Lactation & Breastfeeding Online Course(s) & Continuing Education

Shel works part time for the NHS in northwest England, and has four adolescents.

In addition to this, she runs a small private IBCLC practice specialising in the unsettled baby, those with faltering weight and those who are formula fed, and also holds a variety of consultant and trustee roles in various national and international organisations for advocacy and education around infant feeding; these include being Clinical Director for the breastfeeding support app AnyaHealth, being co-chair of Nursing Matters, an advocacy organisation for the breastfed infant, and being vice-chair of the UK Association for Milk Banking.

Shel has been on the development committee for 3 NICE guidelines including one on Faltering Growth, has co-authored 3 Cochrane systematic reviews, and written a book “Why Infant Formula Feeding Matters” (2022). In 2021 Shel began work towards a PhD in further understanding how best to support families with unsettled babies in universal services, which she conducts part time alongside her other commitments.

She teaches in person and online, both in her NHS role and in the consultant roles, and thoroughly enjoys sharing the knowledge she has acquired to improve the experience of families everywhere.

Cecilia Jevitt is the Midwifery Director and a tenured associate professor at the University of British Columbia, Faculty of Medicine. From 2013 to 2018, she directed the Yale School of Nursing’s Midwifery and Women’s Health Nurse Practitioner master’s degree programs. She has done capacity-building teaching and curriculum consultations in Switzerland, Laos, China and Ghana.
Jevitt studied midwifery at Emory University. Her 1993 doctorate in applied medical anthropology is from the University of South Florida. She established an academic division of midwifery with the University of South Florida College of Medicine while jointly appointed to the Colleges of Nursing and Public Health.
She is an elected Fellow of the American College of Nurse-Midwives and is the At Large Member of the FACNM Board. Jevitt was a Florida Nurses Association Great 100 Nurse in 2009, the 2010 Reviewer of the Year for the Journal of Midwifery & Women’s Health, the University of South Florida Department of Anthropology’s Distinguished Alumni in 2012, and a 2014 Connecticut Nightingale Excellence in Nursing Award winner.
Jevitt’s scholarship focuses on perinatal weight gain optimization and integrating obesity prevention and management into women’s health especially the perinatal and lactation periods.

Mary Ryngaert is a Pediatric Nurse Practitioner since 1987 and an International Board-Certified Lactation Consultant since 2000. She received her MSN in the Primary Care of Children at Catholic University in Washington, DC. In her clinic at the University of Florida, she sees families for breastfeeding issues for the duration of the breastfeeding journey and provides education for pediatric residents. She is active in the local breastfeeding coalition and serves as a consultant/coordinator for the hospital Baby Friendly program. She has a special interest in supporting the development of peer counselors, especially women of color, to provide breastfeeding support within the community. She served as the Chair for the National Association of Pediatric Nurse Practitioners (NAPNAP) Breastfeeding Special Interest Group for six years and is a delegate to the US Breastfeeding Committee for NAPNAP . She was a co-author for the 2018 update to the NAPNAP Position Statement on Breastfeeding.

Kathy O'Grady Venter is a registered nurse and retired midwife. She has been an International Board Certified Lactation Consultant (IBCLC) since 1990.

Kathy is a WHO|UNICEF trained BFHI Assessor and Trainer (1991) through IBFAN Africa and currently she is a CoChair of the BFI assessment committee of the Breastfeeding Committee for Canada (BCC), BFI Lead Assessor – BCC Baby Friendly Initiative (BFI) Assessment Committee, Lactation consultant Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre in Toronto and Breastfeeding educator and BFI consultant.

In the past, Kathy has been Chair for the BCC, Chair of the BFI assessment/education committee of the Baby Friendly Initiative Ontario and the recipient of the Canadian Lactation Consult Association Award for Clinical Excellence.

Alex has been a lactation consultant in the Washington, DC area since 2010. In addition to running her private practice, Bethesda-Chevy Chase Lactation Consultants, Alex cares for breastfeeding moms and babies at Hirsch Pediatrics in Rockville, MD. After earning her master's in English Literature and teaching for several years, Alex met two extraordinary people that inspired her to enter the field of lactation: her daughters. Alex has worked at Inova Fairfax Hospital and Sibley Memorial Hospital as an in-patient lactation consultant. In 2015, she graduated summa cum laude from the University of Maryland Baltimore School of Nursing with a Bachelors of Science in Nursing. Alex is committed to increasing awareness for impaired mammary organ development (IMOD) and impaired mammary organ function (IMOF).

Felisha Floyd, BS, CLC, IBCLC is currently Lactation Coordinator for Hospital Corporations of America system in Florida. She also offers infant feeding support, mentorship, and education to her local community via her private practice, Beyond Breastfeeding. Felisha is the founder of Our Brown Baby, a community based breastfeeding support group, which serves to provide specialized culturally sensitive breastfeeding support to families of color. In addition to these roles, Felisha is one of the founding mothers and current President of the non-profit The National Association of Professional and Peer Lactation Supporters of Color, affectionately known as "NAPPLSC". She is also a Center for Social Inclusion First Food Equity Cohort member. Previously, she worked as a Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) Breastfeeding Peer Counselor and Breastfeeding Coordinator.

Fueled by her professional and personal passions to ensure that all mothers have access to quality breastfeeding support and resources, she has fervently pledged to reduce breastfeeding disparities in the African American community. To this end, she continually makes efforts to help increase breastfeeding rates in the African American community by unapologetically fighting that which contributes to racial health disparities. Fearlessly obsessive, she is affectionately known as the social media guru "Blactavist!" (Black Lactation Activist). This online community consists of approximately 38,000 supporters on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, and is dedicated to empowering African American families to breastfeed.

Felisha is a national leader, an experienced trainer and speaker, and a consultant. Through her aforementioned roles, she has provided training programs across the US on topics of clinical breastfeeding, racial equity, first food justice, mentorship, power of collective impact and more. Her previous experience includes national trainings for WIC and professional consultancies for WIC Loving Support Program and the Boston Medical College's Communities and Hospitals Advancing Maternity Practices grant funded program.

Dedicated to improving the level and diversity of lactation support nationally, Felisha trains and mentors aspiring lactation consultants through her private practice. She is the co-author of Clinical Internships for the Next Generation of IBCLCs, an article featured in The Journal of Human Lactation. Felisha also serves with high honor as a member of the Global Board of Directors for Mom2Mom Global, the Advocacy Chair for the State of Florida Breastfeeding Coalition, Secretary of the Board of Directors for the United States Breastfeeding Committee (USBC). She has been honored as a recipient of the Inaugural Concrete Rose Award by Reaching Our Sisters Everywhere and recognized by USBC with the Legacy Award.

Barbara D. Robertson, IBCLC, has been involved in education for over 34 years. She received a Bachelor’s degree in Elementary Education in 1988 and her Master’s in Education in 1995. Barbara left teaching elementary students in 1995 to raise her two children. Barbara is now the Director of The Breastfeeding Center of Ann Arbor and of the brand new business LactaLearning.

The Breastfeeding Center of Ann Arbor will still continue to serve breast/chestfeeding families and now LactaLearning will be dedicated to all of Barbara’s professional lactation trainings. Barbara has developed two 95 hour professional lactation training, a group training and a completely self study training with Nancy Mohrbacher. Barbara’s idea of creating professional book groups has exploded with her hosting Making More Milk with Lisa Marasco, Supporting Sucking Skills with Cathy Watson Genna, Breastfeeding Answers, 2nd Edition with Nancy Mohrbacher, and new for the fall, Safe Infant Sleep with Dr. James McKenna. Barbara will be hosting a one day online conference in the fall with Lisa Marasco and Cathy Watson Genna using all of her tech savvy skills to make this a one of a kind experience. Barbara is also a speaker for hire on a wide variety of topics including Motivational Interviewing. Barbara volunteered for the United States Lactation Consultation Association as the Director of Professional Development for 4.5 years.

She just retired as Associate Editor for Clinical Lactation, a journal she helped create for USLCA. Barbara has free podcasts, a blog, and Youtube videos which can all be found on her websites lactalearning.com and bfcaa.com. She has written many articles as well. She loves working with parents and babies, helping them with breast/chestfeeding problems in whatever way she can.

Julie Matheney knew when she was ten years old that she wanted to feed babies for a living. She earned her Masters in speech-language pathology and has worked with feeding and swallowing disorders for over a decade. While most people assume speech therapists teach children who stutter or work on ""r's and s's"", the bulk of her job is feeding and swallowing as part of a hospital based, rehabilitation team. The same things you speak with, you eat with! Over the past decade working in the NICU, she discovered her passion for working with breastfeeding families and became an IBCLC in 2018.

She transitioned out of the hospital in July 2021 and currently works full time in private practice as a lactation consultant in Los Angeles. She enjoys helping the whole family in the feeding process to meet their goals.

Her loving husband is always supportive of her in her vocational passions and was instrumental in launching her private practice. She has two young daughters, both of whom were exclusively breastfed until two years old.

Melissa Cole is a board-certified lactation consultant, neonatal oral-motor assessment professional and clinical herbalist in private practice. Melissa is passionate about providing comprehensive, holistic lactation support and improving the level of clinical lactation skills for health professional. She enjoys teaching, researching and writing about wellness and lactation-related topics. Her bachelor’s degree is in maternal/child health and lactation and her master’s degree is in therapeutic herbalism. 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.

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.