GOLD Learning Speakers

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.

Barbara Harper is an internationally recognized expert on waterbirth and gentle birth. She is the Executive Director of Waterbirth International, founded in 1988, with one goal in mind – to ensure that waterbirth is an “available option” for all women. During the past four decades Barbara has influenced and educated hundreds of thousands of professionals and parents through her writing and publishing, and her work as a pediatric nurse, midwife, midwifery instructor, doula trainer, and Blissborn Birth Hypnosis instructor and trainer. Her vast experience helped her develop unique seminars and workshops which she teaches within hospitals, nursing schools, midwifery and medical schools and through her online Gentle Birth World Institute. Lamaze International recognized her in 2002 for contributions in promoting normal birth on an international level. She has published articles in many journals including a new work for the Journal of Perinatal Education (July 2021) on protecting waterbirth, even during a global pandemic. Her bestselling book and DVD, ‘Gentle Birth Choices,’ has been translated into 9 languages, including a 2016 Mandarin Chinese edition. Barbara has dedicated her life to changing the way we welcome babies into the world. She is the mother of three adult children, two of whom were born at home in water, and grandmother of a college senior and a three-year-old. She lives in Boca Raton, Florida. Her website is www.waterbirth.org

Barbara Morrison, PhD, CNM is an associate professor in the Janice M. Riordan Distinguished Professorship in Maternal Child Health at Wichita State University School of Nursing, Wichita, KS, USA. Dr. Morrison’s mission is to advocate, educate and inspire health care reform to enhance physiologically and ecologically appropriate care for the mother-newborn dyads especially as it relates to establishing breastfeeding, frequent Kangaroo Care (KC) and holding, and optimal attachment. Dr. Morrison’s research interests include the impact of breastfeeding and KC on psycho-neuro-endocrine development of newborns and parents, and implementing best evidence-based breastfeeding and attachment practices in hospital birthing and postpartum units and in the community. Dr. Morrison shares her research and passions through presentations, writings, radio shows and her website www.DrBarbCNM.com.

Barbara Wilson-Clay became a La Leche League Leader in 1982. She certified as an IBCLC and entered private practice in Austin, Texas in 1987. Barbara was named a Fellow of the International Lactation Consultant Association in 2008. She recently retired from her practice, which specialized in difficult breastfeeding situations. With a client load of 400-450 visits yearly, Barbara garnered a wealth of clinical and counseling experience and a trove of clinical teaching photos. In partnership with Kay Hoover, she created The Breastfeeding Atlas, which was translated into Chinese in 2019 by Fudan University Press. A Korean translation will be published in September 2020.

Barbara has been a citizen advocate for breastfeeding in the Texas legislature and helped pass a landmark law protecting breastfeeding rights. She is one of the co-founders of the non-profit Mothers Milk Bank at Austin, and retired as Vice President of the Board of Directors in 2010. She continues to serve on the Advisory Board. Barbara's research and commentaries have appeared in the Journal of Human Lactation, Archives of Disease in Childhood, the International Breastfeeding Journal, and others. She has served on various editorial review boards and contributed chapters to several lactation textbooks.

Ben Kingston-Hughes is an international keynote speaker, author and multi award-winning trainer. He is also the Managing Director of Inspired Children and has worked with vulnerable children across the UK for over 30 years. He has appeared on television several times working on a variety of children’s projects and his distinctive blend of humour, neuroscience and real-life practical experiences have made his training invaluable for anyone working with children. His new book, “A Very Unusual Journey into Play.” is now available.

Bernadette is a midwife with a Master in Public Health (MPH), core and pelvic floor specialist, published author and previous pant wetter. She has worked in midwifery across Australia from remote Aboriginal Communities to big city hospitals to publicly funded homebirth. She spent a year volunteering as a midwifery educator in the Solomon Islands and teaches midwifery emergency courses in rural and remote areas around Australia. She was awarded the Sidney Sax award for best overall performance in her MPH. She is also the Founder and Creator of Core and Floor Restore – online education and exercise programs, workshops, and consultations. Her passion is to enable people to use their bodies and minds to their greatest ability in all aspects of life. A big part of her work is centered around emotional and physical birth trauma and postpartum recovery. She offers free online antenatal classes and co-host's "The Great Birth Rebellion" an evidence-informed podcast. Bernadette’s life mission to bring the rate of birth trauma down to zero whilst simultaneously improving postpartum care. She has epically birthed two babes at home and recovered from incontinence and prolapse. When she isn’t working or studying you can find her out bush, camping and hiking or splashing in the bath at home with her boys.

Bernadette Mazurek Melnyk is Vice President for Health Promotion, University Chief Wellness Officer, Dean and Helene Fuld Health Trust Professor of Evidence-based Practice, the College of Nursing, Professor of Pediatrics and Psychiatry at the College of Medicine and Executive Director of the Helene Fuld Health Trust National Institute for Evidence-based Practice at The Ohio State University. Dr. Melnyk is recognized nationally and globally for her clinical knowledge, expertise in evidence-based practice, mental health, and intervention research as well as her innovative approaches to health and wellness. Dr. Melnyk was the first Chief Wellness Officer appointed at a University in the U.S. She founded and is the current president of the National Consortium for Building Healthy Academic Communities. Dr. Melnyk is an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine, the American Academy of Nursing, the National Academies of Practice, and the American Association of Nurse Practitioners. She is a member of the board of directors for the National Forum for Heart Disease and Stroke Prevention. Dr. Melnyk has over $33 million dollars of sponsored funding from federal agencies and foundations as a PI, is an editor of seven books, and has authored over 450 publications. As a member of the National Academy of Medicine’s Action Collaborative on Clinician Well-being and Resilience, she is working to address the national crisis of healthcare provider burnout.

Bethany Sasaki is an advanced practice nurse, lactation consultant and the co-founder of Midtown Lactation Consultants (MiLC). Her nursing background includes pediatrics, women’s health, emergency/trauma nursing and clinical research. She is currently completing the nurse midwifery program at Frontier Nursing University. She plans to continue conducting breastfeeding research focusing on nipple wounds and breast infections. Bethany and her husband Brent live in Sacramento California, USA with their 5 year old son named Leo and 3 year old daughter named Piper.

Betsy Schwartz is a pioneer and a visionary. She established Tenth Month Doula Services in 1994, the first of its kind in South Florida. She has trained hundreds of postpartum doulas. Betsy is a former CAPPA and DONA International Postpartum Doula trainer, and is an active member of both. She now offers online courses at BirthElearning. Betsy’s most recent accomplishment is the creation of Down the Canal –The Game of Birth. Betsy continues to pioneer in Citrus County Florida as a committee member of the Florida Healthy Babies Initiative. Betsy holds a master’s degree in management of human services. She is also a Reiki Master and a yoga enthusiast.

Betty-Anne Daviss MA, RM has been a midwife for 45 years on various continents, and a researcher in the social sciences and clinical epidemiology for 30. She cites learning from traditional midwives from Guatemala to Afghanistan as one of the highlights of her career. While acting as the project coordinator for the Safe Motherhood Initiative of FIGO in 2004, the follow-up to the Term Breech Trial was published and she switched focus to search across Europe for best breech practice. In 2009, she persuaded Andre Lalonde of the Society of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists to bring Frank Louwen, from Frankfurt to the SOGC AGM to present on upright breech and helped organize several breech conferences in Ottawa, Washington D.C., and across Europe 2009-2019. She has provided lectures in China, India, Africa; and Latin America on Human Rights in Childbirth, using the return to breech as one model solution. Working between Ottawa and Frankfurt 2008-2016, she became the co-principal investigator and principal writer for the Frankfurt study comparing vaginal breeches born with the mothers upright vs on their backs (2017) and co-authored other articles with the Frankfurt team on twins and MRIs in the breech. In 2013 she introduced a new technique to retrieve the aftercoming head in the vaginal breech to avoid forceps. Her manual “Rethinking The Physiology of Vaginal Breech Birth,” describes vaginal breech history, new manoeuvres of upright breech, and the research to support them. She is the principal editor of a recently published book, Birthing Models on the Human Rights Frontier: Speaking Truth to Power, a colourful combined activist/academic treatise on social justice issues (2021).

Betty-Anne Daviss MA, RM has practised as a midwife for over 40 years on various continents, and as a researcher in the social sciences and clinical epidemiology, for over 25 years. An Adjunct Professor in Ottawa, Canada, she has taught since the 1980s about the politics of gender and health. She has worked towards midwifery legislation in Canada and the U.S. and acted as the project coordinator for the Safe Motherhood Initiative of the International Federation of Gynecology and Obstetrics (FIGO). Engaged with the SOGC when it first began to reintroduce vaginal breech birth to Canada, she has helped to organize several breech conferences and was the co-principal investigator and principle writer for the Frankfurt study comparing vaginal breeches born with the mothers upright vs on their backs (2017). She was a co-editor of Birth Models That Work (2009) and is principal editor of Speaking Truth to Power: Childbirth Models on the Human Rights Frontier (forthcoming 2019).

Bianca Balassiano has been working with families in private practice since 2008 as an IBCLC and perinatal psychologist/maternal-child health specialist. As a natural consequence of her professional background, has supported breastfeeding families into achieving individual goals while maintaining mental health and stimulating a holistic look towards the subject. Since 2014 is also working as an educator for healthcare professionals in one of the most recognized breastfeeding courses in Brazil, currently offering virtual classes and all over the country. Lives with husband and two children in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. In 2020, she launched her first book aimed at families with the title "Gradual Weaning: How to Bring Your Breastfeeding Story to a Happy End".

Bianca completed her undergraduate nursing and midwifery training at the University of Queensland. She has been neonatal nursing for the last six years, and in that time completed her Postgraduate Certificate in Nursing Practice (Neonatal Intensive Care) and her Masters of Advanced Nursing Practice (Minor Thesis) at the University of Melbourne.

In 2016, Bianca participated in a Nursing Research program entitled ‘Building Evidence with Support to Transform (BEST) Practice at the Royal Children’s Hospital (RCH) in Melbourne, Victoria Australia, which were the beginnings of her nursing research journey. She investigated nursing assessment of pain in neonates, and instigated a hospital-wide change in the pain assessment tool utilised in neonates. Since then she has evaluated the clinical utility and inter-rater reliability of the modified Pain Assessment Tool (mPAT) that is now used at the RCH. She is currently a Nursing Research Clinical Nurse Consultant at the RCH.

Billie has been serving birthing families for 35 years as a mentor, breastfeeding counsellor, childbirth educator, doula, and traditional birth attendant. She is the Founder and Director of Birth Trauma Ontario, an agency that advocates on behalf of parents for universal training in trauma-informed care for all perinatal health care providers and provides training and skills development for primary and allied health care professionals. Billie authored the world's first accredited certification course for becoming a trauma-informed professional specific to caring for the perinatal client. She has devoted decades to following the research that explores issues of maternal and infant health, birthing safety, and midwifery and obstetric practices in the context of culture and structural violence. She has educated doulas, midwives, physicians, nurses, and lactation counsellors in over 120 countries. Billie has been blessed with a very full life with 7 wonderful children, several amazing in-laws, some adorable grandchildren, a couple of decades of homeschooling, and hundreds of families who invited her into their families as they welcomed their precious babies.

Birdie is an RN with a Master’s Degree in Psychology/Counseling. She is a past president of Postpartum Support International (PSI), past Chair of Education and Training, and is currently serving as Director of Certification. Birdie is a Perinatal Mood Disorders International Trainer with Postpartum Support International and speaks frequently to communities, nursing schools, grand rounds, and conferences. Birdie specializes in the recognition and treatment of pregnancy and postpartum mood and anxiety disorders. She is the coordinator of the Perinatal Mood Disorders Program at Indiana University Health in Indianapolis, Indiana. Birdie is highlighted as a PMD expert in PSI’s DVD that is shown around the world: “Healthy Mom, Happy Family: Understanding Pregnancy and Postpartum Mood and Anxiety Disorders”.

Saraswathi Vedam

Saraswathi Vedam is Lead Investigator of the Birth Place Lab and Professor of Midwifery in the Faculty of Medicine at University of British Columbia. Over the past 34 years, she has served as clinician, educator, researcher, and mother to four remarkable women. Professor Vedam has coordinated several transdisciplinary and community-led research projects. In the US, she led the Access and Integration Maternity care Mapping (AIMM) Study examing the impact of integration of midwives on maternal-newborn outcomes, and the Giving Voice to Mothers Study that explored experiences of respect, discrimination, and mistreatment among communities of color in the US. In Canada, she led the Canadian Birth Place Study examining attitudes to place of birth among maternity care providers; and Changing Childbirth in BC, a provincial, participatory study of women’s experiences of maternity care. She is currently PI of a CIHR-funded national research study to evaluate respectful maternity care across Canada. She and her team have developed pragmatic tools that improve person-centered care, including patient-designed quality measures: Mothers’ Autonomy in Decision Making (MADM) scale and the Mothers on Respect (MORi) index, which received the 2017 National Quality Forum Innovation Prize. She was selected as one of the inaugural Michael Smith Health Research Institute Health Professional Investigators.

Professor Vedam has been active in setting national and international policy on place of birth, and midwifery education and regulation. She has provided expert consultations to policy makers, public health agencies, and legislators in Mexico, Hungary, Chile, China, the Czech Republic, Canada, the US, and India. She was Convener and Chair of 3 national Home Birth Summits. At these historic summits a multi-stakeholder group of leaders (clinicians, consumers, policymakers, legislators, researchers, ethicists, and administrators) crafted a common agenda to address equitable access to high quality care across birth settings in the United States.


Monica McLemore

Monica McLemore, RN, MPH, PhD, is on faculty at the University of California, San Francisco School of Nursing. She is in high demand as an expert on inequities in health services, research, and as a policy advisor nationally. She has received numerous awards for her groundbreaking scholarship and excellence in service, including Person of the Year, Abortion Care Network, 2018, Agent - Provocateur of the Year Award, The Association for Wholistic Maternal and Newborn Health, 2017, Amazing Women in Reproductive Health, Association for Reproductive Health Professionals, 2017. Hellman Family Award for Early Career Faculty, 2015-2017, and she was Speaking Race to Power Fellow, CoreAlign, from 2015-2016. Her research is focused on understanding the factors that influence the health, wellbeing and livelihood of low-income and women of color who she serves clinically at Zuckerberg San Francisco General. Using the intersectional human rights middle range theory called reproductive Justice (RJ), enables her to design rigorous studies that answer novel and complex research questions because RJ is simultaneously a theory, practice and a strategy that is grounded in four principles. Simply put, RJ posits that every person has the right to decide if and when to become pregnant and to determine the conditions under which they will birth. Next, every person has the right to decide they will not become pregnant or have a baby and options for preventing or ending pregnancy are accessible and available. Third, individuals have the right parent children they already have with dignity and has the necessary social supports in safe environments and health communities without fear of violence from individuals or the government. Finally, individuals have the right to disassociate sex from reproduction and that health sexuality and pleasure are essential components to whole and full human life.


Kimberly Gregory

Dr. Kimberly Gregory is Vice Chair of Women’s Healthcare Quality and Performance Improvement, Department of Obstetrics & Gynecology, and Director of the Division of Maternal Fetal Medicine at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. Board certified in Ob/Gyn and Maternal-Fetal Medicine, she is a Professor at Cedars with a joint appointment at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health. She has received federal and foundation funding to support her research interests, which include developing maternal quality indicators, patient safety, obstetrical healthcare utilization, variation and appropriateness of cesarean delivery, and complications of childbirth. She has developed algorithms for determining indications for cesarean delivery, cesarean after labor, and elective (no labor) cesarean delivery using hospital administrative data, demonstrating wide variation in cesarean rate by hospital. Additionally, she developed framework and proposed indicators for monitoring quality of care during pregnancy and childbirth. She is currently working on patient reported outcomes and measures of patient reported satisfaction with childbirth services. Dr. Gregory has served in various leadership positions including the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, the Institute of Medicine Committee on Preventive Services for Women, the Board of Directors for the Society of Maternal Fetal Medicine, regional Section Chair for American College Obstetrics & Gynecology (ACOG), and numerous health and public policy committees at both the state and national levels.


Melissa Cheyney

Melissa Cheyney PhD CPM LDM is Associate Professor of Clinical Medical Anthropology at Oregon State University (OSU) with appointments in Public Health and Women Gender and Sexuality Studies. She is also a Licensed Midwife in active, community practice, and the Chair of the Division of Research for the Midwives Alliance of North America. She is the author of an ethnography entitled Born at Home, co-author and editor of Birth in Eight Cultures, and of more than 50 peer-reviewed articles that examine the cultural beliefs and clinical outcomes associated with midwife-led birth in the United States. In 2014, Dr. Cheyney was selected for Oregon State University’s prestigious Scholarship Impact Award for the prolific and highly relevant research outputs of her International Reproductive Health Laboratory and with the MANA Statistics Project. Her research projects span topics from reproductive biology to cultural anthropology, epidemiology and clinical outcomes associated with patient experience, health equity, interprofessional relationships, and place of birth. She is currently the PI on an NIH-funded study examining the outcomes of care for culturally and socially matched doulas serving Medicaid priority populations in Oregon. Dr. Cheyney serves as an expert consultant on numerous interdisciplinary research institutes including the ACOG ReVitalize Task Force, the Home Birth Summit Research and Data Task Force, the Oregon Health Evidence Review Commission, the International Quality Maternal and Newborn Care Research Alliance, and the National Academies of Medicine Committee on Birth Setting. She is Vice-Chair of Oregon State University’s (OSU) Human Subjects Research Institutional Review Board and the Graduate Program Director for OSU’s Applied Anthropology Program. She is a beloved and award-winning teacher, a highly sought mentor and doctoral advisor, and is known for her intentional approach to creating a culturally safe environment for her research team and mentees. Dr. Cheyney is the mother of a daughter born at home.


Michele Goodwin

Michele Bratcher Goodwin is a Chancellor’s Professor at the University of California, Irvine and founding director of the Center for Biotechnology and Global Health Policy. She is also faculty in the Stem Cell Research Center; Gender and Sexuality Studies Department; Program in Public Health; and the Department of Criminology, Law, & Society. She is an elected member of the American Law Institute as well as an elected Fellow of the American Bar Foundation and the Hastings Center. A nationally recognized advocate for civil liberties and civil rights, Professor Goodwin serves on the executive committee and national board of the American Civil Liberties Union. She has advised policymakers and chaired several sections of the Association of American Law Schools, served as a trustee of the United States Law and Society Association, and was elected secretary general of the International Academy of Law & Mental Health as the first woman. Gov. Paul Patton of Kentucky commissioned her as a colonel, the state’s highest title of honor. In 2018 she was bestowed the Sandra Day O’Connor Legacy Award by the Women’s Journey Foundation. Professor Goodwin’s scholarship is hailed as “exceptional” in the New England Journal of Medicine. A prolific author, her publications include five books and over 80 articles, essays and book chapters.


Indra Wood Lusero

Indra Lusero, Esq., is the President and founder of the Birth Rights Bar Association and the director of Elephant Circle, where they work as an organizer, trainer, and lawyer practicing family formation and regulatory law. Indra’s law review articles "Challenging Hospital VBAC Bans Through Tort Liability" and "Making the Midwife Impossible: How the Structure of Maternity Care Harms the Practice of Home Birth Midwifery" are published in the William and Mary Journal of Women and the Law and the Women’s Rights Law Reporter respectively. Indra is honored to have been named "All Around Reproductive Justice Champion" in 2013 by the Colorado Organization for Latina Opportunity and Reproductive Rights. She is the recipient of numerous reproductive justice awards including the Most Audacious Award, Honoring a childbirth professional who has shown remarkable courage and boldness to change childbirth or maternity care, from The Association for Wholistic Maternal & Newborn Health and Human Rights in Childbirth, May 2016. Indra is a genderqueer Latin@ parent with a diverse family of people from all over the world.

Monica Simpson

Monica Raye Simpson, Executive Director of Sister Song, a queer, black, NC native, has organized extensively against human rights abuse, the prison industry, racism, and systemic violence against Southern black women and LBGTQ people. A proud graduate of the historically black Johnson C. Smith University, she earned a bachelor’s in Communications and organized for LGBTQ rights on and off campus. She then became the Operations Director and the first person of color at the Charlotte Lesbian & Gay Community Center. Next, she trained black youth in activism, philanthropy, and fundraising as the Ujamaa Coordinator for Grassroots Leadership. In 2010, she moved to GA to be our Development Coordinator; she was promoted to Deputy Coordinator in 2011, Interim Executive Director in 2012, and Executive Director in 2013.

Monica is a nationally sought-after facilitator, speaker, and organizer, constantly called upon to travel the country for appearances. She is the only woman among the 4 founders of Charlotte, NC's Black Gay Pride Celebration, the first in the Bible Belt, which received awards from the National Black Justice Coalition and the Human Rights Coalition for its incredible launch with 7,000 participants. She has been featured in many publications for her activism, and has written many articles on LGBTQ issues, RJ, over-policing of black/brown communities, philanthropy, and Southern activism. In 2014 she was named a New Civil Rights Leader by Essence Magazine, and in 2015 was chosen as a panelist for the Women of the World Summit. Also a full circle doula certified through the International Center for Traditional Childbirth, she serves on the boards of the Fund for Southern Communities and the legendary Highlander Center.


Paula Rojas

Paula X. Rojas is a community organizer, licensed midwife and social justice trainer. Born in Chile, then growing up in Houston, TX, she spent over a decade working as an organizer in Brooklyn, NY before returning to TX in 2008. For over 25 years, she has worked on issues of gender violence, racial justice, women’s reproductive health, childcare access, health care access and community alternatives to policing. Rojas co-founded a number of community-based organizations working at the intersections of race, class and gender including Sista II Sista, Pachamama, Mamas of Color Rising, Mama Sana Vibrant Woman, Refugio: Center for Community Organizing and the New York Organizing Support Center. As a result of her own challenges experienced while pregnant on Medicaid, Paula became a doula and then a licensed midwife in 2014. In 2012 she co-founded Mama Sana Vibrant Woman and developed a model that integrates cultural congruence, midwifery and community organizing in order to put a more just and loving maternal health model into practice. Paula is a contributor to the INCITE! collections: The Color of Violence and The Revolution Will Not Be Funded: Beyond the Non-Profit Industrial Complex. She co-authored the recent report by the National Perinatal Taskforce: Building a Movement to Birth a More Just and Loving World, that lays out local models and national recommendations to address the current crisis in maternal and infant mortality in communities of color in the U.S. She is the mother of two amazing kids, Xue-li and Camino, and loves to dance!


Micaela Cadena

Micaela Lara Cadena is a chicana New Mexican from a family/chosen family of resilient mujeres in the Mesilla Valley. Micaela is the Research Director at Young Women United (YWU), an organization that leads policy change, research, place-based organizing, and culture shift by and for women and people of color in New Mexico. For many years, Micaela has worked to improve access to pregnancy related care that New Mexicans may need over their lives, including perinatal care for pregnant people in cycles of substance use and addiction and midwifery care as a respectful model that can positively impact disparities in health outcomes within our communities. Previously, Micaela worked at the New Mexico Corrections Department as the Bureau Chief of Recidivism Reduction. With the intention of better identifying and serving the risks and needs of women and people in NMCD custody, Micaela worked to build feasible strategies for making the New Mexico prison system gender-responsive, trauma-informed and evidenced-based. Micaela was also responsible for implementing a state law passed in 2015, Medicaid for Incarcerated Individuals, that mandated the Corrections Department to determine Medicaid eligibility of inmates prior to their release from prison. In 2018, Micaela was elected to serve as a State Representative (District 33) in the New Mexico House of Representatives.


Brenda Blasingame

Brenda Blasingame is Executive Director of Health ConnectOne. HealthConnect One is best known for their Community Based Doula model that has been nationally replicated, their leadership in the development of a Peer to Peer Lactation/Breastfeeding approaches as well as supporting and training of Community Health Workers. She has served over 20 years in the public and non-profit sectors at the local, state, and national levels leading organizations and teams towards a common vision and through her work has demonstrated a deep commitment to issues of equity, diversity and inclusion. Brenda served as the Senior Director of Programs and Partnerships for Save the Children U.S., overseeing the U.S. portfolio of education and psychosocial programs in approximately 16 states and serving as a member of the organization’s U.S. programs’ senior leadership team. During her tenure at Save the Children, she was responsible for leading the development of a community engagement approach to create a place-based community continuum for children and families pre-natal through 3rd grade focused on literacy, safety and resiliency. Prior to joining Save the Children in 2012, Brenda was the Director of Programs at Thrive Washington, where she implemented two early learning demonstration communities, in partnership with the Gates Foundation and working with other national partners such as the W.K. Kellogg Foundation and the Ounce of Prevention Fund. Brenda also served as the Executive Director of First 5 Contra Costa (California) from 2000-2005, where she founded and led the development of a comprehensive set of early childhood development programs, services and activities for children 5 years of age and younger and their families living in marginalized communities.


Rebecca Polston

Rebecca is the founding, owner and director of Roots Community Birth Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota. She has a passion for creating a safe space for all birthing families. She is the community partner lead for a Robert Woods Johnson research project on understanding ways to reduce racial inequities in birth outcomes, co-led by Rachel Hardeman, Ph.D., M.P.H., and Katy Kozhimannil, Ph.D., M.P.A., researchers and professors with the School of Public Health.

Dr. Blanca Aguilar Uscanga is a Biochemical Engineer in Food Science and has a Masters in Food Science. She graduated from the Institute Technologic of Veracruz (ITV) México. She completed her doctoral studies in the specialty of Biotechnology at the National Institute of the Sciences Appliqués of Toulouse in France.

She is currently a full-time research professor (since 2006) at the Centro Universitario de Ciencias Exactas e Ingenierías (CUCEI) de la Universidad de Guadalajara. Dr. Aguilar Uscanga is adjunct professor to the Department of Pharmacobiology, where she teaches courses of Applied Microbiology, Biotechnology and Food Science to undergraduate and PhD students.

She is a member of the National System of Researchers in Mexico recognized by CONACYT, with level 2. The research areas are: Food Biotechnology and Microbiology, which cover different areas of research such as: Obtaining bioactive compounds and metabolites of industrial importance through of microorganisms, production and development of functional foods, fermented beverages, probiotics, prebiotics and food safety.

She has international collaborations with the Institute Armand Frappier, Canada and the Institut sur la nutrition et les aliments fonctionnels (INAF) in Québec. Currently she is member of INRS and has an honorable mention of “Professeure associée” provided by the INRS- the Institute Armand Frappier in Laval, Canada.

Bobby Bellflower is a Neonatal Nurse Practitioner with extensive experience in clinical practice, education, and administration. Her undergraduate nursing degree is from University of Memphis, and her masters and doctorate is from University of Tennessee Health Science Center (UTHSC). Currently, she is the Director of Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) Programs at UTHSC in Memphis, TN and does her clinical practice at Regional One Health, Level IIIc NICU. In the past, she served as director of the NNP program at UTHSC and, most recently (2010-2016), was the manager of the NNP Service at Le Bonheur Children’s Hospital in Memphis. Her research interests include prevention of NEC in neonates, evidence-based practice for APRNs and bedside nurses, and QIs.

Bobby Ghaheri, MD is a board certified ear, nose and throat specialist with The Oregon Clinic in Portland, OR. His interest in treating children with tongue and lip-tie stems from his ardent support of breastfeeding and was furthered by his personal experiences, as his youngest child benefited from treatment for it. He enjoys working with children and has an interest in traditional and non-traditional approaches to pediatric pain control. To communicate with him, feel free to email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter at @DrGhaheri.

Bonnie Holt Logsdon (she/her), is a Registered Dietitian, International Board Certified Lactation Consultant, and Certified Lactation Educator™ through CAPPA, and a DONA-trained birth doula with over 18 years of experience in community-based practice.

In her private practice, Bonnie Knows Breast, she blends her nutrition and lactation work to support families during the prenatal and postpartum periods. Bonnie also mentors IBCLC candidate students, teaches the Certified Lactation Educator (CLE) course, and offers public speaking on lactation and nutrition-related topics.

Bonnie is committed to giving personalized, affirming care and education to each family, individual, and professional she works with! Supporting families during this critical and emotional time in their lives is such important work. Bonnie promises compassionate, non-judgmental support and information.

Bonnie and her husband Brent, have a 7-year-old son, Finley. They enjoy quality time together playing board games, cooking, traveling, and hiking in as many National Parks as possible.

The mission of Bonnie Knows Breast is to empower people with education to make informed decisions related to their health and the health of their babies. Bonnie supports families of all backgrounds, structures, and identities and believes everyone deserves to be supported in their journey.

Bonnie Urquhart Gruenberg, CNM, MSN, CRNP, is the award-winning author of Birth Emergency Skills Training; Manual for Out-of-Hospital Midwives, and co-developer of the workshop by the same name. In 2023, her long-awaited seminal work, Birth Emergencies for Community Midwives, will come to press. She has caught more than 2,100 babies to date in the home, in a free-standing birth center, and in the hospital. She currently works for Wellspan Health in Lancaster County, PA. Bonnie has written and illustrated 12 books on topics ranging from midwifery and maternity care to wild horse management. She enjoys painting, photography, and hobby farming.

Dr. Brandi is the pediatric chiropractor in a practice that provides chiropractic care for women and children. Her focus is on infants with feeding difficulties and children with neurodevelopmental delays. Dr. Brandi created a program at her practice which incorporates chiropractic, optimal nutrition, myofascial/cranial-sacral techniques, and neurofunctional exercises into one comprehensive program. Her ultimate goal is to naturally support the body (brain, gut, spine and immune system) to work together in balance and help children achieve their maximum life potential. Dr. Brandi attended Cleveland Chiropractic College after earning a bachelor’s degree from the University of Missouri- Kansas City. She is also certified by the Academy of Chiropractic Family Practice. In her free time, Dr. Brandi enjoys spending time outdoors with her husband and two sets of fraternal twins.

Brandi Gates-Burgess is a Lactation Consultant at Highland Hospital, Community Engagement specialist for the MILK Research Lab, serves on the Community Advisory Board of the UCSF Preterm Birth Initiative, and Co-chairs The Breastfeeding Cultural Outreach Taskforce (BCOT). Recently, Brandi transitioned from her 16-year career providing lactation support to families of the California WIC Program and decided to live her dream. She started her non-profit organization Breast Friends Lactation Support Services where she provides group lactation education and support to Black Families in the Bay Area. She is a mother to 4 breastfed children, wife and world traveler.

Brian is the Provincial Coordinator for Dad Central Ontario, which is devoted to promoting responsible father involvement in Ontario, Canada and has acted as a catalyst for other provinces and territories within Canada to form their own regional father initiatives. He has taught and trained extensively on understanding fatherhood and ways to engage men as parents. He is also a Marriage and Family Therapist in Toronto. He brings an important perspective to the couple relationship in families, where trust and respect are key elements to building strong families. He is married with three teenage daughters.

Briana Tillman received her undergraduate degree in International Relations from the United States Military Academy at West Point. She has been a La Leche League Leader for 9 years and is a board certified lactation consultant. After spending 10 years as a stay-at-home mom, she is currently attending medical school at Rocky Vista University College of Osteopathic Medicine in Parker, Colorado. She loves spending time with her husband and three elementary-school-aged children—as a family they like to play board games, go camping, and play bluegrass and chamber music.

Bridget Liriano is a registered nurse with over 15 years of experience in pediatrics and holds a Master of Nursing degree from the University of Toronto in Ontario, Canada. As the Quality Leader and a Transport Clinician for the Acute Care Transport Service (ACTS) Team at Sick Kids, Bridget is committed to providing expert medical care in the stabilization and safe transport of acutely ill neonates and children. She is a strong advocate for quality and safety, which is demonstrated through her involvement in clinical research, team-based projects and quality improvement initiatives. She has formerly covered the role of Interprofessional Education Specialist, working in collaboration with the leadership team to support the educational needs of her ACTS colleagues. Bridget has a passion for clinical education and simulation-based training, with a focus on interprofessional collaboration, peer mentorship, clinical debrief and neonatal resuscitation.

Dr. Brigit Carter, Associate Professor and Associate Dean for Diversity and Inclusion, joined the Duke University School of Nursing (DUSON) in 2010. From 2015-2018 she served as the Director of the DUSON Accelerated Bachelor of Science in Nursing (ABSN) program. Dr. Carter earned her BSN at North Carolina Central University in 1998, a Master of Science in Nursing Education from University of North Carolina at Greensboro in 2002 and PhD in Nursing from University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2009. She served as project director for two HRSA Nursing Workforce Diversity grants. The current grant, The Academy for Academic and Social Enrichment and Leadership Development for Health Equity II, focus is to increase underrepresented minorities in nursing and understanding of individual social determinants among undergraduate nursing students. Dr. Carter teaches the DNP and ABSN programs.
Dr. Carter's clinical research focuses on nursing care of premature infants (<1500 grams) with feeding intolerance and identification of measurable methods for early detection of feeding intolerance. She continues her clinical practice as a staff nurse in the Duke University Hospital Intensive Care Nursery, where she has 21 years’ experience.
Dr. Carter retired in 1/2018 from the U.S. Navy as a Commander after 28 years of service.

Dr. Britta Bushnell (she/her) is author of Transformed by Birth, host of the podcast Transformed, veteran childbirth educator, celebrated speaker, mythologist, wife and mother, and specialist in childbirth, relationship, and parenting. For over 20 years, Dr. Bushnell has worked with individuals and couples as they prepare for the life-changing experience of giving birth. Her work with parents has been enriched by her doctoral work in mythology and psychology, her years spent as a co-owner of Birthing From Within, as well as her dedicated study of solution-focused brief therapy, storytelling, and skills for supporting intimate relationships while parenting.

Britta is an engaging teacher, speaker, and presenter. Whether addressing a room of expectant parents, new mothers, or seasoned birth professionals, Britta has a way of captivating and inspiring them all. She has presented at conferences such as DONA International, MANA, ICEA, and Lamaze. Additionally, Britta has been featured on several popular podcasts including Informed Pregnancy, Birthful, and Atomic Moms. In 2016, in recognition of her transformative childbirth classes, Britta was awarded "Educator of the Year" by the Southern California Doula Association (DASC).

Bryna is a lactation consultant, mentor, educator, and birth doula in the Pacific Northwestern United States. They are active in their community as an advocate for mutual aid, reproductive justice, and reduction in barriers to care. They also own and manage an inclusive private practice. As a member of both Queer and Neurodivergent communities, offering inclusive care on every level is very important to Bryna. Their vision is to offer information and tools to providers to build a community of comprehensive, concordant, and individualized care for all families in the perinatal period.