Biographies

Tine Aaserud

Tine Aaserud is a Danish midwife who was educated in Norway ten years ago. She was instrumental in starting the first breastfeeding clinic in Norway in 2000. Currently she works with prenatal care, including breastfeeding classes for pregnant women. She is a skilled counsellor.

Marina Alzugaray

Marina Alzugaray, MS, LM, CNM, is an international midwifery consultant and speaker with more than 30 years of experience in women's health care. She received her Master of Science degree from the University of California, San Francisco, where she focused her research on homebirths and birth positions and related maternal-infant outcomes. Marina has facilitated sacred births in homes, hospitals and birth centers. She now offers homebirths and waterbirths in the Florida Keys, where she develops courses and facilitates educational retreats as director of Comadres Institute. Marina is known as a provider of holistic midwifery care; pioneer of water births; developer of the American AquaNatal method, a prenatal water exercise program; and producer of continuing education courses on sacred birthing, women's health and care that empowers clients. She serves as regional representative to Midwives' Alliance of North America (MANA).

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Tricia Anderson

Tricia Anderson trained as a midwife in Dorset and worked in both hospital and community settings. She was part of the original team that established MIDIRS in the 1980s and served as editor of the MIDIRS Midwifery Digest from 1995-1997. She had her own homebirth practice and was a course leader for the MA in Advanced Midwifery Practice at Bournemouth University. Tricia led workshops throughout Europe on midwifery and childbirth emergencies for settings where there are no doctors. Tricia passed away in 2007. We really miss her dynamic presence.

Shannon Anton

Shannon Anton was honored to receive the Brazen Woman Award from the California Association of Midwives (CAM) in June 2004. She is cofounder of National Midwifery Institute, Inc. She served on the CAM Board and was representative to the North American Registry of Midwives (NARM) Certification Task Force. She currently serves on the NARM board as Director of Accountability. Shannon lives in rural Vermont with her life partner of 17 years.

Birthe Ariansen

Birthe Ariansen, a Norwegian midwife, works at the ABC unit in Oslo, Norway. She has expertise on waterbirth.

Diane Barnes

Diane Barnes, a midwife who moved through the lateral stages of lay midwife to DEM to RNM to CNM, began to midwife in 1974. She currently owns and operates a free standing birth center and attends 120 births a year. Diane is a past president of Midwives' Alliance of North America (MANA), active supporter of all midwives, mother of six and is expecting her 14th grandchild. She has published many articles regarding statistics and various childbirth situations.

Alison Bastien

Alison Bastien, CPM, (previously Alison Parra) was an independent homebirth midwife in Mexico for 12 years. She now teaches classes in midwifery, childbirth education and herbalism, and together with her family runs a natural products dispensary and store. She has lived in Mexico over 30 years, and was one of the founders of the MANA Mexican region.

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Andrea Bolz

Andrea Bolz is executive secretary of the Association of Independent Midwives of Germany.

Lillian Bondo

Lillian Bondo has been the President of the Danish Association of Midwives since 2001. After qualifying as a midwife in 1984, Lillian worked as a Midwifery Centre midwife, attending pregnant women and their families in antenatal clinic and birth preparation as well as attending births.

Jana Borino

Jana Borino Jana Borino is the founding Executive Director of the Florida School of Traditional Midwifery, a position she grew for 13 years. She served as Executive Director of the Birth Center of Gainesville, the oldest birth center on the east coast of the United States, for three years. Jana attended births as a midwife assistant for 20 years and served on numerous boards and committees of national, state and community based midwifery organizations. Jana was very involved in legislative action during key political years that resulted in successful passage of Florida Statue 467, The Midwifery Practice Act. Her fundraising accomplishments at FSTM included over $550,000 in cash donations, a $575,000 loan from the Florida Community Loan Fund and a $150,000 Johnson & Johnson grant. Her work continues to advance midwifery through her teaching, writing and public speaking.

Sue Brailey

Sue Brailey, BA (HONS), RN, RM, is an English midwife currently living in Switzerland. She has a background in Social Science and completed her midwifery training in 1993. After qualifying she worked for many years as an independent midwife in London where she offered complete maternity care to women, attending births at home and in hospital. In 2001 she moved to Switzerland where she worked for over 2 years in a free standing birthing centre. Currently she is back attending home births and also teaches part time at the Berne School of Midwifery. Sue has lectured internationally on subjects such as optimal foetal positioning, midwifery led care, informed choice, and physiological third stage. Sue has also published a wide range of articles on subjects such as episiotomy, home birth, optimal foetal positioning, prevention of tears. She has just completed a chapter on promoting normal birth for a book that will be published next year. She speaks English and German, and has two children both of whom were born at home.

Susanne Rose Brønnum

Susanne Rose Brønnum is a danish midwife with 14 years experience. She is an organic psychotherapist, who offers therapy and personal development in both single and group sessions. She works with midwives and has clients dealing with postpartum trauma and depression.

Rudite Bruvere

Rudite Bruvere started the first independent midwifery practice in Latvia, offering pregnancy care and breastfeeding support, as well as attending homebirths. Since 2000, she has been on the board of the Association of Midwives of Latvia, working on the politics of and for the profession. In 2003 she founded The Family Cradle, a non-profit organization that will include a maternity center, midwifery training and a shelter house for neglected pregnant women.

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Sarah J. Buckley

Sarah J. Buckley, a GP (family physician), has been writing and lecturing on pregnancy, birth and parenting since 1997. Born in 1960 in New Zealand, Sarah inherited her interest in medicine and birth from her father and grandfather, who both worked as small-town GP-obstetricians, and her passion has been fueled by her experiences with her own children. Sarah has deepened her understanding of birth and mothering as a journey of transformation through her participation, ongoing since 1992, in women's circles with Shivam Rachana and the Melbourne-based International College of Spiritual Midwifery, of which she is a founding member. [ PHOTO BY DEIRDRE CULLEN ]

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Vanessa Calderon

Vanessa Calderon is a native Costa Rican midwife. She lives and practices on the Caribbean side of the country.

Katherine Camacho Carr

Katherine Camacho Carr, PhD, ARNP, CNM, FACNM, is associate professor at Seattle University College of Nursing in the Master of Science in Nursing program. She also works as a nurse-midwife at Highline Midwifery and Women's Health, providing care to a diverse and primarily low-income group of women. Katherine will assume the presidency of the American College of Nurse-Midwives in June 2004 for a three-year term.

Justine Clegg

Justine Clegg, MS, LM, CPM, is a Florida Licensed Midwife and Licensed Mental Health Counselor. Involved in maternal and child health since 1973 as a La Leche League leader, childbirth educator, founding member of the Midwives Association of Florida, homebirth midwife and political activist, she earned her M.S. in counseling in 1991 and has served as Director of the Midwifery Program at Miami Dade College since 1994. She was a founding Board member of MEAC and helped develop the NARM certification process. She is proud to be a real "granny" midwife, having attended the births of grandbabies Spencer and Nya.

Jill Cohen

Jill Cohen lives in Gates, Oregon, with her husband and two of her four children. After practicing as a lay midwife for 20 years, she has now returned to school to get a nursing degree. She has been with Midwifery Today since 1990, where she is associate editor of Midwifery Today magazine.

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Suzanne Colson

Suzanne Colson is a senior lecturer and research midwife at Canterbury Christ Church University College, Canterbury, England. She worked as lactation consultant at Pithiviers State Hospital in France and has been involved in breastfeeding counseling and research since the 1970s. She has introduced a new approach to breastfeeding called biological nurturing and is currently examining the mechanisms for PhD research.

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Ansu Coto

Ansu Coto is a doula trained in body work and holistic therapies. She is co-founder of Acompañando Mamás al Nacimiento (AMAN) and teaches a prenatal class in hypnobirthing.

Sharon Craig

Sharon Craig, CPM, is a Midwife Trainer and Advisor working in Afghanistan. Sharon has worked as a midwife in Russia, the Philippines, California and Afghanistan. In 2005, Sharon opened the Maternity Ward in Kabul's CURE International Hospital, and opened the Maternity Service in the Family Health Center in the summer of 2006. Her current focus is on community-based health education on healthy pregnancy, birth and newborns.

Hilde Curinckx

Hilde Curinckx has been a midwife in Belgium since 1993. She worked in a local hospital in Mol, Belgium, for more than 10 years. Since January 2004 she has taught in the midwifery education programme in Hasselt, Belgium, and is currently responsible for teaching second year students, as well as the high risk unit in the third year. She is currently interested in giving students more knowledge about physiological births to prevent pathological or high-risk births; receiving an IBCLC in July 2008; and participating in international midwifery programmes.

Cathy Daub

Cathy Daub designed and taught the first Birth Works® classes in New Jersey in 1981. Birth Works joined The International Cesarean Awareness Network (ICAN) in 1982. Cathy served as chairperson of the education committee to develop Birth Works into a certification program. The program was completed in 1988 and the first childbirth educator training workshop was held. In 1994 Birth Works incorporated, becoming a non-profit organization with a full Board of Directors and Board of Advisors.

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Lorna Davies

Lorna Davies, RM, MA, is a midwife and a midwife teacher in the southeast of England. Her particular interests lie in learning and teaching, gender studies, parent education, breastfeeding, birth art and normal birth. [ PHOTO BY ANDREA NOLL ]

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Elizabeth Davis

Elizabeth Davis, CPM, is a renowned expert on women's issues. She has been a midwife, women's health care specialist, educator and consultant since 1977. She is internationally active in women's rights and lectures widely on midwifery, sexuality and women's spirituality. She served as regional representative to the Midwives Alliance of North America for five years and as president of the Midwifery Education Accreditation Council (MEAC). She is co-founder of the National Midwifery Institute, Inc., a three-year, MEAC accredited, apprenticeship-based midwifery program, leading to licensure in California. She holds a degree in Holistic Maternity Care from Antioch University and is certified by the North American Registry of Midwives. She is the author of the classic Heart and Hands: A Midwife's Guide to Pregnancy and Birth, in addition to several other books. Elizabeth lives in Sebastopol, California, and is the mother of three children. [ PHOTO BY JENNIFER ROSENBERG ]

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Robbie Davis-Floyd

Robbie Davis-Floyd, PhD, is a Senior Research Fellow in Anthropology at the University of Texas, Austin, and an Adjunct Associate Professor of Anthropology at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. A cultural anthropologist specializing in medical, ritual and gender studies and the anthropology of reproduction, she lectures at childbirth, midwifery and obstetrical conferences around the world. Robbie has written over 70 articles as well as the book Birth as an American Rite of Passage (1992).

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Betty-Anne Daviss

Betty-Anne Daviss is a registered midwife, social activist, researcher and preceptor working in Ottawa, Canada. She is an adjunct professor in Women's Studies at Carleton University. A midwife since 1976, she has caught babies on five continents. Her research has included ethnographic study on traditional midwives, social science research on changes in midwifery in North America and epidemiological investigation of clinical data. The Chair of the International Bureau of the Canadian Association of Midwives, her most recent international work was in Afghanistan. She is co-investigator of the CPM2000 Project, the largest prospective homebirth study in North America. She holds a Bachelor of Journalism degree and an MA in Women's/Canadian Studies.

Debbie A. Díaz Ortiz

Debbie A. Díaz Ortiz, CPM, MPH, began her midwifery career as an apprentice to Rully Delgado, a Puerto Rican traditional midwife, in 1986. Today they are colleagues. In 1992 she went to Maternidad La Luz, and from 1993 on worked as a primary caregiver at homebirths in Puerto Rico. She is a member of the Latin-American and Caribbean Network for the Humanization of Childbirth.

Jock Doubleday

Jock Doubleday is president and founder of Natural Woman, Natural Man, Inc., a California nonprofit corporation (http://www.gentlebirth.org/nwnm.org/nwnm_org.html). He is also a freelance writer. His current project is a novel titled Eve, Dr Q, and the Child Born.

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Madeline L. Dusky

Madeline L. Dusky, president and director of the Touch Learning Center, graduated from Ohio College of Massotherapy in 1988, relocated shortly thereafter to Antrim, New Hampshire. She opened her private practice with a focus on pre- and postpartum care and women suffering from fibromyalgia. In 1991 she volunteered as a massage therapist at the Iron Man Triathalon in Kona, Hawaii. It was during this visit that she was blessed to have met the Kahuna Healer, LomiLomi Master Aunty Margaret Machado who intorduced her to the ways of the Kahuna healers and the spiritual practice of LomiLomi Hawaiian massage. This spiritual journey with traditional healers has been an ongoing passion and includes a BS in alternative healing with a focus on maternal-fetal health. Madeline moved back to Ohio in 2002 and became part of the integrative medical department of the world renowned Cleveland Clinic. She also volunteers as part of the team for hisk risk pregnant women at MacDonald House, University Hospitals/Case Western Reserve School of Medicine. Madeline offers her workshops/seminars in LomiLomi, prenatal and fibromyalgia at schools and hospitals around the country. LomiLomi is the foundation of all her work—it integrates body, mind, and spirit. It will benefit all those that receive from the premature infant to medically frail clients and to those patients preparing for their soul's journey.

Mabel Dzata

Mabel Dzata, RN, CNM, is a midwife who lived and trained in Ghana, where she attended over 2,000 births. She has practiced as a homebirth midwife in the US since 1988. Mabel has attended many twin and breech births. She now works as a CNM.