About the Speakers

Dr. Mitchell is a Boston‑trained midwife and founder of The Birth Sanctuary Gainesville, the first freestanding, midwifery‑owned birth center in Alabama, established to expand access to community‑based prenatal, birthing, and postpartum care in a state long without such options. After relocating to rural Sumter County in 2020 and discovering there were no birth centers serving the region, she persisted despite years of regulatory and policy barriers from the Alabama Department of Public Health that treated birth centers as de facto hospitals and imposed onerous requirements that could have made operation impossible, leading her and other providers to challenge these rules in court. Her work not only brought a new model of care into a maternity care desert but also involved advocacy and legal action to protect the ability of midwives to provide safe, evidence‑based out‑of‑hospital care in Alabama.

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She has been a Registered Nurse for 18 years, a Certified Nurse Midwife for 9 years and a Certified Professional Midwife for 3 years. Stephanie remains involved in the greater birth world community by developing professional relationships with people and institutions that have aligning philosophies. 

The transformative power of Black, Indigenous, and people of color-led birth

centers

Rebecca is a midwife, director of Roots Community Birth Center, and COO of Birth Center Equity. She has been a practicing as a midwife since 2011.

She is dedicated to improving Black maternal health and founded one of the few Black-owned, accredited birth centers in the U.S. to reduce health disparities. Her center's outcomes for cesarean rates, breastfeeding, and health issue prevention exceed Twin Cities averages.​

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Birth Center Equity aims to ensure every community has access to a birth center where midwives, families, and communities of color thrive. The organization invests in birth centers led by Black, Indigenous, and people of color.

​Laulani Teale is a cultural practitioner, mother, birth worker, Indigenous health advocate, artist, activist, and musician from Windward Oʻahu. She has cultural training in laau lapaau (plant-centered medicine) and hoʻoponopono (family peace process) and has dedicated over 30 years to revitalizing hānau (birth) traditions. With a Master’s degree in Public Health, she currently coordinates the Hoʻopae Pono Peace Project and the Ea Hānau Cultural Council.

TIffany lives in Aiea, Hawai’i and has serverd as the EMS Director of Operations since 2023.
In that role, she is responsible for internal and external business operations and relationships for ambulance services including, contracts, data management, emergency medical transportation and system design, billing, and staff training. She brings a deep understanding of billing systems and policy and is a content expert on integrating ground ambulance and air ambulance billing system linkage project.

Ginger is alicensed physical therapist with extensive experience in pelvic health rehabilitation, currently practicing at Queen’s North Hawai‘i Community Hospital in Waimea, Hawai‘i.
She began specializing in pelvic floor therapy in the early 2000s in response to a request from a local obstetrician-gynecologist seeking collaborative care for patients with pelvic floor dysfunction. Since that time, she has pursued extensive continuing education in pelvic health and developed a broad, patient-centered pelvic rehab treatment program, treating both women and men with a wide range of pelvic floor conditions.
She is passionate about interdisciplinary collaboration and education, and looking forward to sharing knowledge with midwives and other healthcare providers to support comprehensive, patient-centered care.

Dr. Emily J. Goulet is a board-certified Obstetrician and Gynecologist and a Reproductive Endocrinologist and Infertility Specialist. She currently practices at the Fertility Institute of Hawai’i in Honolulu. Additionally, she serves as a Clinical Assistant Professor at the University of Hawai’i's John A. Burns School of Medicine.

Annette has been a Registered Nurse since 1976 and a Certified Nurse Midwife (CNM) since 1983. She has a PhD from UHManoa in 2015 as a Nurse Educator and has taught BSN students at HPU and UHHilo. Her 2015 PhD qualitative original research dissertation was titled: Prenatal Care Expectations of Women Living in Rural Hawai’i.
In Hawaii, she has worked as a full scope CNM in hospital based practices at (Queens) North Hawaii Community Hospital (Hawaii Island) and at Castle Medical Center (Oahu). In 2016, she
began work at a Federally Qualified Health Center, Hamakua-Kohala Health (Hawaii Island) creating their first prenatal program and learned to do pregnancy related ultrasounds. She retired in 2021. Since 2023, Annette has been the President of the Hawaii Affiliate of the American College of Nurse Midwives.
In January, 2025, Annette was the creator and organizer for the 2025 Inter-island Midwife Gathering - a well attended, funded, and successful Midwife Gathering of midwives across the islands.
She lives in Honoka`a (Hawai’i Island) with her husband, Michael.

In 1978 after the birth of her first child, Nina began an apprenticeship in midwifery. Six years
later her services as a midwife were immediately in demand after moving with her family to the
Big Island of Hawaii. She continued her education by securing a nursing degree from the
University of Hawai’i in 1990. After a year of working on Oahu at Kapi’olani Women’s and
Children’s Center, she helped develop a service through North Hawaii Community Hospital on
the Big Island to return medically fragile children to their families. Ten years later she
transitioned to case management at North Hawai’i Hospice. Throughout her nursing career she maintained a committed midwifery practice serving birthing mothers and training midwives.
In 1993 , Nina was a founding member of the Midwives Alliance of Hawaii and served on its
board for 20 years. In 1995, she became a Certified Professional Midwife through the National Association of Registered Midwives (NARM). She was instrumental in the legislative process to bring about the licensing of midwives in Hawai’i in 2020. Recently retired from 20 years with hospice, she continues to serve as a respected and loved midwife in the local community, and as a preceptor and mentor to midwifery students.
She lives rurally on the Big Island with her husband of 52 years

Our project, which we have named Heal, Educate, Advocate, Learn, Integrate, Nurture, Grow (HEALING) Midwifery Together is designed to explore the current state of the practice and profession of midwifery and how midwives are educated in the US. We have three years of funding to dedicate to this project and are starting with listening sessions with aspiring midwives, student midwives, and midwives trained through all pathways. Within these three years (and beyond) we will use our collective experience and expertise to build relationships and offer repair within and between midwifery professions while exploring the needs, desires, and ideas for midwifery education within community-based midwifery and nurse-midwifery. During the listening sessions, we will facilitate discussions around experiences of midwives, listen to the needs of participants, and help the groups come to agreement on what needs to be done. We will share the priorities established by each group and talk about next steps, depending on the group’s needs. Our hope is to ultimately co-create an implementation plan for an educational program in which all midwifery professions can be seen and supported, sharing knowledge and healing wounds between the professions in order to better support patients and families. 

Julie graduated from Eastern Kentucky University with my BSN in 1989. She has worked clinically in Pediatric ICU, Peds Med-Surg, Level 2 and 3 NICU, Mother Baby and as the newborn transition nurse in Labor and Delivery. She graduated with her MSN as a Parent-Child CNS from California State University Dominguez Hills in 2007. After almost 10 years as a Women's and Children's Service Line CNS in Indiana, she moved into an Executive Director role and graduated with a DNP from University of Southern Indiana. In Hawai’i she has worked as a DNP Program Director at the University of Hawaii and Director of Perinatal, Maternal Health and Pediatrics at The Queen's Medical Center. She currently serves as the Hawai’i Perinatal Quality Collaborative Program Manager and teaches part-time at CSUDH and Point Loma Nazarene. She is funded by the AIM (Alliance for Innovation on Maternal Health) Capacity Grant.

Dr. Robey serves as a Family Physician, Core Faculty, and Associate Program Director for the Hawaii Island Family Medicine Residency Program at Hilo Benioff Medical Center. She holds academic appointments as an Assistant Clinical Professor at the John A. Burns School of Medicine and as Community Instructor Faculty at the University of Minnesota Medical School.

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Her career includes full-spectrum family medicine roles in Hawaii, Minnesota, and Oregon, with clinical focuses on obstetrics (including surgical deliveries), women’s health, breastfeeding medicine, and lifestyle medicine.

Molly is an associate professor at the University of Hawai’i at Manoa. She served as the program director of UW nurse-midwifery program from 2020-2023 and led UW’s truth and reconciliation process. She is currently leading the Midwifery Re-Envisioning project, which will directly inform this work. Dr. Altman is renowned HEALING Midwifery Together for her expertise in both community-led research and equitable education approaches. Molly is a co-investigator of the HEALING Midwifery Together Project. 

Farrah Ka’healani Rivera, MSM, LM- Farrah is a licensed midwife in Washington state, professor at Bastyr University’s Maternal Child Health Master’s Program, Academic Director of Cedar School of Midwifery, Clan Mother with Hummingbird Indigenous Family Services and is on the Board of Center for Indigenous Midwifery and the National Association of Certified Professional Midwives as lead for the equity committee. She has extensive experience as a community midwife, educator and perinatal advocate. She has been instrumental in assisting multiple organizations’ capacity building, procurement and administration of grants to help birth workers reach colored and LGBTQ+ communities. Farrah a co-investigator of the HEALING Midwifery Together Project. 

Leila is a healthcare professional with over 15 years of experience across hospital, pharmacy, and community health settings. A dedicated advocate for community-centered care, she focuses on restoring ‘ike Hawai‘i by bridging traditional knowledge with clinical practice to uplift the wellbeing of ‘ohana. Her extensive credentials include being a Licensed Massage Therapist, a Certified Indigenous Breastfeeding Counselor, and a Certified Lamaze Childbirth Educator. Currently serving as an instructor for the Healthy Hāpai Perinatal Program and a kumu for Ka Lāhui O Ka Pō, she has also held leadership roles such as the Centering Pregnancy Coordinator at Queen’s North Hawai‘i Community Hospital. An active member of the Hawai‘i Maternal Mortality Review Committee and a frequent keynote speaker on Native Hawaiian birth and breastfeeding practices, Ryusaki continues to lead initiatives that address perinatal health disparities and revitalize cultural traditions.bring community midwives

Dr. Karmon is the Chief Medical Officer of Reproductive Endocrinology & Infertility at the Fertility Institute of Hawai’i. She is a Diplomat of the American Board of Obstetrics & Gynecology in Reproductive Endocrinology and Infertility, following her fellowship training at Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard University. Dr. Karmon is an active leader in the field, currently serving as the Vice President of Administration for the Pacific Coast Reproductive Society. Her published research focuses on improving fertility treatment success through investigations into factors affecting IVF and IUI outcomes, such as male lifestyle factors and hormonal levels, and she has served as an investigator on clinical trials for assisted reproductive technology.