You want birth to feel joyful and sacred.
But for too many parents…it doesn’t.
Why is birth often treated like a medical emergency instead of an everyday event? Why is a parent’s experience of birth so overlooked throughout the process? Why are unnecessary interventions used to “hurry” along a birth rather than trusting that a woman’s body knows what it’s doing?
Birthing people thrive when they are nurtured, listened to, and treated with respect.
And, for the most part, our maternity care system prioritizes none of these things, especially for Black parents and babies. There is a better way. A way to create a positive birth experience. A way to healthy births that champion each parent’s creative power. A way to birth that honors the start of a new human life.
You don’t need to give up the idea of a hospital birth.
You don’t need to give birth in the ocean surrounded by shamans (though that can be fun!)
All you need?
A compassionate guide to hold the space for your vision, connect you with the best resources and options in your community, and empower you with the highest quality information so that you can navigate the maternity healthcare system with more ease and experience the positive transformation that birth offers.
Whether you’re an expectant parent or birth worker, you can experience birth as a sacred, joyous occasion that treats parents and babies with dignity, respect, and love.
Meet your birth ally.
In my 20+ years of work as a doula and consumer advocate for expectant parents and birth workers, I’ve learned not only how to create a beautiful birth experience within our current system, but how to create change, slowly but surely, and build a better system for generations to come.
I came to birth work through feminism when I witnessed first-hand how birth transforms a woman’s power, agency, and creativity in her life. I saw birth’s potential to become a site of profound personal power for women…and I saw the shortcomings of our healthcare system to honor that.
After I became a doula and started working with parents one-on-one, I wanted more. I wanted to build a better system, so I founded Choices in Childbirth, an organization dedicated to educating expectant parents about birth and affecting change on the local, statewide, and federal levels in the U.S.
Along the way, through working with thousands of birth workers, I discovered that no one is better poised for the work of activism and advocacy than birth workers themselves. Now, it’s my mission to activate and educate a squad of birth workers who are empowered with the information they need to navigate our current system and build better birth care in their communities. Collectively, with the help of parents who advocate for better births, we’ll help the larger cultural expectation shift to birth as a sacred occasion that makes parents more powerful, more creative, and more fully expressed as the people they were born to become.
I Educate, Activate, & Inspire
A handful of the organizations I’ve served during my career:
Founder, Board President
Choices in Childbirth
2012 - 2015
A 501(c)(3) not-for-profit New York City-based organization whose mission is to improve maternity care by providing the public, especially childbearing women and their families, with the information necessary to make fully informed decisions relating to how, where, and with whom they will give birth.
Member, Board of Directors
Maternity Neighborhood
2013 - 2018
Maternity Neighborhood is a mission-driven company with a portfolio of digital tools to support woman-centered, relationship-based maternity care. These tools can be configured in a variety of ways to meet the needs of providers in a range of settings and care models.
Healthy Women, Healthy Futures Program
Originating Member, Advisor
2013 - 2015
A proposal to expand access to doula care for underserved women across the 5 boroughs of New York City. In 2013, the city and state awarded the program $450,000, initial funding that would lead to a multi year partnership.
North Central Bronx Coalition
Originating Member, Advisor
2013 - 2014
A coalition of community-based organizations, advocates, parents, policy makers and concerned citizens that successfully petitioned the city to re-open the midwifery lead labor and delivery department at North Central Bronx Hospital.
New York Coalition for Doula Access (NYCDA)
Co-Founder
2011 - 2015
A coalition of doulas, activists, community-based organizers and concerned citizens working together to expand access to doula care among the most at risk and under served communities in New York City & State.
Homebirth Consensus Summit
Delegate representing consumer advocates
2011, 2013, 2014
The Home Birth Summits convened a multidisciplinary group of leaders, representing all stakeholder perspectives, to address their shared responsibility for care of women who plan home births in the United States.
North American Registry of Midwives (NARM)
Public Member of the Board of Directors
2011 to 2015
NARM provides and maintains an evaluative process for multiple routes of midwifery education and training; develops and administers a standardized examination system leading to the credential “Certified Professional Midwife” (CPM); identifies best practices that reflect the excellence and diversity of the independent midwifery community as the basis for setting the standards for the CPM credential.
B.A., Gender and Sexuality Studies
New York University, 2005, Magna Cum Laude
Emergency Medical Technical Certification
New York State Department of Health Bureau of Emergency Medical Services, 2003
Midwifery Assistant Program
The Farm, 2003, 2004
Birth Doula Training
DONA International, 2000
Awards
Foundation for the Advancement of Midwifery, honored for contribution to the profession of midwifery, 2015
NYU Midwifery Education Program’s Koko Roy Award, 2013
Coalition for Improving Maternity Services’ award for making Mother-Friendly Care a Reality, 2008
Childbirth Connection’s Carola Warburg Rothschild Award, 2007
Media
Guest of the Brian Lehrer Show, WNYC June 10, 2010 “Midwives in New York City”
Guest of the Brian Lehrer Show, WNYC December 2009 “Birthing Options”
Grit TV November 26, 2010 “The Other Side of Choices: Giving Birth In America”
Featured speaker in documentary film, The Business of Being Born, released 2008.
