Rhett Edwards, MA, is a native Ohioan who has lived in Texas the last 8 years. Married for 9 years, has a 15-year-old stepdaughter, 6-year-old daughter and 3-year-old son. Rhett has an MA in Clinical Mental Health Counseling and is a Licensed Professional Counselor – Associate, Supervised by Matt Whalen and works with Matt at Changing Tides Counseling, in Katy, TX.
Before entering the mental health field, he spent nearly twenty years working with teenage and young adult populations in non-profits, higher education, and most recently teaching high school psychology in a public charter school. Clientele focus is around teenagers’ development and mood regulation, twenty somethings life transitions, and adult men navigating family, fatherhood and career.
Tania Zirulnik graduated from midwifery school at the age of 23 in Lima, Peru, her native country. Since then, she has been able to participate in the birthing process in different settings, from hospital to home. Ultimately, it was home birthing that inspired her and brought joy to her work. Additionally, the experience of giving birth to her children at home with the support of her husband deepened her understanding of the birthing process.
Tania’s practice is based on listening to people’s stories and visions of their births and on empowering them to be active participants of their pregnancy and birth. Her care is personalized and aimed to educate and offer information necessary to build a trustworthy relationship with every pregnant person under her care. She adjusts her care to the needs of every individual so she can support them and contribute towards achieving the goal of a natural and powerful birth experience.
Encouraged to support women after the birth of her own daughters, Catrice Harris has been helping families with childbirth education, labor & birth, postpartum and lactation support since 1992. Her initial Lactation training was through the University of Texas Health Science Center and City of Houston WIC Programs.
She continued to embrace caring for women and children by becoming certified as a birth and postpartum doula. After observing many challenges faced by women who did not feel enabled to advocate for themselves during childbirth, it seemed that the only next step was to pursue midwifery. Taking the leap away from Corporate America in 2012, she embraced birth work full time.
Growing into a midwife has been a journey that constantly presents new opportunities for growth in many beautiful ways. Currently, with a solo home birth practice, Catrice also trains and mentors doulas through a grant funded program seeking to provide birth support to under-served communities in Houston, TX. Having supported over 365 families with the births of their babies as of 2023, she is truly grateful that this work found her.
Kirsten Nottleson is the proud mother of 2 sons, 18 and 24 years old. She has worked extensively with parents, preschool staff, teen parents, and families experiencing substance abuse issues as a parent educator/consultant in Austin, Texas for the past 30 years. Kirsten LOVES leading all sorts of support groups and classes, especially ones that involve play, pillow fights, and wrestling. She has been using the Hand in Hand parenting approach in her own family for over 24 years and is eternally grateful to have had these support tools during the teen years as her boys grow into young men. All of her work is based on the principles of the Hand in Hand Approach, which she believes to be nothing short of a Peace Movement in Action.
If you’d like to learn more about the classes, consulting services, and free talks that Kirsten offers, visit Hand in Hand Workshops.
She will be leading a 6 week Foundations Course for Parents Class with Pat Jones starting March 13.
And a Raising Happier Teens and Tweens Class, starting March 14. Enter promo code WHOLEMOTHER to receive a 15% discount on either class.
Barbara Harper is an internationally recognized expert on waterbirth and gentle birth, a published author who founded Waterbirth International in 1987, with one goal in mind – to ensure that waterbirth is an “available option” for all women. During the past four decades Barbara has worked as an obstetric and pediatric nurse, midwife, midwifery instructor, childbirth educator, doula and doula trainer and has used her vast experience to develop unique seminars which she teaches within hospitals, nursing schools, midwifery and medical schools and community groups worldwide. She was recognized in 2002 by Lamaze International for her contributions in promoting normal birth on an international level.
Her bestselling book and DVD, ‘Gentle Birth Choices,’ has been translated into 9 languages, including a 2016 Mandarin Chinese edition. She is working on two new books, ‘The Essential Guide to Waterbirth” and ‘The Wisdom of Gentle Birth.” Best known for her Waterbirth Certification Courses, Barbara has dedicated her life to changing the way we welcome babies into the world. She is the mother of three adult children, two of whom were born at home in water, and grandmother of two boys. She lives in Boca Raton, Florida, where she is active in the community as a midwifery and doula mentor and Blissborn Birth Hypnosis teacher. Her website is www.waterbirth.org and Instagram @thebarbaraharper and @waterbirthint.
Jessica Gonzales, CLD, is a Queer Chicana from Houston working in the field of reproductive health for over 25 years. She is co-founder and program director at Heart of Houston Birth and Wellness Center, as well as a senior student midwife planning to sit for her boards in the next couple of months.
Jessica started her career as a medical assistant in a Title IX clinic in Texas where she witnessed the disparities in maternal and early childhood healthcare for people of the global community (PGC). In 2009 she began working with local organizations and individuals seeking to improve maternal mortality outcomes for PGC, abortion access across Texas and full spectrum doula services for all birthing bodies.
Jessica is also the creator of the Whole Heart Collective, a program with a strong focus on fostering community among new and expectant families. She has facilitated postpartum support circles and Queer parenting groups for over 10 years. As a doula and now student midwife, her ancestral gift of navigating the spaces between new life and death has afforded her the grand honor of welcoming close to 500 new souls into our world. Jessica is the mother to two incredible kiddos, ages 8 and 5 and enjoys camping, reading, live music, and naps.
Jackie Griggs, CNM, is a Certified Nurse Midwife who has been practicing in the Houston/Beaumont area for the past 35 years. She is a mom of 5 grown sons, 3 born at home with the help of midwives, two grandchildren and a new grand baby is expected in about two weeks. She has helped mainly with home and birth center births, but has worked in the hospital some as well. She is still actively involved with delivering babies and loves it as much as ever!
She is the owner of a birth center in Beaumont, Birth Center of Beaumont and also helps with home births in the Houston area. She has been on the Board of Directors of the American Association of Birth Centers, and still is a very big advocate for midwifery care at a birth center or home, for the women of this country. She is also focused on training new midwifery students and helping to increase the number of birth centers in Texas and the United States.
Teresa Maskery joins us to discuss the work and the training to become a postpartum doula. Teresa is a CAPPA Certified Labour/Postpartum Doula, Childbirth/New Parent/Educator, and the Senior Program Adviser for the CAPPA Childbirth Educator department. She has been serving clients across York Region (Ontario, CANADA) since 2008 as the business owner of My Baby Bump and Stouffville Prenatal. Teresa holds a diploma in Early Childhood Education from St. Lawrence College in Kingston Ontario, and she uses this combined skill set to support families through pregnancy, delivery, and early parenting. She joined the CAPPA faculty in 2016 to help equip and empower the next generation of doulas and educators as they expand their knowledge and develop the skills needed to have a thriving doula or birth education business.
Through her business, TRUST-Prenatal Postpartum and Doula Training, Teresa prides herself on offering interesting, innovative, interactive trainings that will increase group participation and encourage content retention. Her desire is to help YOU trust and embrace the journey you are on so you can support the families in your community.
With 13 years of dedicated experience as a Doctor of Physical Therapy, Dr. Valerie Akinwande is a leading expert in women’s health. In 2020, she founded WomansDPT, a venture aimed at empowering women through specialized physical therapy. Dr. Akinwande holds a Doctorate in Physical Therapy, a Master of Science in Biology and Biochemistry, and a Bachelor of Arts in Biology. Her credentials also include the Certificate of Achievement in Pelvic Health and the Certificate of Achievement in Obstetrics from the American Physical Therapy Association (APTA).
Beyond her academic and professional achievements, Dr. Akinwande’s journey includes three un-medicated vaginal births, instilling in her a profound belief that all women can benefit from the guidance of a pelvic floor physical therapist. Drawing on her wealth of knowledge, she served as a college professor for several years, enriching the lives of her students.
Currently, Dr. Akinwande is actively involved in the community, both locally and online, where she teaches birth preparation and postpartum classes. Her mission is to impact the lives of 10 million women, helping them navigate pregnancy, recover from childbirth challenges, manage painful periods, overcome incontinence, experience pain-free intimacy, and cope with menopause.
A passionate advocate for women’s health, Dr. Akinwande channels her mission by providing on-demand courses and freebies online at Pelapy Academy and on her Pelapy YouTube channel, where she creates and shares valuable content with the world.
Debbie Hull began learning about birth in 1996 after the birth of her first baby and has been serving Houston area families since 1999. She is certified with CAPPA as a new parent educator, labor doula, and childbirth educator, is honored to be on CAPPA faculty for both labor doula and childbirth educator, and is the Senior Program advisor for CAPPA’s labor doula training program. Debbie believes that it is the most precious and sacred of honors to be invited to care for a family during their childbearing season and is very proud to have the opportunity to speak into the work of the next generation of birth professionals.
Her work has taken her places she never expected to go, including portraying Jillian in all the Houston productions of Karen Brody’s play, Birth, but only with the fingerprints of her beloved midwife/friend all over her back. They say the birth sounds she made there, on a stage in front of hundreds of people, sounded real. She profoundly hopes so. Debbie designed and developed the curriculum for an innovative, interactive childbirth class and began offering classes that even dads report enjoying! She believes that we learn best when we are laughing, so her childbirth classes and professional training are designed to be enjoyable and memorable.
Debbie is most proud to be the mother of two amazing formerly breastfed and home-schooled young adults, the youngest of whom has been on a nursing strike for over 20 years. When she is not working on her feelings about that, Debbie enjoys movies, reading, and game nights, even when she loses.
Kimberly Seals Allers is an award-winning journalist, five-time author, international speaker, strategist, and advocate for maternal and infant health. A former senior editor at ESSENCE and writer at FORTUNE magazine, Kimberly is a leading voice on the racial and socio-cultural complexities of birth, breastfeeding, and motherhood. She is the founder of IRTH a new “yelp-like” app for Black and Brown parents to address bias and racism in maternity and infant care. Kimberly also created BIRTHRIGHT, a podcast about joy and healing in Black birth that centers on positive Black birth stories as a tool in the fight for birth justice and reverses the narrative of negative statistics common in mainstream media coverage of Black maternal health. Learn more at KimberlySealsAllers.com Follow her @iamKSealsAllers on Facebook, twitter, and Instagram.
Sheridan Blackwell assumed the role of Head of Systems Change, Hospitals, and Partnerships in November 2022. Ms. Blackwell is a seasoned healthcare professional with 10 years of experience. Sheridan began her career as an administrative fellow and quickly rose to managerial positions holding various roles of increasing responsibility across program management, ambulatory operations and special IT projects. Most recently, she served as Administrative Director of Women’s Health at Jersey City Medical Center – RWJBarnabas Health. Sheridan oversaw a team of over 50 employees, responsible for administrative and financial management, strategic planning, population health and community engagement, and operations of inpatient and ambulatory Women’s Health Services.
Ms. Blackwell holds a master’s degree in Health Administration from Seton Hall University and a bachelor’s degree in Health Administration from St. John’s University. Ms. Blackwell is passionate about improving maternal health outcomes with a strong emphasis on population health and improving health equity, reducing bias in care, and patient education.