Linda Jones

Linda Jones is a birth and postpartum doula, photographer, and mother of two, grandmother of four and great-grandmother of three, who lives in Oakland, CA. She founded and owned Waddle and Swaddle Baby Boutique and Birth Resource Center in Berkeley, CA from 2000 to 2010 and has been a part of the natural birth advocacy and reproductive justice community in the Bay Area for almost three decades.

Linda is one of the co-founders of Black Women Birthing Justice (BWBJ) and is coauthor of Battling Over Birth and Black Women and the Maternal Health Care Crisis in California.

Linda’s recent work has been centered around training and mentoring women of color to be doulas for low income women of color. This was started in 2014 when she was a part of the East Bay Community Birth Support Project. This group has gone on to morph into the Roots of Labor Birth Collective (RLBC). Linda was a part of the group that helped formulate this organization and hire the people that are now members of the collective. Her role now is as a support person.

Linda feels that the work she is now doing with BWBJ and RLBC, is adding to the fulfillment of the work she has done the past three decades. Helping families bring babies into the world and get their families started the best possible way has helped heal her own traumatic birth experiences.

Being able to potentially change how women of color presently are treated during birth makes her heart full.