Delegates and Biographies

Elizabeth Armstrong is an Associate Professor at Princeton University in the Department of Sociology with joint affiliations in the Woodrow Wilson School and the Office of Population Research. She obtained her Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania.

Elizabeth's research interests include public health, the history and sociology of medicine, risk in obstetrics, and medical ethics. She is currently conducting research on diseases and agenda-setting, and on fetal personhood and the evolution of obstetrical practice and ethics. She has authored and coauthored articles in Health Affairs, Social Science and Medicine, Journal of Marriage and the Family, International Family Planning Perspectives, and Studies in Family Planning. She is the author of Conceiving Risk, Bearing Responsibility: Fetal Alcohol Syndrome and the Diagnosis of Moral Disorder (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003). She was a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Scholar in Health Policy Research at the University of Michigan from 1998-2000 and a former member of the Governing Board of Lamaze International.

Jill Arnold is the founder and author of The Unnecesarean, a patient advocacy web site (blog) that provides information about preventing an unnecessary cesarean and resources for making fully-informed decisions about childbirth while offering an irreverent take on the maternity care crisis in the United States and beyond.

Jill started site in August 2008 as a collection of big baby birth stories, as well as women's accounts of their unnecesareans and VBACs (vaginal births after cesarean). After refusing a planned cesarean for suspected macrosomia based on a 38 week ultrasound estimate of fetal weight, she gave birth vaginally to a healthy baby and later found that the midwives model of care better met her needs as a pregnant woman.

Sir Sabaratnam Arulkumaran is Professor and Head of Obstetrics and Gynaecology at St George's University of London. He has been in clinical practice for 37 years and in research and teaching for 25 years. Before joining St. George's, he held posts at a number of high-profile institutions including the National University of Singapore, the University of Nottingham, the Asia and Oceania Federation of Obstetrics and Gynaecology.

Previously the Secretary General and Treasurer to the International Federation of Obstetrics and Gynaecology for nine years, he is now President-Elect for the federation. Sir Sabaratnam Arulkumaran is also the past President of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists of the UK from 2007 and 2010. He is Editor-in-Chief of Best Practice and Research in Clinical Obstetrics and Gynaecology and author of 245 indexed publications, 24 books and 164 book chapters.

His research and clinical interests are in understanding and improving the quality of life for women and newborn babies. Among his key achievements is the development of a "clinical dashboard" to provide clinicians with the relevant and timely information they need to inform decisions that improve the quality of patient care.

He is the Honorary Fellow of the America, Sri Lankan, South African, Pakistan, Indian, Australian and New Zealand Colleges of Obstetrics and Gynaecology and the Honorary Member of the Canadian, Malaysian, German, Italian and South African Societies.

Sir Sabaratnam Arulkumaran was knighted as Knight Bachelor in the Queen's Birthday Honours List in June 2009 in recognition of Services to Medicine.

Since 1970, Alice Bailes has been a home birth mother, childbirth educator, birth activist, speaker, participant in regulatory processes, researcher, teacher, author and mostly, a midwife. More than 1550 babies have been born into her hands in the intimate undisturbed environments of homes, or at the BirthCare Alexandria, VA birth center. Education includes a BFA in Dance and Theatre in 1970 from NYU, BSN from George Mason in 1979, and an MS in Midwifery in 1981 from Georgetown.

Since 1987, she has been the Co-Founder, Co-Owner, and Co-Director of BirthCare & Women's Health, a home birth and birth center midwifery practice. The practice has provided service in over 4500 cases over the last 25 years, and currently serves 25-30 birthing families per month. Vital to BirthCare's longevity and breadth of practice has been the creation of relationships with hospital based maternity practices, consumer groups, childbirth educators, academic institutions, researchers, health insurance companies, professional liability insurance companies, and midwifery professional organizations.

Bailes was a founding member and former chair of ACNM's home birth section, distributing statistical information, presenting at conferences, authoring official documents and participating in research that increased the visibility, importance and acceptability of home birth practice. She is co-editor of the ACNM Handbook on Home Birth Practice and co author of "Birth in the Home and Birth Center" in Varney's Midwifery.

Since 1992 she has precepted midwifery students at all clinical levels. Because BirthCare is unique in providing a large census of home and birth center clients, students come to BirthCare from all over the US to gain home birth experience. The practice has accepted students into 2013. She is dedicated to assuring that this model of practice will continue on.

Bill Barth is Chief of the Division of Maternal-Fetal Medicine, Vincent Obstetrics and Gynecology Service at Massachusetts General Hospital and Associate Professor of Obstetrics, Gynecology and Reproductive Biology at Harvard Medical School. He is immediate past Chair of the Committee on Obstetric Practice for the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, an Oral Examiner for the American Board of Obstetrics and Gynecology, and an Editorial Board Member for the journal, Obstetrics and Gynecology.

Before retiring as a Colonel in the United States Air Force in 2005 he served as Department Chair at Wilford Hall Medical Center, as Chief Consultant to the Surgeon General for Maternal-Fetal Medicine and as Commander of the 407th Expeditionary Medical Group in Iraq.

His primary research interests since 1996 have been in the design and conduct of a number of randomized trials in clinical obstetrics and perinatology. His clinical practice and interests are in the areas of preterm birth, cervical insufficiency, multiple gestations and intrapartum obstetrics.

Ocean Berg received her BA in Sociology at University of California Santa Cruz, her MSN in Community Public Health/Clinical Nurse Specialist in Perinatal from San Francisco State University in 1998 and 2003 respectively. She is currently the Perinatal Clinical Nurse Specialist at San Francisco General Hospital. Ocean thrives in multidisciplinary work and strives to promote normalcy in high risk birth. Currently Ocean is representing AWHONN with MD Nancy Lowe in a Home Birth Consensus Summit. She has lectured throughout California for AWHONN on the subjects of Baby Friendly and Normalizing Childbirth. She has written an article for JPNN on the topic of Baby Friendly and for Maternal Child Nursing on the topic of Skin to Skin in the Operating Room. She is going to work with the CMQCC Preeclampsia Taskforce. Ocean lives in San Francisco with her two home birthed daughters, extreme sport engrossed husband and two calico cats. Non professional pursuits include outdoor sports of all sorts and enjoying her extended family of friends.

Debra has over 30 years of leadership experience in Maternal-Child Health where she has helped develop, implement, and evaluate hospital-based and public health quality improvement initiatives in both rural and urban settings. Debra has authored articles on leading change and quality improvement. Her primary expertise is translational research and effective implementation of quality improvement at the front-lines of health care.

Debra is currently the Vice President of Research, Education, and Publications for the Association of Women's Health, Obstetric & Neonatal Nurses. Previously, she was the Executive Director of the California Maternal Quality Care Collaborative (CMQCC), which is a state-wide initiative with approximately 300 hospitals where 560,000 births a year occur (one out of eight US births). The mission of CMQCC is to eliminate preventable maternal morbidity and mortality for all women. during my tenure at CMQCC she worked with the CA Department of Health to start the California Pregnancy-Associated Mortality Review (PAMR) Committee and review methodology. Debra served on CA-PAMR for 3 years. Prior to 2006 she was the Director of Maternal Child Health Nursing for two hospitals in New York City. Debra is also past President-Elect of Lamaze International and past chair of the Lamaze Institute of Safe and Healthy Birth Committee.

Melissa Cheyney is the Chair of the Division of Research for the Midwives Alliance, and an Assistant Professor of Medical Anthropology and Reproductive Biology in the Department of Anthropology at Oregon State University (OSU). She received her doctorate from the University of Oregon in 2005, where her research examined the U.S. Homebirth Movement and Midwifery Models of Care. Dr. Cheyney is a Certified Professional Midwife, Director of the Reproductive Health Laboratory at OSU, and Chair of the Board of Direct-entry Midwifery for the State of Oregon. She is also the author of the recently published ethnography, Born at Home by Wadsworth Press.

Linda Cole is the current president of the American Association of Birth Centers and Executive Director of the Lisa Ross Birth and Women's Center, a freestanding birth center in Knoxville Tennessee, as well as a practicing midwife. After graduating from the University of Colorado in 1985, she worked as an RN in labor and delivery in rural North Carolina alongside a traditional midwife who eventually delivered her two children at home. Before entering midwifery school in 1992 at the Medical University of South Carolina, she had experienced the entire spectrum of birth from home birth to high risk tertiary care obstetrics.

Though the full spectrum of experience was valuable in her education and as a nurse, she felt that normal birth outside the hospital was the model of care she sought to practice as a midwife, so a freestanding birth center such as Lisa Ross Birth and Women's Center seemed a perfect match for her as a Certified Nurse Midwife. She has been there since 1994, except for a one year leave to teach midwifery students in the university setting. She has continued to be involved in the education of many midwifery students over the years in the birth center setting. She also practices in the hospital, taking care of clients needing that setting for birth. She continues to be amazed at how much better birth unfolds when there is minimal interference with the woman's own instincts and way of giving birth, regardless of the setting.

She is a member of the American Association of Birth Centers, and the American College of Nurse-Midwives. She represents AABC as a member of the Coalition for Improving Maternity Services, the United States Breastfeeding Committee and the National Quality Forum. In addition she serves on her regional Fetal and Infant Mortality Review Committee.

Dr. Conry is assistant physician in chief for Kaiser Permanente's Sacramento-Roseville region in CA, where she also oversees member marketing and health and wellness programs for patients and employees. She is on the executive committee for the Preconception Health Council of California and serves on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention select panel on Preconception. She is also Chair of ACOG District IX.

Katsi (guh jee) Cook, wolf clan Mohawk is a healer, midwife, researcher and a respected educator and elder in her community. For the past 25 years she has worked as a women's health advocate and activist for environmental restoration in her Tribal community the Mohawk Nation at Akwesasne in northern New York State straddling the U.S.-Canadian border. Katsi was the founding Aboriginal midwife of the Six Nations Birthing Centre, the first school of indigenous midwifery.

She has written numerous published essays, articles for Indian Country Today, and she was a featured speaker at Live Earth at the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, DC in 2007. She was honored in 2005 where community leaders, including a generation of women who became mothers and social activists under her guidance, honored Katsi's leadership and extensive body of work. Katsi was a recipient of a 2004-2005 Indigenous Knowledge Cultural Researcher Award from the Indigenous Health Research Development Program at the University of Toronto.

She currently works in Maternal and Child Health qualitative research for the Tribal Epidemiology Center at United South and Eastern Tribes (USET, Inc.), Nashville, Tenn., a consortium of 24 tribal communities in the southern and eastern region of the U.S. She is researching and writing about environmental and reproductive justice issues in Native America.

Professor of Community Health Sciences and Assistant Dean, Doctoral Education, Boston University School of Public Health

Professor, Obstetrics and Gynecology, Boston University School of Medicine

Dr. Declercq is Professor of Community Health Sciences and Assistant Dean for Doctoral Education at the Boston University School of Public Health. He is also a professor on the faculty of Obstetrics and Gynecology at the Boston University School of Medicine. He was awarded a Robert Wood Johnson Investigator Award in Health Policy Research to study policy and practice related to cesarean section in the US and has served as lead author of three national studies of women's experiences in childbirth and in the postpartum period entitled Listening to Mothers I & II and New Mothers Speak Out.

Ms. Diaz-Tello is Staff Attorney at National Advocates for Pregnant Women (NAPW), which works to secure the human and civil rights, health and welfare of pregnant and parenting women, focusing particularly on those who are most vulnerable - low income women, women of color, and drug-using women. At NAPW, she has focused on birth justice: ensuring that women have options in birth, the economic and social support necessary to access those options, and the freedom to exercise them with dignity and without coercion or punishment. She has tracked and documented cases in which women have been threatened or punished with court orders or child removal for their choices in prenatal care and delivery. Ms. Diaz-Tello has also assisted in cases in which families have been investigated and babies separated from their mothers on the basis of the decision to birth at home. She hopes to bring to the Summit the human, Constitutional, and common law rights dimension of homebirth policies, knowledge of the duties of mandatory child protective reporters with regard to birthing women, and the ethical/public health perspective on coercive or punitive use of legal systems against birthing women.

Marinah learned the art of midwifery through traditional midwives, as well as working in birth centers, public hospitals in developing nations, formal education in the United States and, of course, the many mothers she has served in her home birth practice. Marinah is licensed in Arizona and holds her National Certification and is a graduate of Arizona State University with a degree in Politics.

After partnering in a non-profit waterbirth center on the Mexico/Guatemala border and a short time in Uganda working at a primary care medical and birth center, Marinah returned to Arizona and established an active and diverse practice located in Tempe, Arizona. Marinah attends primarily homebirths but also attends, on occasion, families wishing to deliver at a local birth center in downtown Phoenix.

Marinah was raised in the traditional ways of her parents and was gifted to watch her grandfather and mother walk among plants, identifying their healing properties both in the mountains of Mexico and the deserts of Arizona. Her love for midwifery stems from this lifelong belief in the healing essence of the natural world, her strong political views regarding healthcare and informed consent, and the beautiful homebirths of her own children. Her current passions are linking Mayan/Mexican traditional healing with Chinese medicine as a way to further the healing potential of both practices, teaching students of midwifery and activism, and reaching out to individuals who do not generally have access to healthcare - whether through NGO work, free health work locally, or legislative and political work as a speaker or street level activist.

She currently serves on the board of the Midwives Alliance of North America (MANA) as the representative for MANA's western region, and is the President of Migrant, Inner-City and Rural Aid (MIRA). MIRA is the only nonprofit in Arizona with the expertise to effectively and efficiently distribute no-cost services to activists and humanitarian organizations and is actively collaborating with other non-profits to further address health disparities.

Russ' pathway to midwifery, and home birth advocacy began as a consumer of midwifery services (both CPM and CNM) in which he had the presence of mind to follow his wife's leadership as she planned 3 home births. He observed and followed his wife as she worked to become a Certified Professional Midwife and learned to appreciate how important having trained midwives is to women. He is now a leader of one of the largest and most effective statewide midwifery advocacy organizations in the U.S., the North Carolina Friends of Midwives. Russ engages the media and the body politic in an effort to cultivate a safe and supportive environment for the women and families that choose midwifery care and the home setting for birth in North Carolina. Russ' work is not yet done.

Professionally, Russ is a nuclear engineer, a reactor physicist and engineering manager. Russ' team is charged with the design of the advanced fuel assemblies and reactor cores for the power stations that provide about 7% of U.S. electricity capacity and more internationally. Russ has been engaged in safety analysis for 25 years, an area of expertise that makes him uniquely qualified to evaluate safety issues associated with maternity care in both hospital and out-of-hospital settings.

Russ views the issue of midwife attended planned home birth as fundamentally a management issue, in which each state needs to assure they have a sufficient number of trained and credentialed midwives to meet the need, provide for regulatory oversight to assure the standards of care are maintained, and to set expectations throughout the healthcare team on how these families shall be cared for.

Kate is in private practice as midwife and owner of Woman's Way Health Care in Ithaca, New York, providing well-woman and maternity care, and currently attending planned home births. The focus of Kate's practice involves women as partners through self-care and shared decision-making.

Kate's background includes a BS in Nutrition with maternal/child focus from Cornell University. After working in WIC programs, Kate felt called to provide full maternity care and chose the direct-entry path to midwifery practice. Graduating from the 3-year program at Seattle Midwifery School , Kate was prepared for full-scope midwifery practice. Licensed in Washington in 1989, Kate conducted a private home birth practice and provided well-woman care at a public women's health clinic in Seattle. From 1993-1995, Kate worked in Cambodia, managing an integrated provincial health program and training Cambodian midwives as a team member with British and French midwives. Kate became committed to advancing recognition of the universality of midwifery within diverse pathways of education.

Upon returning to the United States, Kate became a pioneer for direct-entry midwifery equivalency to nurse midwifery. Kate relocated to New York because the licensing law was poised to recognize direct-entry and nurse midwifery education as equivalent. Kate was the first American-educated, direct-entry midwife to challenge this equivalency and earned one of the first ACMB Certified Midwife (CM) credentials in 1998. That same year Kate earned the new NARM Certified Professional Midwife (CPM) credential. However, Kate feels most comfortable identifying herself professionally as a Licensed Midwife. In 2000, Kate became one of the first direct-entry midwives to complete the MS in Midwifery at the Philadelphia University. Kate's thesis work covered the language direct-entry midwives could use to describe their unique competencies , a comparative sociological review of professionalization of midwifery and medicine, and a strategic analysis of promoting direct-entry midwifery in licensing legislation, both CM and CPM credentials. From 2000-2005, Kate held independent admitting privileges at a local hospital with a birth center, offering women the choice of home, birth center or hospital as place of birth. By 2005, Kate chose to return to exclusive home birth practice.

In 2010, midwifery practice in NY was laboring under the restrictive requirement of maintaining a written practice agreement with a physician as a precondition to practice. With a surge of consumer support, the midwives in NY were successful in passing legislation establishing collaborative relationships with physicians as the model for inter-professional coordination. As a board member of the New York State Association of Licensed Midwives, Kate coordinated messaging between lobbyists and the consumer-sponsored social media campaign called Free Our Midwives, contributed to legislative strategic planning, and was lead author on ten evidence-based lobbying documents.

Since passage of the NY Midwifery Modernization Act, Kate skills in creative and strategic problem solving have been brought to bear on both sides of the equation in developing systemic structures that promote mutually respectful collaborative relationships between OBs and home birth midwives. Kate gave a grand rounds presentation on planned home birth at the SUNY Upstate OB Residency Program and at the regional AWHONN conference. Kate cultivated the assistance of the Regional Perinatal Center in helping local affiliate hospitals understand their responsibility to engage in coordinating communication and transfers with home birth midwives. Within the New York Association of Licensed Midwives, Kate fostered the development of a Statement on Planned Home Birth outlining model behavior for both midwives and hospital providers during transfers. These steps bring home birth closer to being integrated as part of the health care system in Kate's region of upstate NY.

Kate is honored to be invited to participate in the Home Birth Summit.

Dr. Fisher practices at the Hubbard Center for Women’s Health in Keene, NH. He is the Chair, Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology: Dartmouth-Hitchcock Keene and Cheshire Medical Center, Keene NH. He is also an Adjunct Assistant Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Dartmouth Medical School.

Dr. Fisher is currently a Master of Health Care Delivery Science candidate at Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire. He obtained his medical degree at Dartmouth Medical School, Hanover, New Hampshire, completing his categorical internship and residency in obstetrics and gynecology at the Naval Medical Center in San Diego, California.

Dr Fisher’s interest in home birth has grown out of the relationships he has developed with local group of home birth providers through his practice as well as formal initiatives he has been involved with through NNEPQIN (Northern New England Perinatal Quality Improvement Network). He has been involved in developing web-based resources to facilitate communication between home birth providers and obstetricians in the region as well as expedite transfers to the hospital setting when necessary and appropriate. While there may be differences in our training and philosophies, Dr. Fisher thinks it is critically important that all parties involved in the care of women and delivery of babies work to eliminate barriers that stand in the way of the health and safety of those they serve.

Rixa is a researcher and writer. She has a PhD in American Studies from the University of Iowa with emphasis on childbirth and maternity care. She spent several years following direct-entry midwives in Iowa, and wrote her doctoral dissertation about the modern unassisted birth movement in North America.

Since her graduation in 2008, she's written several articles and presented research on home birth and breech birth at Lamaze conferences and the International Breech Conference in Ottawa. She's also had three children, all born at home in various circumstances: a planned unassisted birth, a CNM-attended home birth, and most recently a surprise unassisted birth (the midwife didn't arrive on time). You can read a bit more about me here or at my interview with Amy Romano.

Her most recent article, for the Expert Review of Obstetrics & Gynecology, was about Attitudes towards home birth in the US.

Tara N. Gaston, Esq., is an attorney in upstate New York, working primarily in women's healthcare and healthcare access. She works with other attorneys around the country through various groups to provide legal education and advocacy for women looking to exercise their rights in pregnancy and childbirth. She is a consumer advocate with BirthNet of New York, and a contributor to theunnecesarean.com, a well-read blog dealing with issues facing women in pregnancy and childbirth. She is a member of Legal Advocates for Birth Options and Rights (LABOR), as well as a number of professional organizations. Tara also volunteers with The Legal Project, assisting in the representation of victims of domestic violence, and is herself a homebirth consumer.

Ann's insurance career spans over 35 years. She attained the CPCU (Chartered Property & Casualty Underwriter) designation in 1988 and continues her industry education through the Continuing Professional Development program. The St. Paul Insurance Company provided many years of underwriter training and experience which she has now transferred to the agency business.

Ann is co-owner and C.E.O. of Dean Insurance Agency which specializes in professional liability programs offered on a countrywide basis. Dean Insurance has sponsored the Out of Hospital Birth Feasibility Study and continues to develop insurance policies meeting the unique needs of midwives and birth centers. A new midwifery website was launched in January 2011.

Ann is very active in the community, and has served on non-profit boards and committees, including Anthony House, American Cancer Society and Rotary. She is also a consumer midwifery advocate with memberships including MANA, MAF, NACPM, ACNM, AABC and CFM. Dean Insurance Agency is a corporate sponsor/exhibitor for many of these organizations. She also teaches many CEU programs for midwifery students, allied health and hospital family practice residency programs. Ann served as a stakeholder in the Transforming Midwifery Care Symposium in 2009.

In 2007, as MANA Insurance Committee Chair, Ann developed an affordable health insurance program for MANA members. Ann continues as MANA Insurance Committee Chair to date.

Ms. Linda Glenn has been Assistant Professor/Staff Certified Nurse Midwife (CNM) with the Nurse-Midwifery/Women's Health Care Program at Oregon Health Sciences University (OHSU), School of Nursing, since 1988. She has also had a private midwifery practice since 1990 and provided mental health counseling specializing in issues related to pregnancy, couples counseling, trauma, parenting, affective disorders and attention disorders. She has an appointment to the Oregon State Direct Entry Midwifery Board and participates in the following Board committees: Public Safety/Peer Review and Legislation & Rules.

Ms. Glenn earned a Master's of Nursing degree from OHSU, a Master's of Public Health in Maternal and Child Health from University of North Carolina, School of Public Health, a Certificate of Nurse-Midwifery from the University of Mississippi, School of Nursing, and a Bachelor's of Science in Nursing with a Minor in Psychology from Central Missouri State College, Department of Nursing.

Jenifer received a Bachelor of Science degree from Lesley College and went on to earn a Master's Degree in Educational Leadership from Bridgewater State College, later taking courses in the realm of the M.Div degree at Andover-Newton Theological School, and Harvard Divinity School, as a way to combine her passion for people, their emotional and spiritual needs and her intense love of intellectualism.

Her current focus is on improving the care of mothers and babies through grass roots organizing and political action in her home state. She trained as a doula, and may continue to pursue midwifery in the future. She lives with her husband and two daughters in Cape Cod, Massachusetts where she raises goats and other livestock. She is passionate about birth politics and the care of mothers during the childbearing year and has a garden that is the delight and envy of all who see it.

Diane Holzer is a home birth midwife of over 20 years, teaches classes in women's health, natural family planning, and works as a physician assistant in a bi-lingual rural healthcare family practice clinic.

She has been actively involved with the Midwives Alliance of North America (MANA) for more than 16 years and is a past president. She has been on the faculty at Maternidad La Luz, a midwifery training program, for over 10 years. She served on the board of the International Confederation of Midwives (ICM) as the regional representative for the Americas and was appointed ICM representative to the United Nations for a three-year term. She participated on the Board of Midwifery Education Accreditation Council for 13 years.

Diane is an internationally known speaker, including one of her favorite venues, the 1995 Fourth World Conference on Women, in Beijing China.

Director of the Section for Maternal and Child Health at the American Hospital Association (AHA) and is responsible for working with the over 2000 member hospitals providing specialty care to women and children. Over three decades, she has worked exclusively in the maternal and child health field including positions at the AHA, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, and on Capitol Hill for the Senate Committee on Labor and Human Resources, Subcommittee on Child and Human Development. Bonnie has been active in many organizations including committee appointments at the March of Dimes, the Alan Guttmacher Institute, and other national and local child health initiatives. Bonnie has an undergraduate degree in Child Development from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, and a graduate degree in Health Services Administration from The George Washington University, Washington, DC.

Debbie Jessup has over 30 years experience in midwifery, women's health and health policy. Since 2005 she has been employed as a Health Legislative Specialist in the office of Congresswoman Lucille Roybal-Allard. In that position, she has been actively engaged in health appropriations work as well as helping the Congresswoman to develop and pass several pieces of health legislation. Most recently Deb helped conceptualize and draft the Maximizing Optimal Maternity Services (MOMS) for the 21st Century Act, which was first introduced in the 111th Congress.

In Deb's early career she worked as a childbirth educator, a labor and delivery nurse, and a nurse-midwife. Her midwifery experiences included private, community health center and HMO practices, and incorporated hospital, home, and birth-center settings. Deb established the first midwifery practice in Billings, Montana in 1982, and the first home birth practice in that city in 1984.

Throughout her career Deb has been significantly involved in nurse midwifery policy activities, including being the Virginia Chapter American College of Nurse Midwives (ACNM) Chair and Legislative Chair during the passage of state prescriptive authority for nurse-practitioners; serving on the ACNM Board of Directors from 1996 - 2000; and developing and chairing the ACNM Division of Health Policy from 2000 - 2005. She completed the HRSA Bureau of Health Professions Primary Care Policy Fellowship Program in 2000, and the Women's Education and Research Institute (WREI) Congressional Fellowship Program in 2005.

Debbie is a Fellow of the American College of Nurse Midwives, and is currently completing a PhD in Nursing at George Mason University.

Rima Jolivet is a Senior Technical Advisor, Health Policy Program with The White Ribbon Alliance. As the Associate Director of Programs for Childbirth Connection from 2007 - 2010, she provided leadership in many key areas including serving as Director of the Transforming Maternity Care Project. She co-authored several publications including 2020 Vision for a High Quality, High Value Maternity Care System and Blueprint for Action: Steps Toward a High Quality, High Value Maternity Care System. She is an adjunct faculty for the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, Bethesda MD and has been a faculty member and consultant for Centering Healthcare Institute since 2000.

Jennie Joseph, a British-trained midwife and women's health advocate, moved to the United States in 1989 and began a journey which has culminated in the formation of an innovative maternal child healthcare system, The JJ Way®.

Executive Director of Commonsense Childbirth Inc, her non profit corporation, she owns and operates The Birth Place birthing center in Winter Garden, Florida and has established an outreach clinic for pregnant women who are at risk of not receiving prenatal care. Jennie is also the owner/director of Commonsense Childbirth School of Midwifery, a Florida licensed direct-entry midwifery, doula, childbirth education and lactation training program, and is an expert and activist regarding perinatal health disparities.

Dr. John Kattwinkel is a Professor of Neonatology with the University of Virginia and a member of the American Academy of Pediatrics.

He received his medical degree from Harvard Medical School. He joined U.Va. in 1974 following his residency, fellowship and research training at Duke, Case Western Reserve and the National Institutes of Health.

He is a pioneer in the field of sudden infant death syndrome and was one of the lead authors of the landmark 1992 American Academy of Pediatrics policy statement that urged parents to put infants to sleep on their backs to prevent SIDS. In addition to his work on sleep position and SIDS, Kattwinkel has focused on neonatal lung disease and disorders of respiratory control, including the use of surfactant in the treatment of respiratory distress syndrome.

Soon after arriving at U.Va., Kattwinkel developed a perinatal regional plan for the 12 hospitals in northwest Virginia, with U.Va. serving as the perinatal regional center. This required setting up a Newborn Emergency Transportation System. As a founding member and later chairman of the Governor's Perinatal Services Advisory Council, he was instrumental in establishing a similar perinatal plan for other regions across the commonwealth.

Supported by a grant from the National Institutes of Health, Kattwinkel created an educational program to optimize the care of the newborn in the first critical minutes of life. His Perinatal Continuing Education Program, an educational program for physicians, nurses, nurse midwives and practitioners, respiratory therapists and all others who care for pregnant women or newborn babies, has now been expanded across the globe. The program has been used by more than 150,000 health care professionals across the United States as well as by caregivers in Canada, Bosnia, Poland, Mexico and China. In addition, PCEP served as the model for a program developed in South Africa.

While serving as a consultant for the American Academy of Pediatrics' and Project HOPE, Kattwinkel helped establish care facilities and outreach education programs for rural perinatal care in China, Poland, Romania, Central America and South Africa.

Dr. Kattwinkel attends the Summit at the request of the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), where over the past 25 years he has been very active in the development and distribution of the Neonatal Resuscitation Program (NRP). The NRP was developed jointly by the AAP and the American Heart Association and has trained over 2 million health care professionals in the technique and skills required to resuscitate and stabilize compromised infants at birth. As a founding member of NRP, Dr. Kattwinkel has served as a member and Chair of the NRP Steering Committee and has been Editor of the NRP Textbook for the past 3 editions. He is the winner of numerous other honors and awards, including a 1995 "Miracle Maker" award honoring exceptional children's physicians from A.H. Robbins Co., the National Education and Apgar Awards of the AAP, the Outstanding Faculty Award from the Virginia State Council on Higher Education, and recognition as one of the "10 Parenting Leaders" by Parenting Magazine. In 2004, Kattwinkel was awarded an inaugural Discovery Health Channel Medical Honor.

Holly Powell Kennedy is the inaugural Helen Varney Professor of Midwifery at Yale University and President of the American College of Nurse-Midwives (ACNM). She is on the faculty of King's College London where she was a Fulbright Distinguished Scholar during 2008. She served for a number of years as the co-chair if the International Confederation of Midwives Standing Research Committee.

She has practiced in numerous settings including rural health, community and tertiary hospitals, and in academic practices and has educated midwives since 1993. Her research includes numerous qualitative studies exploring the work of midwives and its relationship to health outcomes. One focus of her work is on "optimality" in perinatal care and the appropriate use of interventions in low risk women during childbirth. She has also completed a clinical trial of CenteringPregnancy, a group model of prenatal care, in two military settings. She speaks internationally on strategies to normalize birth care and her numerous research studies.

She is a graduate of the Frontier School of Midwifery & Family Nursing, her master's degree from the Medical College of Georgia as a family nurse practitioner, and her doctoral degree from the University of Rhode Island. Her awards include Fellowship in the American College of Nurse-Midwives and the American Academy of Nursing, the Lamaze International Research Award to the ACNM Optimality Working Group, the Margretta Madden Styles Award for Excellence in Nursing, the Rhode Island State Nurses Association President's Award for Service to Nursing, a Governor's Citation for Service to the State of Rhode Island, and the Irving Harris Visiting Professorship at the University of Illinois-Chicago.

Tanya leads home birth advocacy for the International Center for Tradition Childbearing and is a member of the Homebirth Summitt steering committee. She is co-founder of Birth and Family Health Center in Sacramento, California, an innovative multidisciplinary women's health center. After receiving her midwifery training in Seattle, Washington at the Seattle School of Midwifery, she furthered her skills and life experience with apprenticeships in Senegal and Jamaica, where she learned another dimension of homebirth from an international lens. Prior to her work with Birth and Family Health Center, Tanya spent eight years coordinating obstetric, psychosocial and health education service delivery as a midwife and clinic administrator at the Birthing Project Clinic in Sacramento which serves low-income high risk women and teens. Tanya is the mother of three- terrific daughters and who were all born at home.

Mary Lawlor is a Certified Professional Midwife in private home birth practice in Vermont and New Hampshire since 1981 and is the owner of the Monadnock Birth Center in New Hampshire, which opened in 2008. She earned a BS from Georgetown University, her Associate in Midwifery in 1981 at The Maternity Center in El Paso, Texas, a high-volume freestanding birth and midwifery training center, and an MA in Counseling from Lesley University in Boston in 1986.

Mary was active in successful legislative efforts to license midwives in both Vermont and New Hampshire. She has served as a Midwife Advisor to the Vermont Office of Professional Regulation since 2003, helping to oversee the practice of midwifery in the state.

She is a founding board member and President of the National Association of Certified Professional Midwives (NACPM) since 2003. She also serves as Policy Analyst to the Midwives and Mothers in Action (MAMA) Campaign, a national coalition of six midwifery-related organizations advocating in the U.S. Congress for increased access for women across the country to Certified Professional Midwife services and improved maternity care.

Dr. Leeman is a family medicine physician with a focus on Maternal and Child Health. He is Associate Professor of Family and Community Medicine; Obstetrics and Gynecology at the University of New Mexico (UNM). He is director of the UNM Family Practice Maternal and Child Health clinical service and fellowship and co-medical director of the Mother-Baby unit at the University Hospital. His research interests include maternal and neonatal outcomes of childbirth, rural maternity care, and family planning.

After graduating from the University of California, San Francisco School of Medicine, Dr. Leeman completed a family medicine residency at the University of New Mexico School of Medicine. He was in rural practice with the Zuni-Ramah Indian Health Service from 1992-1998 where he was the Maternity Care Director for the hospital birth center that functioned without on-site cesarean capability. He subsequently completed a family medicine fellowship in operative and high-risk obstetrics at the University of Rochester (N.Y) School of Medicine.

He is the managing editor of the Advanced Life Support in Obstetrics (ALSO) curriculum of the American Academy of Family Practice and co-editor of the Global ALSO curriculum both of which focus on the management of obstetric emergencies. He has helped introduce the ALSO curriculum in Mexico, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Ecuador and China.

As a faculty member at UNM he has worked for eleven years as a consultant for home birth and birth center midwives and helped care for their clients who have required hospital transport. He was the physician member of the New Mexico State Licensed midwifery advisory board from 1993-1998. He has presented grand rounds for the UNM Ob/Gyn and Family Medicine Departments on Home Birth with a focus on facilitating improved collaboration from home to hospital.

Audrey has been a licensed midwife since 2001. She received her BA from Stanford University in 1984 and her midwifery training at the Seattle Midwifery School from 1998-2000. She practices in Olympia, WA and attends births both at home and in freestanding birth centers.

Since 2005, Audrey has served as co-chair of the Physician-Midwife Workgroup, under the auspices of the WA State Perinatal Advisory Committee. In that capacity, and as President of the Midwives' Association of Washington State (MAWS) since 2009, Audrey has been a leader in efforts to improve inter-professional communication and enhance the safety of out-of-hospital birth. In addition to being a member of MAWS, she is a member of the Midwives' Alliance of North America (MANA) and the National Association of Certified Professional Midwives (NACPM).

Dr. Lewis is a clinical assistant professor at the University of Washington in Obstetrics and Gynecology. She is the medical director of the midwives group at Northwest Hospital (a community hospital owned by University of Washington) where she also practices general obstetrics and gynecology.

She has a strong interest in interdisciplinary maternity care, out of hospital birth and safe transfer to the hospital when needed. She spends time teaching residents at the University of Washington on labor and delivery and helping them learn to care for women transferring in from an out of hospital birth setting. She has an interest in cross disciplinary education and forming collaborative relationships between hospital and out of hospital maternity care providers.

Judith Lothian is an internationally respected childbirth educator and advocate for safe, healthy birth and breastfeeding. She is an associate professor in the College of Nursing at Seton Hall University in South Orange, New Jersey.

She currently chairs the Certification Council for Lamaze International that is responsible for developing the international certification examination for Lamaze certified childbirth educators. She is also the Associate Editor of the Journal of Perinatal Education and writes a regular column for the JPE. Her advocacy work includes national leadership positions in Lamaze International and national work with Childbirth Connection, the American College of Nurse Midwives, and the Coalition for Improving Maternity Services.

Co-author of The Official Lamaze Guide: Giving Birth with Confidence and a blog about normal birth at birthwithconfidence.blogs.lamaze.org. Research interests are breastfeeding and childbirth and she is currently completing a qualitative research study of the experience of home birth for women and their midwives.

Lisa is an Assistant Professor in the School of Nursing and Women's Studies Department at the University of Michigan. She completed her doctoral studies and an NIH BIRCWH post-doctoral fellowship in interdisciplinary women's health research, also at the University of Michigan. She brings her twenty five years of midwifery clinical practice experience to the research questions she asks about labor care practices, with an emphasis on evidence based practices to promote optimal health outcomes. Lisa is also the chair of the Division of Standards and Practice, Clinical Standards and Documents section where is ushers standard setting documents through a process of development to implementation, including those related to Homebirth.

Marian MacDorman is a senior statistician and researcher in the Reproductive Statistics Branch at the National Center for Health Statistics, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Marian has published extensively on home and out-of-hospital birth, cesarean section, induction of labor, preterm birth, infant, fetal and perinatal mortality, and other topics related to the birthing process. Her latest publication on home birth is: MacDorman MF, Declercq E, Mathews TJ. US Home Births Increase 20% from 2004 to 2008. Birth 2011;38:1-6.

Marian is a member of the editorial board for the journal Birth: Issues in Perinatal Care. She is also a Governing Councilor for the American Public Health Association (APHA), MCH section, and was previously the co-chair of the SIDS and Infant Mortality Committee, MCH section from 1999-2009. Marian co-wrote an APHA policy statement on maternal mortality which is currently under review, and a policy statement on female genital mutilation which was adopted by APHA in 1998.

Élan is the president and co-founder of Choices in Childbirth, a consumer advocacy organization whose mission is to improve maternity care by providing women and families with the information necessary to make fully informed decisions relating to how, where, and with whom they will give birth. She oversees production of The [National, New York and Philadelphia] Guide to a Healthy Birth, free annual publications which inform the public about women's rights and options in childbirth. She is Co-founder of the Grassroots Advocates Committee of The Coalition for Improving Maternity Services and is on the committee which has created The Birth Survey, an on-line consumer tool that allows women to provide feedback on maternity care providers and facilities. Élan is the consumer representative for the North American Registry of Midwives (NARM). She is a DONA-Trained Labor Doula who has been attending home births as well as births in hospitals and birth centers since 2000. Élan is a featured speaker in Ricki Lake's groundbreaking 2008 documentary film, The Business of Being Born.

As a Broadway Producer, Élan's credits include The Peewee Herman Show, American Idiot, Come Fly Away, Cry Baby, Coram Boy, Spamalot (Tony Award), Hairspray (Tony Award), Metamorphoses, The Crucible, and The Iceman Cometh. Her London producing credits include Spamalot, Rent and Michael Moore Live! She is currently developing a one woman show with rock goddess, Storm Large.

Sara is the Director of Women's and Children's Services at Monadnock Community Hospital in Peterborough, NH. For AWHONN, she currently serves as the Section Leader of the NH Section and Chair of the Nominating Committee, and previously as Past Section Chair, 2006-2010.

Sara has broad clinical knowledge of both tertiary and community hospital perinatal nursing practice, having served in staff, education and administrative roles that promote multidisciplinary collaboration among individuals and organizations. She has presented two innovative program presentations at national AWHONN conventions in 2007 and 2000 and served as Co-chair of the planning committee of the 9th National Conference on Outreach Education in 2003.

Sara has a Bachelor of Science degree in Nursing from the University of Maine, and a Master of Science degree in Nursing from Boston University.

Fay is a registered nurse (R.N.), and board certified pediatric nurse practitioner (C.P.N.P.) with a Doctor of Public Health degree (Dr.P.H.) from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. She has experience in patient care as well as research, especially in the area of Maternal and Child Health. At Westat, Inc. (a federal contractor) her experience included acting as a lead study coordinator for a two-arm clinical screening trial to evaluate the effectiveness of screening evaluations for prostate, lung, colorectal and ovarian cancer.

As research coordinator at the United States Pharmacopeia (USP), she coordinated all activities related to implementation, analysis, and evaluation of the benchmarking process for MedMARx ™, an Internet-accessible, program for documenting, tracking and preventing medication errors. She coordinated hospital recruitment efforts for the MedMARxTM beta test and developed the data analysis plan.

For almost 10 years, as a statistician in the Division of Vital Statistics at the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS), of the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), she designed, analyzed, wrote text, and developed special tables and graphics for standard NCHS reports. These reports were based on birth certificate data and data linking birth and infant death certificates. She has published in both government publications and peer-reviewed journals in the areas of method of delivery, obstetric procedures, attendant at birth, and place of birth. She reviewed manuscripts for publication, providing technical assistance to the public and professionals, and collaborated with NCHS staff and outside researchers to initiate, plan, design and author special analytic reports and presentations to the public health community. Dr. Menacker also designed and planned an evaluation of revised birth data, which included both qualitative and quantitative analyses.

Most recently, for Social & Scientific Systems, Inc., a federal contractor, Dr. Menacker assisted with management of specific FDA Medical Product Safety Network (MedSun) initiatives. She was responsible for recruiting hospitals to participate in an FDA exploratory pilot study on use and safety of drugs in infants and young children. She completed the Collaborative Institutional Training Initiative (CITI) Course on Responsible Conduct of Research (RCR) and obtained a Level 5 (FDA Public Trust Position) Security Clearance.

She is a member of t he Editorial Board of Birth, Issues in Perinatal Care. She is a past Chair of the Alexandria Virginia Public Health Advisory Commission. Dr. Menacker served on the Institutional Review Board of the Whitman Walker Clinic in Washington, D.C.

Board-Certified OB/GYN and Medical Director of Spectrum Health Gerber Memorial OB/GYN in Michigan. Dr. Michele brought a CNM into the hospital-employed practice while the CNM also maintains a home birth practice in the community. Bridging the home birthing woman to safe options of care within the hospital, when needed, has always been a goal of her practice. Prior to medical school, Dr. Michele worked as a doula, childbirth educator, and midwife assistant to a CPM. She has provided obstetrical and surgical services to women in Togo, Africa, in addition to inner city, metropolitan, and rural areas of the U.S. Working to make Mother-Friendly care routine in hospital environments, Tami serves as a Board Member on the Leadership Team of the Coalition for Improving Maternity Services (CIMS), and on the Michigan Hospital Association OB Advisory Committee for the Michigan Keystone OB Project. Two of her four children were born at home. Her experience has brought a unique perspective into her OB/GYN practice.

Shafia is a Certified Midwife by the Massachusetts Midwives Alliance, a public health activist, a Doula Trainer, and organizer for homebirth as an option. She is the founder and president of the International Center for Traditional Childbearing (ICTC). ICTC is the nation's first African American infant mortality prevention, breastfeeding promotion, and midwife training non-profit organization, headquartered in Portland, Oregon.

Shafia speaks internationally on infant mortality prevention and increasing the number of midwives of color to improve birth outcomes. She is involved in both national and state legislative initiatives to create systemic change. An advocate of home birth, she birthed six of her seven children at home. Shafia is the visionary behind the prominent International Black Midwives and Healers Conference that brings midwives and other health care providers together to galvanize resources and implement strategies for reducing infant mortality and strengthening families. In 2006, the Black Midwives and Healers Conference received a Proclamation from Oregon's Governor Ted Kulongoski. Her work is profiled in numerous books and articles. In 2007 she authored the Black Midwives and Prenatal Providers Directory-Essential Recipes and Words of Wisdom for Expecting and New Parents. She holds a BA in sociology, with a concentration in medical sociology, from the University of Massachusetts.

Shafia's memberships and affiliations include the MAMA Campaign, Birthing Project USA, Sister Song, Coalition for Quality Maternity Care, the Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) Advisory Council, Maternal Depression Work Group, and the White Ribbon Alliance for Safe Motherhood. She was recently given the Red Dress Award and the Harriet Tubman Award for her social pioneering work to end infant deaths.

Roberta Moore was educated in nursing at Navajo Community College in the heart of the Navajo Nation, and as a nurse-midwife and family nurse practitioner at School of Midwifery and Family Nursing, in Hyden, Kentucky. She has attended births in homes, a birthing center, a small hospital and a tertiary care center. She worked for thirteen years as a clinician for New Mexico’s statewide Public Health Division in a variety of towns and cultures.

Still in New Mexico, her career took a different direction and she was employed for r thirteen years as the Maternal Health Program Manager for the New Mexico Department of Health, Public Health Division. In this role, she was in charge of licensing and regulating both Licensed Midwives and Certified Nurse Midwives for the state. Another focus of the role included projects to increase access, participation in, and quality of pregnancy care in New Mexico. She has also advocated actively for home birth and for Certified Professional Midwives nationally.

A midwife for more than 30 years, Suzy is one of the co-founders of Seattle Midwifery School and is currently the chair for the Department of Midwifery at Bastyr University in Seattle, Washington. Active in the midwifery profession since the mid-70's Suzy has helped train more than 200 midwives; and, with her midwifery partner, she has assisted nearly 2,000 families in their home and birth center practice - Seattle Home Maternity Service.

In the early 1980’s she was active in legislative reform of Washington’s Midwifery Act and served on the first Midwifery Advisory Committee, writing rules and developing the licensing examination. In 1983 she helped to launch the Midwives Association of Washington State and served as its first president from 1983-1985. In 1988 she earned a Master’s degree in Public Health from the University of Washington’s Maternal and Child Health Program. She co-authored the first study of outcomes of licensed midwife-attended births in Washington, which was published in the journal Birth in 1994. More recently, she wrote a chapter for The Labor Progress Handbook, by Penny Simkin and Ruth Ancheta.

Suzy has continued to be involved on many fronts in support of the development of professional midwifery, locally and nationally. From 1994-2008 she served on the Board of Directors of a Joint Underwriting Association created by the Washington State legislature to provide medical malpractice insurance to midwives providing out-of-hospital birth services. She is now actively involved in national midwifery advocacy, serving on the Board of Directors of the National Association of Certified Professional Midwives (NACPM) as well as chairing the new Department of Midwifery at Bastyr University, the first regionally accredited, articulated (may earn BS and MS) direct entry program in the U.S. to grant a Masters Degree in Midwifery.

Jo Anne has been a leader of efforts to advance direct-entry (homebirth) midwifery and the profession of Certified Professional Midwives for nearly 30 years. Her work in the field began in 1981 with a period as administrative assistant to distinguished childbirth educator, author and publisher Penny Simkin. In 1983, Myers-Ciecko began nearly two decades of service as executive director for the Seattle Midwifery School, a position from which she became a driving force for self-regulatory and regulatory advances for midwives in the state of Washington and nationally. She began service with the Midwifery Education Accreditation Council (MEAC), the US Department of Education-recognized accrediting agency for the field, in 2006 and was chosen as its executive director in 2008, a position which she holds today. Myers-Ciecko has spoken and consulted widely, including service on the Task Force on Emerging Professions and the Task Force on Midwifery at the Center for Health Professions, University of California, San Francisco. She completed her Masters in Public Health from the University of Washington in 1998.

Carol has been attending out of hospital births since 1972. She is in a midwifery partnership with five other midwives at the Farm Midwifery Center, Summertown, Tennessee. She has been actively involved with midwifery politics since 1977. She received her CPM in 1995 was actively involved in the Certification Task Force meetings and was the chair of the NARM pre-approval committee. She has worked on item writing and test development of the NARM Written Exam, Skills Assessment and Qualified Evaluator training, and has been involved in the 1995, 2001, and 2008 Job Analysis. She has been involved with the Eligibility Review Process of the CPM credential in 2010-2011. She has been on the NARM Board serving as the Treasurer since 1997 and Director of Applications since 2003.

Carol is co-author of the American Public Health Association (APHA) position paper, "Increasing Access to Out-Of-Hospital Maternity Care Services Through State-Regulated and Nationally-Certified Direct-entry Midwives". Which was adopted in 2001, by APHA. She is co-author of the APHA position paper, “Safe Motherhood in the United States: Reducing Maternal Mortality and Morbidity”. This was adopted in 2003, by APHA. She is co-author of the APHA position paper, “ Maternal Health as a Human Right: Strategies for Improving Maternal Health Outcomes and Care” a 2011 proposed policy. She is currently active in the Maternal Child Health Section representing the profession of Midwifery and Midwifery Educators. She is co-chair of the Innovations in Maternity Health Services Committee of the Maternal Child Health Section of APHA. This is the committee within APHA that holds the space for “normal birth”. She is currently serving on the APHA Governing Council as a representative for the Maternal Child Section. She has been a review editor for the Maternal and Child Health Journal, a peer reviewed journal, since 2002. She is on the Tennessee Council of Certified Professional Midwives. She works as a pro-bono lobbyist for the Tennessee Midwives Association in their legislative efforts.

Since 1997 she has been the MANA public Education and Advocacy chair helping to promote the profession of midwifery and move midwifery forward in the United States.

She lives with Don Nelson, her husband of 37 years. She is the mother of four children, three of which were born at home, and grandmother of 7, all of which were born at home, with Carol in attendance.

Marianne Nieuwenhuijze is head of the Midwifery Science research department of the faculty Midwifery Education & Studies Maastricht (Academie Verloskunde Maastricht (AVM)), which is part of Zuyd University in the Netherlands. Marianne is a midwife and holds a Master of Public Health. At the moment she is working on her PhD with a focus on women’s choices in midwifery care.

After my graduation as a midwife I worked, first, in the labour ward of a regional hospital. Afterwards I joined a community midwifery practice with 4 colleagues in the south of the Netherlands. I worked as an independent, primary care midwife supporting women through pregnancy, birth and in the postnatal period and doing many home births. In close collaboration with other professionals such maternity care assistants, obstetricians and GP’s.

Here I sparked my interest for scientific research and the underpinning of midwives’ actions.

In 1999 I became a lecturer and later a staff member at the midwifery programme in Maastricht. Over the years, I was closely involved in the development of the curriculum, the official accreditation of the midwifery programme and organisational developments within the AVM. Important areas of attention in education for me are promoting physiological birth and the integration of evidence-based midwifery and research. I was appointed head of the Midwifery Science research department when it was established in 2007.

Currently my main focus is on the scientific development of the midwifery knowledge domain. In research, my fields of interest are women’s views on care and health promotion in maternity care, with a special focus on women’s mental well-being during pregnancy, birth and the postnatal period. Presently I am doing research on women’s choices and decision-making in midwifery care, e.g. with regard to birthing positions. Together with my team I conduct a research project on the development and implementation of health promotion interventions for obesity and mental health in midwifery practices.

Over the years, I have held other positions in various fields. I chaired the regional Kring van Verloskundigen (‘Circle of midwives’) (1993–99) and the Commissie van Overleg met de regionale zorgverzekeraars (Consultation committee with the regional health insurers) (1992–99). I have been a member of the Verloskundige Advies Standaarden van de Koninklijke Nederlandse Organisatie van Verloskundigen (national Midwifery Guidelines Commission of the Dutch midwives’ organisation) from 1998-2009 and chair of this commission from 2004 - 2008. I was also a member of the national Science Committee for Midwifery. And since 2010 the Dutch representative in the European Cost Action on Childbirth Choices and Consequences.

Ruth is the Vice President, Women's Health Services of Geisinger Health System in Danville, Pennsylvania. Ruth also serves as an adjunct faculty member for Pennsylvania College of Technology and the Thomas Jefferson University. She has recently received the 2004 Nightingale Award of Pennsylvania in Nursing Administration and was selected as one of the top 100 people in business in 2005 by Pennsylvania Business Central.

Ruth holds an Associate and Bachelor of Science in Nursing degree from Pennsylvania College of Technology in Williamsport, Pennsylvania and a Master of Nursing from the Pennsylvania State University in State College, PA. She is currently pursuing a Doctorate degree in Nursing from Pennsylvania State University. She is certified in Inpatient Obstetrics through ANCC.

Ruth has also been active within several state nursing organizations including: serving on the Education Committee and Registration Coordinator for the fall conference for the Pennsylvania Organization of Nursing Leaders; member of the Board of Directors, program and awards committee for the Nightingale Association of Pennsylvania; Co-coordinator of the Central Pennsylvania AWHONN chapter; member of the Beta Sigma and Zeta Theta Chapters of Sigma Theta Tau; and recording secretary for the Northcentral chapter of ACHE.

Experientially, most of Ruth's practice has been in perinatal and women's health nursing within acute care settings. She frequently presents at local, state, and national conferences on a variety of topics including quality and performance improvement and health information application and management.

Judy speaks and writes on a wide range of women's health concerns, most recently emphasizing reproductive health and justice, human biotechnologies, women and health care reform, and midwifery advocacy. She has appeared on numerous national television and radio programs, including Oprah, the Today show, Good Morning America, The Early Show and NBC Nightly News with Tom Brokaw.

Since 1971, Ms. Norsigian has been part of the Boston Women's Health Book Collective, now doing business as Our Bodies Ourselves (OBOS). She is the Executive Director and the primary spokesperson for this nonprofit women's health education, advocacy, and consulting organization. Ms Norsigian also serves as a board member of Public Responsibility in Medicine and Research and on numerous other advisory and editorial boards. Her personal recognitions include: the Public Service Award from the Massachusetts Public Health Association; Radcliffe College Alumnae Association Annual Recognition Award; Boston YWCA's Academy of Women Achievers; the Massachusetts Health Council Award; and an honorary doctorate degree from Boston University. She was selected by Women's eNews as one of the "21 Leaders for the 21st Century."

OBOS recently completed the 9th edition of its classic book about women, health, and sexuality - Our Bodies, Ourselves - due out in October 2011. The organization has also produced single topic books on menopause and pregnancy/birth (Our Bodies, Ourselves: Pregnancy and Birth, published in 2008). The group is widely known for its reliable, evidence-based information (both in its books and blogs) as well as its extensive advocacy of midwives and safe choices in childbearing. One hallmark of its publications is the combination of well-researched medical information, accessible language, and the personal experiences of women, putting women's health and sexuality within a political and social context. Our Bodies, Ourselves has appeared in 26 foreign editions and alternative formats, with about 4.5 million copies in print world-wide. There are about a dozen more cultural translation/adaptations now underway, and women representing these projects will be featured at a 40th Anniversary Symposium on Oct 1, 2011, hosted by Boston University.

Dr Plante is an associate professor of obstetrics and gynecology, specializing in maternal-fetal medicine at Drexel University College of Medicine in Philadelphia.

A graduate of Albert Einstein College of Medicine, she completed her residency in obstetrics & gynecology at MCP Hahnemann University and her fellowship in maternal fetal medicine at Temple University, both in Philadelphia. In addition, she completed a residency in anesthesiology and a fellowship in critical care medicine at Albert Einstein, in New York. Dr. Plante is board certified in anesthesiology, critical care medicine, general obstetrics & gynecology, and maternal fetal medicine. Her specific areas of interest are maternal medical conditions complicating pregnancy, maternal mortality, and critical care obstetrics. She is also interested in the application of simulation technology to postgraduate medical education.

She has authored/co-authored several publications on patient-choice cesarean delivery.

Brynne started midwifery training with an apprenticeship in 1991. In 2005, she received her CPM certification through the Portfolio Evaluation Process (PEP) from the North American Registry of Midwives (NARM). From 2002-2005 she also served as the Legislative Coordinator that year for the Commonwealth Midwives Alliance (CMA), lobbying legislators to pass the CPM licensure bill. The bill passed and she received her Virginia license in early 2006.

Brynne currently sits on the Board of Directors for the NARM, the credentialing agency that oversees the CPM credential through setting of standards for testing, accountability, and recertification. They recruited her after the Virginia bill passed to help work with other states who are seeking licensure. She also continues to serve CMA as the Public Relations Director and Legislative Liaison to the Board of Medicine.

Brynne is the co-founder of Private Practice, web-based electronic charting software designed for midwives. She writes about HIPAA and patient centered medical records on the Private Practice blog: http://getprivatepractice.com/blog/

Brynne co-authored an article on Informed Consent that was published in the 2011 summer issue of Squat Birth Journal and she will be co-presenting this article as Informed Consent and the New Health Care Laws at the North American Midwifery Conference in November 2011. In May of 2011, Brynne was a guest on NPR's Kojo Nnamdi show, Midwifery in our Region, as a representative of CPMs on the state and national level.

Brynne recently traveled to South Africa as an Observer member of the Midwives Alliance of North America (MANA) delegation to the International Confederation of Midwives (ICM) Council and Congress. You can read more of her thoughts and experiences about global midwifery issues, as well as a history of political efforts for midwives in Virginia at The Midwife Monologues.

Katherine Prown has seventeen years of experience in communications, grassroots advocacy, and teaching. Her areas of expertise include creating effective messaging and branding materials and generating earned media in a variety of formats for both candidate and issue-based campaigns. During the last ten years she has placed dozens of articles in local, national, and international media outlets for the campaigns she has managed, with a particular focus on increasing public awareness of Certified Professional Midwives (CPMs) and out-of-hospital maternity care.

As Campaign Manager of The Big Push For Midwives Campaign, Katherine has worked with advocacy groups in multiple states, providing guidance and other assistance on such areas as drafting legislation, building strong grassroots networks, and utilizing savvy legislative strategies to advance and pass legislation to license and regulate CPMs. In her capacity as Legislative Chair for the Wisconsin Guild of Midwives, she co-led a statewide, bi-partisan grassroots campaign to successfully pass a CPM licensure bill into law in 2006.

In support of these efforts, Katherine founded and manages various online and social- networking communities devoted to maternity care reform, which together have a combined membership of more than 15,000 activists nationwide. In recognition of her work on behalf of expanding access to Certified Professional Midwives and out-of-hospital birth, she received the 2006 Citizens for Midwifery Susan F. Hodges Award for Outstanding Leadership in Midwifery Advocacy.

A former professor of English and Women's Studies at The College of William and Mary, Katherine developed and taught courses on the ethics of reproductive technologies, women and medicine, women's fiction, and women writers of the South. She is the author the book, Revising Flannery O'Connor: Southern Literary Culture and the Problem of Female Authorship, a project that was one of the first recipients of the National Endowment for the Humanities Dissertation Grant, and of the white paper commissioned by the International Cesarean Awareness Network, "Protecting and Enforcing the Rights of Women Seeking Vaginal Birth after Cesarean (VBAC): A Primer." She is also a contributing author to the online book, From Calling to Courtroom: A Survival Guide for Midwives. Her articles and book reviews have appeared in academic journals, in online magazines, and on Web sites devoted to birth activism.

Katherine earned a BA from Grinnell College (1985) and an MA (1988) and PhD (1993) from The College of William and Mary. She lives in Fox Point, Wisconsin, with her husband and three boys, who were born at home in states where CPMs were illegal at the time, an experience that became the catalyst for her advocacy work on behalf of midwives and out-of-hospital maternity care.

Sheryl delivered her four daughters at home with midwives, one a lay midwife who was working in a state where she was “a-legal”, and the others certified nurse-midwives. She has worked in lay community health as a counselor for at-risk pregnant women and teens, grassroots organizing on both local (co-founder, Midwifery Options for Mothers, Inc.) and state levels (conceived of and facilitated state merger that resulted in Birth Matters Virginia), and, most recently, she was one of the facilitators of the 2011 Healthy Mothers Healthy Birth Summit, a national summit focusing on maternal mortality in the United States. In 2005, Sheryl was appointed to the Virginia Advisory Board on Midwifery for the Board of Medicine as the consumer representative. She served for three years.

Sheryl holds a B.I.S. in Women’s Studies in Communication from George Mason University, and she has worked in Communications as a human resource specialist and quality improvement trainer, community health trainer and supervisor, technical editor and writer, publisher, and as a writing and public speaking teacher in home school cooperatives. In 2005 she published Mothers & Midwives, Women’s Stories of Childbirth.

Currently, Sheryl is a graduate student at Johns Hopkins University. In May 2012 she will graduate with an M.A. in Creative Writing. Her graduate work has led to the beginnings of a memoir that is part medical, part mother-daughter narrative.

Sheryl has had positive experiences with both physicians and midwives and believes the key to quality maternity care is communication and respect on all levels. From her physician’s labor support over the phone while waiting for the home birth midwife to arrive, to seeking out back-up care for her homebirths with physicians who had never heard of midwifery, to hearing the thoughts of feelings of both midwives and physicians on the subject of homebirth, Sheryl believes the differences are not stumbling blocks; rather, they are the catalysts for necessary change.

Paula X. Rojas has 19 years of experience working as a community organizer. Born in Chile, passing through Houston, TX and Brooklyn, NY, she is currently based in Austin, TX. From the time she was a teen, Paula has been working on grassroots social justice issues affecting her own local community. Over the years she has co-founded various community non-profit organizations focused on issues affecting young and adult women of color including Sista II Sista, Pachamama and Community Birthing Project.

Paula's own personal experiences during pregnancy have led to her work (for the last 6 years) at the intersections of healthcare access, midwifery and community organizing. During the first half of her first pregnancy she experienced care under private insurance and then had to switch to Medicaid for the remainder of her pregnancy. She was forced to lay herself off at Sista II Sista, where she was working, due to funding cuts. After having worked on many issues, ranging from housing discrimination, to violence against women; Paula found the challenges and disparate access she faced during pregnancy to be key areas to be addressed in order to create a more just and equitable world. She decided to focus her community organizing work on birthing justice. She became a doula for low-income women, worked as a Childbirth Educator at the largest clinic for uninsured families in Austin and began organizing to address the disparities in pre-natal care and birth outcomes both locally and regionally. Currently she is an apprentice midwife and a member Mamas of Color Rising, a grassroots organization she co-founded in Austin, TX. She is currently working on a campaign to get Texas Medicaid to cover midwifery care both in and out of hospitals, and on the creation of a free holistic pre-natal health clinic with volunteer midwives, pre-natal dance and yoga classes and support groups for low-income women of color at the WIC centers in Austin.

Paula makes a living as a trainer for grassroots community organizations and as a pre-natal dance instructor. She is the mother of two amazing children, Xue-li and Camino.

Amy Romano has worked in the maternity care field as a clinician, research analyst, educator, and consumer advocate since 2001. In 2010, she joined Childbirth Connection, where she directs the Transforming Maternity Care Partnership and works on a broad range of program activities.

Prior to joining Childbirth Connection, Amy spent six years as a perinatal research and advocacy consultant to Lamaze International, during which she analyzed, summarized, and critically appraised research for the Lamaze community and implemented the organization's social media strategy. She launched Lamaze's award-winning research blog, Science & Sensibility, and worked as lead author and production consultant on a series of consumer-oriented videos on evidence-based care in labor and birth, viewed over 500,000 times on YouTube. Amy also coordinated a collaborative effort by leaders in the consumer movement for access to vaginal birth after cesarean (VBAC) that distilled the proceedings and findings of the 2010 NIH Consensus Development Conference on VBAC into a useful primer for women. Her 2010 article, "Power, Social Media, and the Future of VBAC," in the Journal of Perinatal Education is the first to explore the impact of web-enabled consumer movements to drive maternity care quality improvement. Amy has won national awards for both her research scholarship and social media activism.

In addition to her consulting work, Amy provided maternity care services to childbearing families for two years as a nurse in the postpartum and well-baby unit of a large teaching hospital and for four years as a nurse-midwife, during which she worked in the home, birth center, and hospital settings. She also coordinated the introductory labor and birth course for the Nurse-Midwifery Specialty at the Yale School of Nursing and frequently guest lectures for other courses both at Yale and the University of Bridgeport in Connecticut. She is the president of the Connecticut State Affiliate of the American College of Nurse-Midwives (ACNM) and serves as an active member of ACNM's Health Information Technology Taskforce and the Quality Section of ACNM's Division of Standards and Practice.

Prior to entering the maternity care field, Amy worked in public health, first as a website content coordinator for the National Cancer Institute, then as a program assistant for Population Services International where she supported contraceptive and HIV-prevention social marketing programs in Africa and Asia. She has also worked in Guatemala, where she provided programmatic support to a small nonprofit organization piloting an innovative model of midwifery training and continuing education.

An accomplished writer, Amy is co-author of the second edition of Obstetric Myths versus Research Realities and co-editor of the 9th edition of Our Bodies, Ourselves, both due out in 2011. Her work has been published in several peer reviewed journals, and online at RH Reality Check, e-Patients.net, The Health 2.0 Blog, DrGreene.com, The Unnecesarean, Our Bodies Our Blog, Midwives Connection, and Health Tap.

Amy received her undergraduate degree in women's health and economics from the University of Michigan and her Masters of Science in Nursing from Yale University.

Stephen Ruocco is the Divisional Vice President, P & C Severity Claims with Chartis Insurance in Jersey City, NJ. He has technical and administrative responsibility for three senior healthcare complex claim directors. They manage a nationwide pending comprised of high severity primary and excess healthcare professional liability claims. Birth trauma cases are significantly represented therein. Chartis' insured clients include hospitals, physician groups, midwives and birthing centers, long term care facilities, national medical laboratories, and miscellaneous healthcare related facilities and professionals. Stephen's responsibilities include internal and external customer support and mentoring, damage mitigation, oversight and support of the litigation process, establishment of case reserves, and development and implementation of effective claim disposition strategies. Due to their singularly high exposure, managing litigated birth trauma cases remains a core focus for Stephen and his colleagues.

Kate Ryan is the Program Coordinator at the National Women’s Health Network. In this role, she works to develop and implement a program of legislative and regulatory advocacy that focuses on reducing women’s exposure to unnecessary drug and medical treatment risks. Through work with the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, Kate advocates for increased research to improve healthy childbearing and birth outcomes in the U.S., including research to reduce unnecessary interventions.

NWHN brings women's voices to the health policy debates in Washington, DC and the states, and advocates for a health care system that is accessible to all and meets the needs of diverse women. NWHN supports women's right to choose the place they give birth and the type of provider who attends them. NWHN also has a long history of advocacy around the standard of evidence necessary to prove that routine interventions used during pregnancy and childbirth, including medications, are safe and effective.

Prior to joining the NWHN, Kate worked in the Capitol Hill office of U.S. Representative Joe Sestak (D-PA), where she worked on health care reform and the women’s issues portfolio. Before moving to Washington, DC, Kate volunteered in Ghana with the Alliance for Reproductive Health Rights to monitor and assess availability of, and access to, women’s sexual and reproductive health services under the Ghanaian National Health Insurance Scheme. Kate also monitored Ghana’s progress on Millennium Development Goals 4 & 5 – to reduce child mortality and improve maternal health.

In addition to her professional work on home birth, Kate was born at home and was present for the home births of her younger siblings. Kate received her MPA in International Public & Non-Profit Management and Policy Analysis with a focus in women’s rights from the NYU Wagner Graduate School of Public Service.

Carol Sakala has worked on maternity care issues as an advocate, educator, researcher, author, and policy analyst for more than twenty-five years, with a continuous focus on meeting the needs of childbearing women and their families. In 1998-99, Carol worked with Childbirth Connection (then known as Maternity Center Association) to plan the organization's long-term national program to promote evidence-based maternity care. She joined the staff as Director of Programs in 2000, and has since developed and led a broad range of program activities to advance Childbirth Connection's mission of improving the quality of maternity care through research, education, advocacy and policy. Through its programs, Childbirth Connection serves as a trusted and valued resource to health professionals, childbearing women, policy makers, the media, and a broad range of organizations and agencies. Ongoing program initiatives address labor pain, labor support, cesarean section, shared decision making in maternity care, and path breaking national Listening to Mothers surveys, as well as Childbirth Connection's award-winning website.

Since the launch of Childbirth Connection's Transforming Maternity Care initiative in 2007, program work has focused on improving maternity care quality and value by strengthening the effectiveness of the maternity care system. The initiative convened the relevant stakeholders for collaborative deliberation, planning and action, resulting in two foundational reports, 2020 Vision for a High-Quality, High-Value Maternity Care System and Blueprint for Action (published in Women's Health Issues, January 2010). A broad multi-stakeholder partnership is now working to implement the Blueprint. In 2011, Childbirth Connection began a collaboration with the Foundation for Informed Medical Decision Making to develop tools and resources to help women make maternity care decisions.

Carol is Childbirth Connection's liaison to the National Quality Forum. She is a member of the National Priorities Partnership's Overuse Workgroup. She serves on the Steering Committee of Guidelines International Network's Patient and Public Involvement Working Group and works with the Cochrane Collaboration's Pregnancy and Childbirth Group to involve consumers in refereeing the group's protocols and reviews. She has an adjunct faculty appointment in the Boston University School of Public Health.

Carol is lead author of the 2008 Milbank Report, Evidence-Based Maternity Care: What It Is and What It Can Achieve. She is a co-investigator of Childbirth Connection's three national Listening to Mothers surveys and co-author of resulting reports and articles. She is a co-author of the widely consulted Cochrane Review, Continuous Support for Women During Childbirth. Carol served as a guest editor of special issues on Childbirth Connection's Transforming Maternity Care project (Women's Health Issues, 2010), on The Nature and Management of Labor Pain (American Journal of Obstetrics & Gynecology, 2002) and on medically unnecessary cesarean sections (Social Science & Medicine, 1993). From 2003 through 2007, her quarterly column on Current Resources for Evidence-Based Practice appeared simultaneously in Journal of Midwifery and Women's Health and Journal of Obstetric, Gynecologic and Neonatal Nursing. She has contributed an annual column, Letter from North America, to the journal Birth since 2006.

Carol was a Pew Health Policy fellow at Boston University, where she received her doctorate in Health Policy through the University Professors Program in 1993. She has Master's Degrees from the University of Utah and the University of Chicago.

Jane Sandall qualified in nursing at St Bartholomew’s Hospital, and has worked as a midwife in Malawi and as a midwife and health visitor working with homeless families in the UK. Her first degree was in Social Science/Social Policy, and her MSc was in Medical Sociology from Royal Holloway College. She taught on one of the first UK degrees in midwifery in the early 1990’s at King’s College and Queen Charlotte’s Hospital, and in 1993, she was awarded a Department of Health Research Training Fellowship. Her PhD in Sociology at Surrey University explored the impact of changes in UK maternal health policy on the organisation of midwifery work and on midwives lives. She joined King’s College in 2000, as Chair in Midwifery and Women’s Health, and now leads the maternal Health Services and Policy Research Group in the Division of Women’s Health. She also leads a programme of work on ‘Innovation’ in the NIHR King’s Patient Safety and Service Quality Research Centre, and is member of NIHR Faculty. She is Associate Editor of Midwifery and Adjunct Professor University of Technology, Sydney and of the University of Iceland.

Her research in maternal health and reproduction is interdisciplinary between the clinical and social sciences and focuses on issues of quality and safety in maternal health care. Key themes are: a) The impact of maternal health policy at a health system and service delivery level, and on health outcomes and users’ experiences b) The social and organisational implications of the translation of innovative health technologies into health care. Her research has been funded by the ESRC, MRC, Wellcome Trust, NIHR, and a range of charitable sources. Completed research includes: an evaluation of a programme of continuity of midwifery care aimed at improving access and outcomes for women in disadvantaged areas; an ethnographic study of transfer and handover in a midwife-led unit; the development and field testing of a training package for midwives and doctors to support women to have a ‘normal’ birth; the development of access, quality, and optimal outcome indicators in maternal health care; review of maternity workforce deployment and staffing and impact on safety; social and organisational implications of novel reproductive technologies and long term impact of caesarean section in Brazil. Current research includes: co-leading organisational case studies in Birthplace in England, a national study of birth outcomes in home, midwife led, and obstetric led units; investigating the relationship between measures of safety climate and health care quality in A and E and intrapartum care; and conducting nested process evaluations of two trials of obesity in pregnancy behavioural interventions.

She is programme director in the NIHR King’s Patient Safety and Service Quality Research Centre leading a programme of work on innovations in service quality and health technologies. The programme of work on patient safety looks at both the translation of novel technologies into health care and innovative ways of organising services differently to bridge ‘gaps’ in care and improve quality and safety for patients. Current research includes: a) the exploration of the management of ‘failure to rescue’ in medical and maternity settings b) exploration of the development, diffusion, governance and patient experience of technique-centred and clinical innovation. Both work streams involve PhD students and seconded NHS clinical and managerial staff. Findings have informed the UK government commission on Nursing and Midwifery, Healthcare for London commissioning plans, and US, Brazilian and Australian reviews of maternity services. Her research has also informed the House of Commons Health Committee on Inequalities and informed the Prime Minister’s Strategy Unit in the Cabinet Office on developing public services that empower service users.

Laura Schummers is interested in the issue of home birth from a number of angles, both personal and professional. A woman of child-bearing age, with no children yet, she is a future consumer of maternity care.

In September, 2012, Laura will start her Master’s in Epidemiology at the Harvard School of Public Health, with a Maternal-Child Health concentration. Her focus will be on North American maternity care, birth outcomes, and obstetrical management decisions to optimize maternal-fetal outcomes.

Laura was born and raised in Baltimore, MD, where home birth is rare and very contested. She moved to Vancouver, Canada in 2004 to finish her Bachelor’s of Science at the University of British Columbia, where she studied Global Resource Systems, a mix of social, applied, and basic sciences.

Living in Canada provided Laura with a markedly different perspective on midwifery, collaborative and inter-professional models of maternity care, and home birth. Preparing to return to the US, she worries that there are fewer birthing options available to women in the US. She hopes that the maternity care climate will become more collaborative and more consistent across jurisdictions.

Laura is currently the Research Coordinator in the Division of Midwifery, Department of Family Practice, Faculty of Medicine at the University of British Columbia. Laura has worked with faculty from midwifery, family practice, obstetrics, nursing, and sociology to manage several health services and clinical research studies.

Jacqueline Sequoia is currently a resident physician in the Department of Family Medicine at Georgia Health Sciences University. She recently completed a medical internship in Obstetrics and Gynecology. After realizing that she had less interest in being a surgeon and more interest in providing primary care to entire families, she decided to change specialties. She earned her medical degree and a Masters of Advanced Studies in Clinical Research from the University of California, San Diego.

Prior to entering medicine, Dr. Sequoia completed a Masters of Public Health in Epidemiology at San Diego State University. She worked with the internationally recognized Compton Foundation during a year-long fellowship on American Indian adolescent reproductive health education. She also adapted the Planned Parenthood resource,"There's No Place Like Home for Sex Education to be culturally appropriate for the American Indian community. She is a certified lactation educator and is trained in clinical hypnosis. In addition to being passionate about birth, breastfeeding, and mother-baby care, she is also interested in the role Vitamin D deficiency in the development of chronic disease, especially as it applies to prenatal care.

It was participation in her youngest sisters' birth when she was only 14 years old that led Dr. Sequoia to pursue a career in medicine. Reproductive health was always her central interest but it wasn't until her own pregnancy that she became involved in the birth community and discovered the maternity care crisis. She is member of the Coalition for Improving Maternity Services (CIMS) and works to provide physiologic birth options and education in her community.

Geradine Simkins is an activist, midwife, author and visionary. She began as a self-taught homebirth midwife in 1976 and became a nurse-midwife twenty years later. She has owned and operated Birthways Midwifery for over 30 years, a midwifery service that specializes in home birth. She was also co-founder and staff midwife at a freestanding birth center. Geradine is keenly interested in public health midwifery, particularly strategies for overcoming healthcare disparities and engendering a more equitable maternity care system for all mothers, babies and families. She worked in a bilingual clinic for Hispanic migrant farmworkers, as a women's health expert for American Indian organizations co-managing maternal and child healthcare programs, and as a project consultant for the National Institutes of Health initiative called Healthy Native Babies.

Geradine is President and Interim Executive Director of Midwives Alliance of North America where she concentrates on endorsing MANA's key guiding principles including achieving optimal birth outcomes with least intervention, supporting women's autonomy in making informed choices that affect her body, pregnancy, birth, labor, and parenting style, and increasing access to midwives in all settings.

As a leader in the movement Geradine works passionately at sustaining the midwifery profession, advocating for healthcare reform, mentoring the next generation of midwives, and collaborating with key partners and stakeholders. She is the editor of the recently published book entitled Into These Hands: Wisdom from Midwives, an anthology of the life stories of 25 remarkable women who have dedicated their lives and careers to the path of midwifery and social change.

Mark Sloan is a pediatrician and writer, and has practiced with The Permanente Medical Group in Roseville and Santa Rosa, California, for nearly 30 years. From 1997-2002 Dr. Sloan served as Chief of Pediatrics at the Santa Rosa Kaiser facility.

He received his medical degree from the University of Illinois, Chicago, in 1979, and completed his pediatric residency training at the University of Michigan's Mott Children's Hospital in 1982. He is an Assistant Clinical Professor in the Department of Family and Community Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, and enjoys teaching clinical pediatrics to residents and medical students.

Dr. Sloan's writing has appeared in a number of publications, including the Chicago Tribune and the San Francisco Chronicle, and he writes frequently on children's health issues for the Santa Rosa Press Democrat and Sonoma Medicine magazine.

His book, Birth Day: A Pediatrician Explores the Science, the History, and the Wonder of Childbirth (Ballantine Books, 2009), received praise from The New England Journal of Medicine, The Lancet, The Journal of Midwifery and Women's Health, and The Washington Post, among other publications. Birth Day was a 2009 Northern California Book Award finalist.

Dr. Sloan has presented at a number of conferences dedicated to the promotion of natural childbirth in the United States and Canada, most recently at Turning the Tide: Balancing Birth Experiences and Interventions for Best Outcomes, organized by the Collaboration for Maternal and Newborn Health, in Vancouver, BC.

Jennifer Taylor is a Legislative Assistant for Congresswoman Chellie Pingree (ME-01). Her legislative portfolio includes health and human services, women's issues, low income housing, and immigration, and she is currently responsible for managing H.R. 1054, the Access to Certified Professional Midwives Act. She previously served as a health policy fellow for Congresswoman Lois Capps (CA-23). She has a Master’s in Public Health from the University of California, Los Angeles, and bachelor's degrees in Biological Sciences and Psychology and Social Behavior from the University of California, Irvine. Before moving to Washington DC she was the Program and Public Policy Manager for the Perinatal Advisory Council (PAC/LAC), a nonprofit organization focused on improving maternal and child health and birth outcomes in Southern California.

Professor Vedam is the Director of the Division of Midwifery in the Faculty of Medicine, University of British Columbia. Over the last 29 years, she has cared for families in homes, hospitals and birth centers. She is a committed educator who has taught midwifery and medical students in universities across North America, and was nominated twice for the A.C.N.M. Foundation's Excellence in Teaching Award. Professor Vedam serves as chair of the Homebirth Section of the American College of Nurse-Midwives Division of Standards and Practice, and as Senior Consultant on the Midwives Alliance of North America Division of Research Coordinating Council. Saraswathi was awarded an honorary doctorate from Amherst College in May 2008.

Professor Vedam has been active in national and international birth policy development. In Spring 2003, she was invited as an expert consultant to the Hungarian Health Ministry and the Alternatal Foundation during a historic symposium to develop national guidelines for midwifery care and home birth. In June 2010 she was keynote speaker and expert consultant to the Mexican Ministry of Health, for the first national forum on Professional Midwifery, Education and Regulation. In the US and Canada, she has authored several national clinical practice guidelines and articles on evidence-based midwifery practice in low resource settings. She participated in the development of the first US registry of home birth perinatal data, and served as host for two Normal Labour and Birth Research conferences. She has also served as a leader of several initiatives to increase diversity in education and midwifery care for diverse populations. Supported by funding from the Canadian Institutes for Health Research, Saraswathi is currently conducting a national, multi-site study to investigate the experiences and opinions of multidisciplinary maternity care providers regarding planned home birth in Canada.

Dr. Waldman is chair of the ob-gyn department and medical director of performance improvement at St. Joseph's Hospital Health Center in Syracuse, NY. He is the Immediate Past President of the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG).

He is also president of the Associates for Women's Medicine and clinical associate professor of ob-gyn at Upstate Medical Center, the State University of New York. An ACOG Fellow since 1981, Dr. Waldman has been involved in a number of ACOG activities. He has served as a member of the ACOG Executive Board and chaired the Council of District Chairs. He has been a member of the committees on Finance, Nominations, and Patient Safety and Quality Improvement and on the task forces on Safety in Residency Training, and District and Section Donation Policy. Dr. Waldman has also been a member of the Collaborative Practice Advisory Group and was team leader for the Voluntary Review of Quality of Care program. He has served as the Junior Fellow College Advisory Council advisor and the ACOG representative to Practicing Physicians Advisory Council National Committee for Quality Assurance.

Dr. Waldman has held a variety of regional leadership positions, including chair and vice chair of ACOG District II and the Syracuse-Utica Section. He has served as District II Scientific Program and Nominating Committee chairs and the Quality Assurance Committee co-chair. He was a member of the District II Primary Care Committee and Practice Management Committee and is a recipient of ACOG's Outstanding District Service Award and Outstanding Section Service Award. Dr. Waldman is a past president of the Central New York Obstetrics and Gynecology Society and a former consultant to the International Childbirth Education Association.

He has been active in advocating for improvements in women's health for many years and established the first hospital-based midwifery practice in Central New York. Dr Waldman has served on several New York State task forces working with the Commissioner of Health and the Superintendent of Insurance. Dr. Waldman received his medical degree from the New Jersey College of Medicine & Dentistry and completed his residency at Upstate Medical University, the State University of New York.

Dr. Kristi Watterberg is a Professor of Pediatrics and former Chief of the Division of Neonatology at the University of New Mexico School of Medicine. She has also served as faculty at the Hershey Medical Center at Penn State University.

Her primary research interests are adrenal function in the fetus and newborn infant and the pathogenesis and prevention of bronchopulmonary dysplasia. She has received NIH and other national funding for her studies in these areas, and is an internationally recognized expert in this field. Currently, Dr. Watterberg is the Principal Investigator at New Mexico for the NICHD Neonatal Research Network, which has multiple ongoing observational and interventional studies in the NICU. She is a member of the Committee on Fetus and Newborn of the American Academy of Pediatrics and was lead author for the committee statement on the use of postnatal steroids to prevent or treat bronchopulmonary dysplasia. In addition, Dr. Watterberg serves on NIH peer review panels and is a member of the American Pediatric Society.

Sarah Balthaser has been on staff with the Community Outreach Program at the Department of Veteran Affairs Medical Center, Pittsburgh PA, USA. She organized programs for Veteran’s health education and facilitated Veteran reentry in the areas of healthcare benefits and employment opportunities. She has worked with the Jewish Healthcare Foundation, a non-profit organization that provides free healthcare to the underserved community. Her particular emphasis was on improving health literacy. Her work at the Maternity Care Coalition in Philadelphia PA was in HIV Prevention. Sarah has co-facilitated Future Search to address the following issues: Reducing child poverty in a neighborhood of Rochester, NY called the Rochester Children’s Zone; Preventing Violence against Women and Children in Uganda; Finding a Future for Children and Adults in the Karamoja Region of Uganda.

Cari is an executive coach, consultant and ‘organizational midwife’. She has been working for over 15 years with individuals and organizations to support them in birthing their own highest potential. She is co-founder and co-CEO of Birthwise Consulting and producer of the DVD Birthwise: Your Creation, Your Choice. She is also a Director with Future Considerations leadership consultancy based in London, England a recent recipient of the 2012 WorldBlu Certification of the most democratic organizations.

Cari is passionate about bringing leading edge social technologies to bear on the critical issues facing pregnancy and childbirth today. She believes that committed individuals really can solve tough, stuck problems when the right people, the right process and the right timing converge. Cari works with senior leaders in business, government and civil society through experiential initatives that often integrate leadership, corporate sustainability and diversity. Cari has worked in over 10 countries and her clients have included HSBC, The British National Health Service, KPMG, Ford Motor Company, Cadbury Schweppes, NACPM, PwC, The Office of Fair Trading, several local UK authorities and NGOs.

Cari has designed countless learning and change interventions, Cari has trained with the Strozzi Institute completing courses in Personal Mastery and Somatic Bodywork, the Intercultural Communications Institute, and the Newfield Ontological Coaching Network. She is certified in the Intercultural Development Inventory, Richard Barrett’s Cultural Transformation Tool and Leadership Values Assessment, holds a BA in Philosophy, History and International Studies from Northwestern University and has completed course work toward her Master’s in Intercultural Communication.

Cari’s experience of having her first son Conor was a profound transition for her. After researching endless books, DVDs, and courses about birth, and starting a course to train as an childbirth educator with the National Childbirth Trust, she felt that crucial messages and issues like encouraging women to trust their bodies, stories of natural birth, and the emotional journey to motherhood were – still – only a faint whisper and not reaching women. This began her journey to bring her worlds of corporate consulting and passion for childbirth together. Cari is blessed to be mother to Conor, 7 and Luca 15 months and currently lives in Madison, Wisconsin.

Sandra Janoff, PhD, has over twenty years experience planning, designing, and facilitating whole-systems interventions in the public and private sector. She co-developed the principle-based methodology called Future Search, a process used world-wide to get the whole system in the room focusing on the future and creating values-based action strategies. The organizations with whom she has worked in the areas of healthcare include: INOVA Health Systems in the redesign of the patient care process across the entire system and an initiative that involved 200 stakeholders to focus on Nursing, Woman's Hospital in Baton Rouge, LA that built a strategic direction involving stakeholders across the hospital system, Center for Disease Control to create policy and local practice around hospital/community collaboration

Sandra's international work includes: UNICEF's Operation Life-Line Sudan and UNICEF, Indonesia. In Kenya, she ran two Future Searches and a training to create a future for the children of Southern Sudan. The follow up took place within Southern Sudan to demobilize child soldiers that resulted in 2500 young boys being demobilized. In Indonesia, she ran a Future Search to create region-based education policy and practice across the country. This resulted in the implementation of local community meetings to create local policy. Her work with highly polarized community members in County Fermanagh, Northern Ireland, Salford, UK, and Derry-Londonderry, Northern Ireland resulted in an integrated economic development plan that was implemented by the community.

Sandra co-authored Future Search: An Action Guide to Finding Common Ground in Organizations and Communities, Berrett-Koehler, May, 3rd ed, 2010 and Don't Just Do Something, Stand There! Ten Principles for Leading Meetings that Matter (Berrett-Koehler, 2007).

Shirley offers 21 years experience in Learning and Development. She is co-founder and co-CEO of Birthwise Consulting and producer of the DVD Birthwise: Your Creation, Your Choice.

She specializes in leadership, equality, diversity, and individual development through facilitation, coaching, consultancy. She has worked with a wide range of organizations/individuals from the commercial sector, central/local government and Non Profits in the UK, Europe, Africa and the US. Her clients include, NACPM, Shell, Mellon , KPMG, Home Office, the NHS, 2 Sisters Food Group and ICA at the UN.

Shirley has an open, direct and intuitive yet empathetic style, with an emphasis on developing strong trust and rapport with her clients. Shirley has successfully been Lead Faculty on more than 25 Leadership programs on 4 continents for a global oil company in the last couple of years. She has lead a large scale, award winning organizational change program. And is an accredited Intercultural Development Inventory Assessor (IDI), trained in Portland Oregon.

After many years as a Life/Executive Coach Shirley is currently undertaking an advanced executive coaching program with Teleos Leadership Institute. Thus set to gain her Professional Certified Coach accreditation from International Coach Federation. She is also certified in Robert Barrett’s Cultural Transformation Tool and leadership values assessment(CTT).

Shirley led transformational programs, for 6 years, to groups of 100 people. Shirley has undertaken work to raise the awareness of the impact of breast cancer in the black community, leading to some fundamental shifts with how mainstream cancer organizations outreach.

Her passion for the birth world began when she had her first child. When Shirley & Cari facilitated a midwifery conference on ‘Overcoming Disparities in Birth Outcomes’ in 2010. Shirley became clear about the work that she was being called to do. To bring together the two worlds of business consulting, and doing what she can to empower the inspiring people and organizations that work to provide care and maternity services to women and their families. She is committed to work at all levels of the system/stakeholders to ultimately reduce the number of women and babies dying unnecessarily through childbirth. This is her daily work and her life's work.

Shirley is married to Dan, has two gorgeous children Honor 7, Ethan 3 and lives in London, UK.