Nashira Baril, MPH, Executive DIRECTOR & Founder

Nashira (she/her), a biracial Black ciswoman, is the daughter and great-granddaughter of midwives. She experienced firsthand the sacred care of community midwives at the home births of her siblings in 1987 and 1989 and her own two children in 2013 and 2017. These births transformed her worldview and put her on a path to receive “the call” from elder midwife Dr. Jo-Anna Rorie, who first held the vision for a birth center in Roxbury in 1980.

With a master’s degree in Maternal and Child Health from Boston University School of Public Health and nearly 20 years of experience designing and implementing public health strategies to advance racial equity, Nashira founded Neighborhood Birth Center in 2015 and co-founded Birth Center Equity in 2020. Neighborhood Birth Center will be the first-of-its-kind community birth center in Boston, providing community midwifery to strategically address the maternal health crisis. Nashira brings a structural analysis and embodied practice to the design and implementation of public health strategies that advance justice and equity. She has worked at the Boston Public Health Commission, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, and Human Impact Partners.

In 2024, Nashira was featured in an interview on NPR’s All Things Considered on the state of maternal health care in Massachusetts.  She is also one of the few Black leaders in Massachusetts to be honored at Black Excellence on the Hill, the Massachusetts Black and Latino Caucus’ premier black culture celebration.

Nashira feels most free when walking barefoot in the grass or jumping in a cold lake. She lives with her family in the Mattapan neighborhood of Boston, the traditional, ancestral and unceded territory of the Pawtucket, Massa-adchu-esset, Pokanoket, and the Wampanoag people. 

Jo-Anna Rorie, CNM, Msn, PhD, Consulting Midwife

Dr. Jo-Anna Rorie (she/her) has an extensive background in nurse-midwifery, public health, diversity workforce development, social justice advocacy and has held many well-known leadership roles in midwifery at the local, regional and national levels.

She began her career in the late 1980’s when Massachusetts was faced with an infant mortality crisis, especially in the Boston neighborhoods of North Dorchester, Mattapan and Roxbury. An extensive needs assessment followed, which led to a city-wide maternal and child health (MCH) agenda. Jo-Anna’s fingerprints were all over that agenda; and the subsequent recommendations calling for community-based perinatal initiatives that would utilize nurse-midwifery services as a critical element of care for underserved communities.

Jo-Anna was the featured midwife in a provocative and pivotal Boston Globe series that highlighted the “Death Zones of Boston” – and brought the devastating statistics about racial and ethnic disparities within Boston’s infant mortality crisis into the light of day. Jo-Anna called for a “Marshall Plan” to address the deeply rooted and vexing problems underpinning the high infant mortality rates. Taken together, these events both inspired and motivated the development and implementation of the Boston University Nurse-Midwifery Education Program (NMEP) in 1993 where she served as Associate Director.

She played an integral role in the development of a culturally competent primary care curriculum for nurse-midwifery clinical practice, the first of its kind nationwide. Jo-Anna was also integral to the acceptance of the new model of care by Boston’s most vulnerable communities and most venerable medical institutions.

Jo-Anna’s passion for midwifery and her zest to be a part of the next generation of solutions to the public health challenges has not wavered in the past 35 years, even during the COVID-19 Pandemic. She continues to do clinical practice as a postpartum rounder for the Nurse Midwifery practice at Boston Medical Center.

Katherine Rushfirth, CNM, FACNM, Policy Director

Katherine (she/her) is a Certified Nurse Midwife with a long-held commitment to health equity and social justice. She is the Policy Director for the Neighborhood Birth Center, working to open Boston’s first birth center and increase access to midwifery care in the state.

Prior to that, Katherine was the Associate Chief of Midwifery at Massachusetts General Hospital successfully leading programs to address the social determinants of health and expanding family planning, including abortion services, to community health centers.

Katherine was among the first midwives to be appointed as teaching faculty at Harvard Medical School.

Katherine is a past-president of the Massachusetts Affiliate of the American College of Nurse Midwives and currently serves as the Legislative Co-Chair. Katherine completed her midwifery education at Yale University and her BA in Women’s Studies/Anthropology at Barnard College.

In 2022, she was inducted as a Fellow in the American College of Nurse Midwives for her contributions to the field of midwifery. 

Katherine lives in Lynn with her husband and their two small children.

Shaw Pong Liu, Co-Manager of COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT AND COMMUNICATIONS

Musician and community-builder Shaw Pong Liu (she/her) facilitates dialogue and healing through listening-based creative collaborations.

From playing music in wintry bus shelters, to inviting people to share their “songs from home” and migration stories, to creating sidewalk Chinese calligraphy play spaces, Shaw Pong seeks to connect people to one another through embodied creative practices.

As City of Boston Artist-in-Residence in 2016 she created Code Listen, a five-year project collaborating with mothers who’ve lost children to homicide, Boston police officers, and teen artists to share stories and create original music together. Code Listen also filled concert halls, city streets, and Boston’s City Hall with musicians and memorial portraits of loved ones lost to homicide, raising community consciousness of the inequitable impacts of violence on our city.

Shaw Pong is a violinist, erhu player, and composer who performs, teaches and foments musical justice uprisings in the Greater Boston area.

As a new mom to a darling 16-month old, Shaw Pong is fired up about helping families in Boston have access to holistic, community-based care that honors their whole being and their sacred journey.

Tiffany Vassell, RN, CO-MANAGER OF COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT AND COMMUNICATIONS

Tiffany Vassell (she/her) is a registered nurse who has worked as a labor and delivery nurse for over eight years. She has also served as a substance misuse nurse assisting patients with their recovery at clinics in Boston. She is a Black maternal health advocate who supports midwifery care, equity, reproductive justice, autonomy, and access to home births and birth centers.

She is a board member of the Bay State Birth Coalition. She founded the Nurses for Black Maternal Health and Equity Organization to diversify the perinatal workforce. She has also served as the Co-Chair of the Speaker Committee at the 5th and 6th Annual Black Maternal Health Conference, the country’s largest Black maternal health conference, held by the Center for Black Maternal Health and Reproductive Justice at Tuft's University School of Medicine.

She co-authored the book 'Preparation for a Hospital Birth.' In the book, she seeks to demystify birthing in the hospital in ways only a nurse can explain. She aims to educate birthing people about the many available options during labor, delivery, and the immediate postpartum periods while in the hospital to create a safer and more autonomous experience. In 2024, her book was recognized by the National Black Nurses Association for its exceptional contribution to promoting Maternal Health Equity.

Tiffany serves on the steering committee for Mind the Gap and Birth Equity & Justice Massachusetts. She is also a member of the Harvard Catalyst Community Coalition for Equity in Research, which seeks to provide high-quality input on research proposals and protocols. She has sat on several panels to discuss her work and advocacy in the maternal health space.

She is a member of the Sigma Theta Tau Nursing Honor Society for Leadership and a member of Zeta Phi Beta Sorority, Incorporated. She is the awardee of the 2022 Image of the Professional Nurse awarded by the Massachusetts Nursing Association. She is also one of the 2022 Ten Outstanding Young Leaders awarded by the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce.