Beth Russet, DNP, FNP-BC

Beth spent 20 years living and working on the rural coast of Maine before returning to the city of her birth. While there, she was involved in the creation of a homeschool collective, a midwifery practice and a non-profit organization for migrant farmworkers. In 2019, Beth completed her Doctorate in Nursing Practice with a focus on structural competency and racialized health inequity. She currently serves as faculty in the FNP track at UMass Boston and works clinically as a primary care provider at Fenway Health. She birthed her two beautiful boys, Seamus Creek and Jacob Finn, at home into the loving hands of midwives.

Bethany N. Serota, ESQ

Bethany N. Serota, Esq. is the Executive Director of Diversity Equity and Inclusion for Beth Israel Lahey Health, South where she advances system wide and hospital centered efforts to transform care delivery by dismantling barriers to equitable health outcomes, and fostering a culture that embraces diversity, equity and inclusion for the organization’s patients, workforce, and communities served. Before joining Beth Israel Lahey Health, Bethany served as the Deputy Director of Workforce Equity and Inclusion for the Mayor’s Office of Workforce Development for the City of Boston. In 2020, Mayor Walsh charged Bethany with creating Project Opportunity, a program designed to support second chance residents impacted by their criminal record. Project Opportunity provides free CORI sealing and expungement clinics, convenes panels on CORI challenges and solutions, hosts CORI friendly resource fairs and job readiness workshops, and trains front line workers who support justice involved individuals. Prior to this role, Bethany served as the Deputy Director for the Mayor’s Office of Fair Housing and Equity for the City of Boston where she oversaw investigations of allegations of housing discrimination, increased equitable access to affordable housing, and enforced the Fair Housing Act. Bethany received her B.A. from Temple University and J.D. from Suffolk University Law School. As a litigator, Bethany represented clients who could not afford legal counsel, as well as refugees and asylum seekers in the Middle East. Bethany serves as an At-Large Director and Chair of the Community Service Committee for the Massachusetts Black Lawyers Association, and as the Co-Chair of the Board of Directors for the Neighborhood Birth Center. Bethany is also a member of the Board of Directors for Nurtury Early Education Learning Lab, Emmanuel Music, and the Sarita & Claire Wright Lucas Foundation. Bethany is a 2020 Fellow graduate of The Partnership, Inc. Bethany co-founded and co-directed G.I.R.L.S. R.U.L.E., an empowerment program for teenage girls in Roxbury. She is also a member of the Citizen’s Housing and Planning Association, the Massachusetts Academy of Trial Attorneys, and the Nine Streets Neighborhood Association in Roxbury.

Carleen Tucker

Carleen is a Development Director at the American Heart Association.  In addition to fundraising she works to advocate for access to health solutions and racial equity. She also has over twenty years of managed health care and health insurance experience. Carleen previously served as a board member for Franklin Park Coalition.  Carleen has four children, including a set of twins.   

Chris A. Miller

Chris is white, male, racial justice consultant with 35 years of experience in leadership and change management in both for-profit and not-for-profit organizations. In working with clients, Chris compassionately supports organizations in reducing the gap between its stated desire for justice, equity and inclusion and its organizational reality. Having started his career at Planned Parenthood in 1982 and having worked for more than a decade as Practice Administrator for the midwifery practice that delivered his two sons, Chris has been a longtime advocate of reproductive justice. He has a B.A. in Social Work from Purdue University and an M.B.A. from Boston College. Newly an empty-nester, Chris has more time to hike and camp.

D.J. Baker

D.J. Baker(they/them) is a trans-nonbinary advocate and birth and gender-affirming care doula. They have been a birth doula since 2019 and have advocated for trans and queer individuals and families through their work under Sir Doula, Better Birth Mississippi, and the Massachusetts Transgender Political Coalition(MTPC). Education is at the heart of their work. It has shown up in the areas of food justice, birth justice, and trans equity. Outside of justice, advocacy, and education, D.J. loves fermentation, food gardening, foraging, playing music on vinyl, and kayaking. 

DANANAI MORGAN, BA, LLB

Dananai was born and raised in Zimbabwe. Prior to coming to the United States, she studied Law and Sociology in South Africa where her career in International Development was launched at the High Commissioner’s Office. Dananai brings an extensive background in fundraising and has worked for organizations such as CARE International in the United Kingdom, National Youth Development Council, Enroot, and First Teacher in Boston. In addition to her work with nonprofits, Dananai has worked in higher education at both MIT and Harvard. Dananai is the mother of two young boys, Zahir (7) and Aydin (4) and lives in Dorchester.

Ebere Oparaeke

Ebere Oparaeke (she/her) is a birth worker and birth justice advocate. She became a birth doula 10 years ago while pursuing her undergraduate degree at the University of Michigan in Women's Studies and now provides a spectrum of support throughout the perinatal period. With a background in childcare and youth development, she has always felt connected to efforts that support children and parents. She graduated with a Master's degree in Public Health with a focus in Maternal and Child Health from Boston University in 2020. She has since engaged in community-based strategies and advocacy efforts for health equity, including interning for and promoting the opening of the Neighborhood Birth Center. She is passionate about reproductive and social justice efforts towards the liberation of oppressed peoples and believes that all people should be informed, supported, and validated in their birth and reproductive journeys.

ERLINE ACHILLE

Erline has more than 15 years of experience in public health, racial justice, program development, and strategic planning. As a consultant she provides training, lectures, and strategic planning focusing on racial justice practice. She served as Project Manager for the Center for Health Equity and Social Justice at the Boston Public Health Commission to support its priority to address racial health inequities. She supported the Commission to build internal capacity to approach complex race issues by shifting public health practice toward racial equity through staff and program development, evaluation, and practice. Her role in this work was built on the understanding that community is central to the process, addressing institutional and structural racism is key, collaborations is necessary, and it is crucial to go beyond social service towards systemic social and policy change. A mother of 3, Erline advocated for 2VBACs!

Joanna Gattuso

Joanna is a white, queer woman, systems-thinker and creative facilitator with abolition in her heart and a radical imagination. Her paid work is as an organizational consultant, supporting teams in embracing change and centering relationships, often through facilitated conversation, leadership coaching, and policy-change consulting. Her background is in youth development, sexuality education and public health and she is honored to put her core values of trans-inclusive feminism, body liberation, and reproductive justice to work at the Neighborhood Birth Center. She is a 2017 Fellow of the Massachusetts Institute for Community Health Leadership and a graduate of Northeastern University's Master's in Public Health program.

Jonah Stern

Jonah brings hands-on experience providing strategic planning, real estate consulting, and project management services. As the Head of DBI Projects’ Boston Office, Jonah has delivered impactful planning and project implementation solutions for diverse educational, social service, cultural, and religious organizations (and birth centers!) around the world. Jonah received his undergraduate degree in Art & Architecture History from Wesleyan University, and his Masters in City Planning from MIT. Jonah lives in Arlington with his wife, son, and daughter.

Marianne McPherson, PhD, MS

Marianne’s roots run deep in Boston, where she, her mother, and her children (caught by midwives and their dad) were born. In the wake of her mother’s death in 2018, she found new life in connecting to Nashira, this project, and this community. Marianne supports community and population health, well-being, and equity through her work at the Institute for Healthcare Improvement. She has worked at Our Bodies Ourselves, Ibis Reproductive Health, the National Institute for Children's Health Quality, and with an amazing circle of reproductive and social justice advocates, especially those with whom she has the honor to be in community for the Neighborhood Birth Center.

MEENAKSHI VERMA-AGRAWAL, MPH

Meenakshi spent the last decades consulting with organizations to develop a racial justice agenda. As a person who racializes as Asian and is ethnically Indian, her life’s work is rooted in building solidarity with other people of color in a collective movement toward liberation. She brings nonprofit development organizational development and fundraising skills to the birth center project. Meenakshi is a mother of 3 and lives in Framingham, MA. 

Ndidiamaka N. Amutah-Onukagha, PhD, MPH

Ndidi received her PhD in Public Health with a focus on Maternal and Child Health at the University of Maryland, College Park School of Public Health in 2010. Ndidi has a longstanding commitment to public health that spans over 15 years of experience. She is a member of the American Public Health Association and is currently the co-chair of the Perinatal and Women’s Health committee in the Maternal and Child Health section. Additionally, she is an Associate Professor in the Department of Public Health and Community Medicine at Tufts University School of Medicine. Her current research interests include maternal mortality and morbidity, health disparities, reproductive health, infant mortality and HIV/AIDS in women of color. Dr. Amutah-Onukagha is also the Principal Investigator of an R01 funded by NIH aimed at examining maternal safety bundles and the role of doulas maternal health outcomes in Black women. She is the proud mother of a beautiful baby boy and lives in Dorchester, MA with her husband. 

POOJA MEHTA, MD

Dr. Mehta is a board-certified, practicing obstetrician gynecologist, and Women’s Health Lead of Cityblock Health, the first tech-driven provider for communities with complex health and social needs–bringing better care to neighborhoods where it’s needed most. Cityblock’s care teams meet members where they are, delivering highly personalized primary care, behavioral health care, and social services to every member, including those who access Medicaid, are dually eligible for Medicaid and Medicare, and others living in lower-income neighborhoods.

Prior to Cityblock, Pooja served as Interim Chief Medical Officer and Chief Clinical Innovation Officer of Louisiana Medicaid, and Medical Director of the Louisiana Perinatal Quality Collaborative and Maternal Mortality Review. In this role, she led quality improvement efforts, informed benefits design, spearheaded care delivery innovations, and supported multi-disciplinary initiatives to improve maternal, infant, and reproductive health outcomes among more than 1.3 million Louisiana Medicaid members.

Pooja received her undergraduate degree from Columbia University, a Masters of Science in Health Policy Research from the University of Pennsylvania, and her medical degree from Mount Sinai School of Medicine through the Humanities and Medicine Program. She completed her residency training at Boston Medical Center and her health policy training through the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Clinical Scholars Program at the University of Pennsylvania and the Philadelphia Veterans Affairs Medical Center. She is an Assistant Professor in the Section of Community and Population Medicine at the Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center School of Medicine and practices with a reproductive justice-informed focus on obstetrics, family planning, and reproductive infectious disease.