Our Team
NAshira baril, MPH
Nashira (she/her), is the daughter and great-granddaughter of midwives. She experienced firsthand the sacred care of midwives at the home births of her siblings in the 80s and her own two children in 2013 and 2017. These births transformed her worldview and put her on a path to see the vision of elder midwives who first dreamt of a birth center in Roxbury in the 1980s.
Nashira holds a master’s degree in Maternal and Child Health from Boston University School of Public Health, and has over 20 years of experience designing and implementing public health strategies to advance racial equity. Founded in 2015, 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 feels most free when walking barefoot in the grass or jumping in a cold lake. She lives with her family and rescue pup in the Mattapan neighborhood of Boston, the traditional, ancestral, and unceded territory of the Pawtucket, Massa-adchu-esset, Pokanoket, and the Wampanoag people.
Nashira can be reached at: nashira (AT) neighborhoodbirthcenter (DOT) org
Clinical Director
Katherine Rushfirth CNM, FACNM
Katherine (she/her) is a Certified Nurse Midwife with a long-held commitment to health equity and social justice.
Before stepping into her role as the Policy Director for Neighborhood Birth Center, 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 completed her midwifery education at Yale University and her BA in Women’s Studies/Anthropology at Barnard College. She was among the first midwives to be appointed as teaching faculty at Harvard Medical School. 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 young children.
Katherine can be reached at: katherine (AT) neighborhoodbirthcenter (DOT) org
Policy Director
Zev CPM (they | them) has been a Certified Professional Midwife since 2018. They bring community birth expertise in birth center and home birth settings with a specialty in fertility and conception care for queer and trans families. In addition to clinical care, Zev is a health policy expert committed to expanding equity, access, and sustainability in community midwifery. Zev studied in El Paso Texas, and practiced in rural Tennessee before moving home to Boston in 2024. Zev is thrilled, delighted, and deeply grateful to join the NBC team.
Executive DirectorZev colson, CPM
Ana sofia barber de brito msn, cnm
Ana Sofia Barber De Brito (she/her) is a certified nurse-midwife who has been practicing midwifery since 2017. Her clinical and academic interests include, but are not limited to, anti-blackness and antiracism in the provision of healthcare and midwifery, trauma-informed care, and improving care of perinatal mental health. Ana Sofia completed her undergraduate degree in Latin American, Latino and Caribbean Studies at Dartmouth College and her graduate degree from Yale University School of Nursing and has spent the last several years as an academic midwife teaching and practicing. Outside of midwifery work, she spends her time traveling and experiencing new cultures, re-learning the world through her 6 year old's experience, and exploring her continued curiosity about people and the world.
Clinical Director