Collective Member Biographies
Vicky Mill
I am a certified nurse midwife living on a mountain in Costa Rica with my husband. I have a small home birth practice that serves both the expat and local community. My three grown daughters live in the US. I am a Quaker and practice yoga when I am not running off to catch a baby.
“I am a member of the Midwives for Midwives collective because I believe that working together as a structured collective that is informed by feminist principles we can create a place where women and midwives are empowered and babies can begin their lives in an atmosphere of peace and security.”
Abe Johnson
I have been involved in births since 1972. In the beginning I assisted pregnant women with pain control. Then I progressed to teaching childbirth classes and working as a doula and montrice. But I soon became disenchanted with medical model of care births in hospitals. I trained to become a home birth midwife and have been doing out-of-hospital births since 1989. I believe that most women are best served by the midwifery model of care and have, for example, worked on the Texas Midwifery Board to promote that viewpoint.
I now live in Belize and am semi-retired. I travel all over the world doing home births and water births. I have eight years of experiencing birth here in Belize, a third world country. In my opinion, there is much room for improvement of maternity care here and elsewhere, even in many first world countries. I teach evidence based maternity care to doctors, nurses and midwives in Belize in an attempt to make changes in maternity care. Along the way, I have been open to learning wisdom and practices of the “traditional midwives” in Belize, Mexico, and in countries where I have traveled. In summary, I practice and promote what I believe is a kinder, gentler method of birthing that utilizes current advances and techniques to the fullest extent possible – incorporated with traditional home birth techniques and adhering to safety advances as well.
“I like the name, I like the idea of midwives supporting each other, learning from each other and manifesting quality midwifery care around the world. I like catching babies, I like teaching, I like traveling and working with other cultures. You have it all!”
Angel Anderson
Dr. Angel Anderson CNM, DNP has been in practice as a full-scope nurse-midwife since 1996 and has attended over 2000 births. She holds degrees in anthropology, nursing and midwifery. Angel has been involved in leadership positions since 2004 at Intermountain Healthcare, an internationally recognized healthcare organization and is the current director of Intermountain Nurse-Midwives located in Salt Lake City, Utah. Angel lived in Antingua, Guatemala from 2002 to 2004 as the Clinical and Educational Director at Ixmucané. She worked in concert with traditional midwives giving care to Guatemalan women and communities. She served as mentor and preceptor to students and volunteer midwives who came to work and learn at Ixmucané. Angel has been a member of the Midwives for Midwives board since that time. She has been published for her work within these communities.
“My time in Guatemala was spent re-connecting with the rhythm and ritual of birth and midwifery. I felt I was able to practice intrinsic midwifery, the union of art and science, from the heart, without fear or institutional constraints, but also safely and securely, with the best interests for mother and baby in mind. An amazing sisterhood was forged between the students, midwives and volunteers at Ixmucané- relationships that bond us together, make us better women, friendships to last a lifetime.”
Jenni Houston
Jenni Houston began attending births after the birth of her first born daughter in 1970. In 1972 she began working with a family doctor, and attending home births in Woodstock NY. Jennifer learned about birth from the direct experience of women giving birth uninterrupted. She has been aa birth activist advocating for women’s rights to birth where and with whom they choose.
Jenni has attended over 3000 births and the majority out of those out of hospital. She has worked in all practice settings including attending births in home, small and large hospitals and birth centers. Jenni began an OB practice in upstate NY offering home, hospital & birth center birth options. She began working internationally in 1982 and has worked in Jamaica, India and Guatemala.
“I began working in Guatemala initially with an environmental group called Conservation International first with a medicinal plant project, then training midwives in Petén Guatemala. After visiting Antigua for the first time, I was enchanted. Working with birth and indigenous midwifery in Guatemala has been one of the most rewarding work I’ve ever done. I believe in collective wisdom and collaboration, being a part of a larger WHOLE, strengthening ourselves and each other, while providing true midwifery care, training others, and preserving and strengthen the midwifery model of care. I love Guatemala, working with the traditional midwives, working with other midwives in the collective. I value what each individual person offers, each with particular areas of expertise, this is an impressive, accomplished group of women and I’m honored to be part of this circle.”
Chloe Brown
Chloe was born and raised in California and studied Communities Studies and Women’s studies at University of California Santa Cruz. She spent six years working in Public Health at Planned Parenthood as a program manager and then with HIV positive youth at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles. Chloe’s route to becoming a doula and a midwife has been a long journey on a windy road and began during this time as a doula. Chloe decided to follow her interest in international public health by pursuing her master’s in Public Health at University of California, Los Angeles. Throughout all her work and studies Chloe maintained an interest in both international women’s health and midwifery. This brought her after 5 years working in Haiti with American Red Cross to study midwifery with National Midwifery Institute and complete an apprenticeship at Bumi Sehat in Bali, Indonesia. Chloe is currently working in Trinidad and Tobago with American Red Cross as a Program Manger of public health programs in Jamaica, Belize, Guyana and The Bahamas.
Melda Jimenez
Raised and educated in Guatemala, Melda is a registered midwife in Ontario. She atteneded San Carlos University Medical School. After moving to Canada, she became a registered midwife. Melda has 17 years experience in working as a midwife, attending births at home and in hospitals. Birth still continues to amaze Melda and she feels at awe when women give birth. She volunteered in the Ixmmucane Birth Center in Antigua, Guatemala and trained traditional midwives in our pilot project, working with the minister of health in Solola, Guatemala.
“I think women should be able to have choices that affect their births and should be treated respectfully without limitations of class, race, or sexual orientation. MFM will give this opportunity to Guatemalan women and at the same time it will be an opportunity for me to work with a group of midwives and know that my opinions will be respected and I will work in a safe space where we practice midwifery safely and with love.”
Amie Romano
Amie Romano has worked in the maternity care field as a nurse, midwife, research analyst, educator, and consumer advocate since 2001. As a nurse-midwife, she has practiced in the home, birth center, and hospital settings and taught in the Yale Nurse-Midwifery program. From 2010-2013, she directed Childbirth Connection’s Transforming Maternity Care Partnership, a national multi-stakeholder initiative to improve maternity care quality and value in the United States. Amie recently joined Private Practice, Inc., a start-up named one of the top 50 Health IT innovations of 2012 by the Institute of Medicine, where she is Vice President of Health Ecosystems. In this role, she manages partnerships to develop IT solutions to implement and scale woman-centered innovations in maternity care. Amie is also part of the leadership team of the first national maternity care shared decision making initiative, PregnantMe. A collaboration between the Informed Medical Decisions Foundation and Childbirth Connection, the initiative is developing, producing, implementing, and evaluating a suite of evidence-based, interactive patient decision aids for childbearing women.Author of many peer-reviewed articles, Amie was also a member of the editorial team for the 9th edition of the landmark women’s health book, Our Bodies, Ourselves, released in 2011, and co-authored Optimal Care in Childbirth: The Case for a Physiologic Approach, the American College of Nurse-Midwives 2013 Book of the Year.
Amie is an active member of the American College of Nurse-Midwives (ACNM). She is President of ACNM’s Connecticut Affiliate and serves on the Quality and Health Information Technology Sections, the Physiologic Birth Steering Committee, and the Nominating Committee. In 2012, she received ACNM’s prestigious Kitty Ernst Award.
Amie was instrumental in MFM’s development and apprenticed at Ixmucané, MFM’s model birth center, in Antigua Guatemala when she was a midwifery student at Yale. She is trained in Sociocracy and appreciates this sustainable model of governance for MFM.
Jennie Foster
Jennie Foster is a midwife/anthropologist with a public health perspective. Her path to midwifery began in 1977, when she joined the US Peace Corps and served in a health post in the western indigenous highlands of Guatemala. Since 2007, she has been on the faculty in the School of Nursing at Emory University, Atlanta, GA. Her research focus is the improvement of maternal-newborn health and maternal-newborn health systems, using a community-based participatory research approach. Jennie has served on the Advisory Board of Midwives for Midwives from 2002 until 2006, and coordinated and co-authored two publications about outcomes of birth and training at Ixmucané. She is inspired by the aggregate energy produced by the international collective of dedicated midwives who will provide care to women, train students in the midwifery model, empower Guatemalans, document and share its successes, all in a setting very close to her heart.
Larry John Perl
Larry John Perl, MD is a founding Board Member of MFM. He has been involved in Women’s Health Care for the past three decades as a practicing obstetrician and gynecologist in Upstate New York. His interest in Guatemala began with a visceral response to the movie” El Norte” and he is pleased to be able to participate in a project that serves the women of Guatemala. He is a Section Officer of The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, The Chief Medical Officer of Columbia Memorial Hospital in Hudson, New York, a Kripalu Certified Body Worker, an NLP Practitioner, President of Congregation Anshe Emeth in Hudson, New York and is certified as a Sexual Health Counselor.
Nancy Jane Wolf
Nancy had midwifery care with her 2 children (now adults) and has been a supporter of women’s rights in childbirth as well as a board member of MFM for many yrs. She loves “being part of something bigger than herself ” and serving as treasurer of MFM. She is financial officer for local county in Hudson Valley NY. She is a grandmother and gardener.
“I like the sustainable economic model of MFM and love the opportunity to support women’s rights in childbirth”
