2022) and co-author of The Writing Book (2022).

Kay Hoover became an International Board Certified Lactation Consultant in 1985. She sat for the very first exam and has taken the exam 4 times. She has worked as a private practice lactation consultant, a hospital lactation consultant at 5 different hospitals, the lactation consultant for the Philadelphia Department of Public Health, for The Center for Childhood Obesity Research at The Pennsylvania State University, and the Pennsylvania Department of Health. She currently is retired. She has presented workshops at national and international conferences and is a co-author of The Breastfeeding Atlas.

Ted Greiner received a PhD in nutrition for developing countries from Cornell University. For 19 years he worked as nutrition advisor for the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency, based at Uppsala University where he was Associate Professor of International Child Health, helping to ensure their long-term support for IBFAN and WABA. Dr. Greiner was Professor of Nutrition at Hanyang University in South Korea for seven years. He has consulted for UNICEF, World Bank, FAO and others. He is now retired and edits the journal World Nutrition. He has lived in 8 countries and worked in 10 more. His areas of research expertise include infant feeding and programs to combat vitamin A, iron and iodine deficiency. In the 1970s, he did the first scientific work on the impact of baby food advertising on breastfeeding patterns. His PhD dissertation was on the planning and evaluation of a 1978-81 project to protect, support and promote breastfeeding in Yemen (terminology quickly adopted by UN agencies). Over the next decades, the duration of breastfeeding there doubled. During the planning the Innocenti meeting, he represented Sida, one of the 4 agencies involved. He was active in changing how WHO viewed HIV and infant feeding. He has over 100 breastfeeding-related publications.

Carmela is a family medicine MD, bachelor´s degree in Public Health Education, and IBCLC since 2005. She is also a BFHI Evaluator and the co founder and past president of the Spanish Lactation Consultant Association (AECCLM). She works in a private Family Wellness Clinic, Raices, as person in charge of the lactation program, which includes two IBCLCs attending breastfeeding families and an extensive offer of breastfeeding training for health care professionals and breastfeeding peer counsellors. The team has trained over three thousand doctors, midwives and nurses from both the Spanish National Health Service and the private sector in Spain. She is a frequent lecturer at national conferences, and has also lectured internationally, both on-site and online. She is the author of several scientific papers on breast pain, mastitis and tongue tie. She is also the author of a breastfeeding/parenting book, “Amar con los Brazos Abiertos” (To Love with Open Arms). She is married to Carlos and they homeschool their four children.

Associate Professor Luke Grzeskowiak is a clinical pharmacist and Practitioner Fellow in the College of Medicine and Public Health at Flinders University and the South Australian Health and Medical Research Institute, Australia. He is passionate about improving health outcomes for mothers and babies through the development and promotion of more effective and safer approaches towards medicines use. Luke has been undertaken research involving the use of domperidone for 10-years. He is currently the lead investigator on a number of projects examining the use of domperidone to increase breast milk supply in clinical practice, predictors of treatment response to domperidone, and causes of low breast milk supply. He is also the lead investigator on a large clinical trial comparing the effects of different doses of domperidone in the treatment of lactation insufficiency. He has published widely on the topic of treatment for low breast milk supply, with many of these publications cited in clinical practice guidelines locally and internationally.

Mariana Colmenares Castano was born in Mexico City, and from an early age she was fascinated by animals and nature.She studied medicine at the National University of Mexico (UNAM), and foundher passion as a pediatrician doing her residency at the National Pediatric Institute. When her first child was born she witnessed the lack of knowledge and commitment to breastfeeding within the medical profession, and so she decided to specialize in breastfeeding medicine. She certified as a Lactation Consultant (IBCLC) in 2011.Mariana is a member of the International Lactation Consultant Association, the Academy of Breastfeeding Medicine, and a proud founding member of the National Lactation Consultant Association of Mexico (ACCLAM), where she served on the Board of Directors as Education Coordinator (2014-2019). She is part of board director for the Academy of Breastfeeding Medicine for a 3 year period (2019-2022) and recently named as secretary for the Academy of Breastfeeding Medicine. Mariana is a member of the team for Breastfeeding Country Index BFCI, a project from Yale University and Universidad Iberoamericana. She is consultant for the National Health Institute in Mexico and has collaborated with UNICEF in breastfeeding projects and part of the steering committee for the WHO. She has spoken at national and international conferences, co-published numerous articles and co-authored a chapter for the National Academy of Medicine. At the moment she is a Clinical Fellow in Community Paediatrics in London.