Counseling Skills Online Course(s) & Continuing Education

Amber McCann is an international board certified lactation consultant (IBCLC) whose current interests involve connecting with new families through social media channels and teaching others in her profession to do the same. After maintaining a busy private practice in the Washington DC suburbs and working with an innovative model of care at the Breastfeeding Center of Pittsburgh, she now provides marketing and communications guidance for a number of birth and breastfeeding organizations. When she’s not furiously tweeting or watching terrible reality TV, you can find her eating her way through all of the fantastic restaurants in her new hometown of Pittsburgh and snuggling her three children.

Jeanette McCulloch, IBCLC, has been combining communications work and women’s health advocacy for more than 20 years. She is a co-founder of BirthSwell, which is improving infant and maternal health - and the way we talk about birth and breastfeeding - through strategic communications and social media. She is a board member of Citizens for Midwifery, and is active in local, statewide, and national birth and breastfeeding advocacy projects.

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.

Lesley Everest has been practising as a birth, postpartum, and end-of-life doula in Montreal over the last 26 years. She is the founder of MotherWit Doula Care and MotherWit Doula Training. Lesley's professional background in many forms of somatic/emotional support therapies and inter-spiritual ministry informs her work as a teacher of human resilience , as do the births and parenting of her own four kids, and her experience of healing from cancer. She has learned over the years that a good birth and early parenting experience is less about goals being met and more about feeling safe and respected. Lesley believes that the journey into family-hood matters for all members, serving as a transformational event that has the power to shape early parenting and the next generations. Lesley's diplomatic and collaborative nature has made her a sought after speaker in the North American birth and parenting conference circuits, as well as a facilitator of workshops geared towards soft skills building for medical care providers. Lesley is resourced by long walks in nature, late night dancing with friends to ‘80’s music, and visits to the spa.

Tanya Singleton is a registered nurse with over 35 years of experience in Maternal-Child nursing. More than half of that career was as a Labor and Delivery nurse, certified in High-Risk Perinatal nursing. Tanya is also an IBCLC lactation consultant and Lamaze childbirth educator. She retired as United States Army Nurse Corp officer in 2003 and began working in private practice as a lactation consultant and childbirth educator. She has run several community non-profits in the Fredericksburg, Virginia area that dealt with issues related to women’s and children’s health promotion and illness prevention. Tanya is committed to quality education and lifelong learning, and has taught maternal-child and pediatric nursing to students in the Rappahannock Region of Virginia, sharing her various clinical anecdotes in classroom and in labs. She is an advocate for Perinatal Grief Support and early detection of post-partum depression. She is owner and proprietor of The Baby Whisperer, providing in-home support in childbirth education, breastfeeding and parenting. She is the mother of a blended family of five adult children and Nana to three.

With over 25 years’ experience as a relationship counsellor, parents’ group facilitator, mental health educator, partner and mum, Elly Taylor has become an internationally known parenthood preparation and perinatal relationship expert and the award-winning author of Becoming Us. Elly’s passion is preparing parents for a happy and healthy family—at any stage in their parenthood journey, and especially in a challenging world. Her Becoming Us approach includes fathers and partners in all aspects of pregnancy, birth and beyond, harnesses the attachment bond between couples to stabilise them through the life changes and challenges of parenthood and links both parents into community services to support the mental, emotional and relational wellbeing of the whole family.

Elly has served as an advisor for numerous university research projects and her ground-breaking Becoming Us developmental framework has now become a comprehensive multi-disciplinary education and professional training and courses for parents. In a full circle moment, Elly recently trained midwives, allied health and therapy professionals in her local community and now Becoming Us Nest Building Sessions are preparing expectant parents in the hospitals where her children were born. Elly lives in Sydney, Australia with her firefighter husband, their three kidults and an abundance of pets.

I am the mother of three breastfed children. Certified as an IBCLC in 2007, the next year, in 2008, setup the first IBCLC clinic in the medical center in Taiwan. As the President of the Chinese Lactation Consultant Association from 2015 till now. I have been teaching in the university for 30 years and as a part-time associate professor in the Department of Midwife & Women Health, National Taipei University of Nursing and Health Science, Taiwan now. After I retired from the university, I fund and as the CEO of WELL International Co., aims to promote the three-stages certification of profession lactation support competence.

Cathy Carothers is co-director of Every Mother, a non-profit organization providing lactation training for health professionals. An International Board Certified Lactation Consultant since 1996, she has provided more than 600 training events and conference presentations in every U.S. state/territory and several countries. She is past president of the International Lactation Consultant Association (ILCA), a fellow of ILCA, and past chair of the U.S. Breastfeeding Committee. She chairs the design team for the equity initiative in the lactation consultant profession, and chairs the Monetary Investment for Lactation Consultant Certification (MILCC), which works to reduce financial barriers to the IBCLC exam. She has directed several national breastfeeding promotion and support initiatives for the U.S. federal government, including the national USDA WIC peer counseling program, and national workplace support initiatives through the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. She was honored with the 2014 National Leadership Award from the National WIC Association.

Annette Leary is a registered nurse with over 33 years of experience working in Maternal Child Health. She became an IBCLC In 1995. She works as a Maternal Educator in a large tertiary care hospital (14,000 deliveries a year) that is Magnet designated, JCAHO certified, and BFHI awarded. Her responsibilities include providing outpatient lactation virtual and in-person support, staff education, and inpatient consultations. She began her Upledger Craniosacral training in 2015, taking advanced maternal and pediatric specialty classes. Her most special efforts to date include her marriage of over 33 years, four adult children and being nana to two grandchildren.

Naomi Hull as 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 three 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.

Maxine Scringer-Wilkes graduated with a nursing degree followed later on by her Master of Nursing in 2017 both from the University of Calgary. Maxine was a public health nurse in Calgary for 13 years, where providing face to face contacts with new families soon after discharge is a standard of care. Most families named feeding challenges as their biggest concern. In turn, Maxine developed a passion for lactation support, worked towards and attained the International Board-Certified Lactation Consultant designation, in order to assist families to reach their feeding goals. In 2016, Maxine made the transition from public health to acute care where she currently works in all areas of a large Children’s hospital to support dyads with a myriad of lactation concerns but is primarily in the NICU. Maxine’s responsibilities includes orienting new staff to teaching a provincial lactation education within a team. Maxine is passionate about sharing knowledge with aspiring LCs and is a mentor to many. Maxine participates on numerous committees to update lactation and feeding policies, procedures and documents. Furthermore, she volunteers on provincial and national breastfeeding committees.

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.

For over 25 years Sonya Boersma has supported best practice, working with mothers and babies, as well as professionals. She delivers a calm and informative consult to a great diversity of clients and situations. For her it’s an honour to work with new, new-again, or soon-to-be parents, tailoring care to each.

As an IBCLC and Registered Nurse in various roles such as public health, northern nursing in Yukon Territory, Canada, as a birth doula, and as an independent lactation consultant, she has been fortunate to work with parents in the whole childbirth continuum from pregnancy, labour and delivery, to postpartum.

Sonya also has a broad range of experiences supporting health care professionals to provide infant feeding evidence-based care. She has been instrumental in developing resources regionally and provincially. As a provincial Health Promotion Consultant, Sonya assisted health care organizations like hospitals to progress in implementing the WHO’s Baby-Friendly Initiative. She was the coordinator of provincial breastfeeding protocols, including Informed Decision Making: Infant Feeding and facilitated IDM workshops around the province.

In her spare time, she’s likely outside hiking, cycling, or cross-country skiing.