Conscious Birth Collective

Emilie Rodriguez (she/her)

Founder Ashe Birthing Services & The Bridge Directory

Emilie Rodriguez is a traditional birth and postpartum doula that addresses birthing people’s nutritional, physical, emotional, and spiritual well being. She believes every birthing person should have the birth they desire, the information needed to see it come to fruition, and be an advocate for themselves and their family. She believes that giving birth is one of the most sacred, yet normal, experiences in a birthing person’s life and wants to help them stand in that power. She takes a holistic approach to help get a person to the other side of the mountain we know as birth, using plant based medicine, aromatherapy, low guttural vocalization, indigenous technology, counter pressure, guided meditation, breathwork, etc.

Emilie’s interests first started in medicine where she worked as a veterinary technician for years before becoming interested in the influences of culture on women’s bodies. She received a BA in Medical Anthropology from the City College of New York, with a focus on reproductive health in the United States. She did her first ethnography on doula work in Brooklyn, shadowing Chanel Porchia from Ancient Song Doula Services, and then another exploring birth experiences in the US and abroad. Emilie was also a Colin Powell Fellow for Health Justice, advocating with Health Leads in Harlem Hospital’s OB/GYN Unit to give low-income families access to resources they needed to stay healthy, as well as writing health policy to advance equality and civil rights at New York Lawyers for the Public Interest.

Emilie has always known that she wanted to work with women and children, but did not know in what capacity. It wasn’t until she experienced labor and childbirth herself when giving birth to her son at home that she realized how transformative and empowering it could be. Birth work is definitely Emilie’s passion and calling. She is a guide, an anchor, a sister, and a friend to birthing people in this important transition from maiden to mother/parent. 

Nicole JeanBaptiste (she/her)

Founder, Sésé Doula Services and Co-Founder, Bx (Re)Birth and Progress Collective

Nicole JeanBaptiste is a full spectrum community-based doula offering a calming, culturally informed, humanistic approach to the support she provides to individuals before, during and after childbirth.  Of Caribbean and Southern American heritage and a lifelong resident of the Bronx, Nicole strives to center both Blackness and the borough in this work. 

Nicole has been drawn to birth and pregnancy since she was a child, obsessing over the few TV shows that featured birth in its realness, free of the dramatization that has contributed to much of our society’s fear around this very normal occurrence.  In 2008 when she had her first child, Nicole’s appreciation for pregnancy, birth and parenthood shifted into a new gear upon experiencing firsthand the  inequities facing young, Black, underinsured birthing people.  As a result, Nicole later trained to become a doula through Ancient Song Doula Services.  She completed a second training through The Matrona Holistic Doula Program.

Nicole earned her B.A. in African and African-American Studies from Lehman College and shortly after graduating accepted a Fulbright grant to conduct research in Jamaica.  She spent several years working within a youth leadership program at a Bronx-based non-profit focused on supporting African families, as well as coordinating a family literacy program at another non-profit organization and teaching English to speakers of other languages.  Nicole also holds a Master’s degree in Oral History from Columbia University, and devoted the entirety of her training to pursuing a project that would draw a link between the evolution of birthing practices among people of African descent living in the US and the history of midwifery in the American South. 

A multi-year consultant for the NYC Dept. of Health and Mental Hygiene’s Sexual and Reproductive Health Unit, Nicole supports the agency in meeting its goal of achieving birth justice for all New Yorkers.

Nicole is also the mother of a 14 year old and a 6 year old. She teaches prenatal yoga on most Fridays.

Myla Flores (she/her) CD, LCCE, SpBCPE, CLC

Founder of The Birthing Place, My Loving Doula, and Co-founder of Uptown Village Cooperative

Myla is a birth doula, postpartum doula, birth assistant, Lamaze Certified Childbirth Educator, Spinning Babies Certified Parent Educator, and Certified Lactation Counselor. Myla was first initiated into birthwork in 2006 as a birth assistant for a homebirth midwifery practice then she eventually shifted into primarily offering support as a birth doula in her private practice My Loving Doula. In 2016, Myla co-founded Uptown Village Cooperative @uptownvillagenyc, a multicultural community of maternal health professionals supporting gentle birth and postpartum, breastfeeding, and reproductive health justice in Upper Manhattan & The Bronx. Currently, Myla is working hard to open a Bronx-based birth center, The Birthing Place @birthingplacebx. Experiences working in midwifery-led birth centers around the country and world have allowed Myla to witness the beauty of birthing people with true autonomy over their bodies, and with the firm belief that more New Yorkers should have access to these types of birthing experiences, Myla is a committed birth justice activist who aims to bring a loving and holistic approach to childbirth to more NYC families. She is passionate about organizing a collaboration of wellness providers to soon hit Bronx streets, and bringing Womb Bus to fruition in May of 2022.

Myla comes from a big family as one of ten children, with 27+ cousins, and plenty more nieces and nephews. She takes pride in being a cousin, aunt, or friend that folks feel comfortable talking to about all things regarding reproductive wellness, sexual health, birth and postpartum. She enjoys a good read, great food, and having reason to dance.

Aida Alfonzo (she/her)

Co-founder of Innatus Birth

Aida came into birth work about a year after giving birth to her son in 2014. She had a very traumatic birth at a Brooklyn Hospital that ended in a cesarean section under general anesthesia. 

When she first began supporting families her objective was to shield families from being just as confused as she was about how her birth unfolded. Innatus Birth was founded on the basis of supporting people to find their innate power, worth, and trusting their intrinsic capabilities from within. 

Through years of experience, learning and unlearning, Aida’s passion has only grown greater for supporting birthing people, being their guide and giving them the information they need to feel empowered about their birth and the decisions they make as parents. 

Though she acknowledges the importance of the support she provides to clients during birth and postpartum, it is clear to Aida that her calling is to be the one providing clinical care and providing a different support needed in her community. She is now in school to become a community midwife, attending the only Black-led Midwifery School at Commonsense Childbirth School of Midwifery.

Evelyn Alvarez (she/they)

Co-Founder, Bx (Re)Birth and Progress Collective

Evelyn is a badass. She does what feels right to her and helps others do the same. 

Evelyn also loves to laugh and lives for jokes.

Her entry into Doula work started when she was 17 and her sister gave birth to her niece. It is a family joke that when it was time to head to the hospital, Evelyn took her sister’s items out of her hospital bag and replaced her stuff with brochures she had been given by her OB. Throughout the process, Evelyn proceeded to let her sister know what stage of labor she was in, then asked the OB to move when it was time for her sister to deliver her niece. According to everyone there, Evelyn asked the doctor to move so she could see. While the doctor looked at her incredulously, she simply smiled, asked her sister if she was ok, or had questions. 

Years later, Evelyn had her own child. It was a long, challenging labor that she is convinced would have had a different outcome if she’d had a Doula. She was the first of her homegirls to have a baby, and when they had children, she’d ask questions and try to offer resources, ideas and support. One day, her best friend said “you should become a Doula”. Her response: “I should!”

That was on a Sunday. On Tuesday, Evelyn was told about a scholarship being offered by Ancient Song Doula Services. She applied, even though the deadline had passed. Two days later someone from Ancient Song called to say she won the scholarship. 

She took a chance, said yes, and a week later, she was a trained Doula. 

Since then, Evelyn has had the honor and pleasure to work as a community Doula and have served over 100 families with a variety of experiences: living in transitional housing, single, partnered, under-resourced, mental illness, twins, teens. Each person has taught her something unique about the power of the human spirit. 

In her other life, Evelyn  is a trainer for an agency here in NYC. She facilitates workshops about race, anti-Blackness, parenting, Restorative Justice, and supporting families with children with special needs. 

Naima Beckles (she/her)

Founder and Director, For Your Birth

Naima is an educator, birth prep coach, doula and founding director of For Your Birth – an intentionally diverse birth work consultancy in New York City.  Naima attended Hampton University and earned her MA from Loyola Marymount University. She taught for 10 years in middle and high schools in Los Angeles, Washington DC, and New York City.  Soon after the birth of her first child, she chose the work of supporting expectant parents and earned certifications from Lamaze and DONA International.   Currently, Naima is a teacher for The Institute for the Study of Birth Breath and Death where she has co-created, with the institute’s founder, courses for birth professionals on understanding and responding to pregnancy loss, trauma and infant death in communities of color. Naima also serves as a member of the board for Lamaze International and directs curriculum and programming at Soshe – a digital health company. Naima lovingly stands alongside individuals navigating life’s triumphs and difficulties. Follow Naima’s work by subscribing to her newsletter – Birth/Werk – where she has created a space for birth workers and birth givers to connect and be inspired. 

Te-Ana Souffrant (she/her)

Founder, The Arch App

Te-Ana Souffrant is a wife and mother of three sons. She developed her passion and love for people and health care as a young child, going to work with and being cared for and nurtured by her grandmother, Angela, who worked in Bedford-Stuyvesant, in Brooklyn, NY, as an office manager for a cardiologist who remains in her life today. Te-Ana earned an Associate’s Degree in Business and a Bachelor’s Degree in Health Administration from the University of Phoenix. Prior to earning these degrees, Te-Ana majored in Biology/Pre-Med at Southern Connecticut State University, before deciding to focus her studies on Health Administration and the work she could do behind the scenes to assist those in need. Te-Ana completed her Graduate Studies in 2012, from Hofstra University, with a Master’s degree in Health Administration.

Her love of healthcare has taken her through many areas within the field, and in the Summer of 2014, prior to her own birth to her second son, she watched many of her friends/family, who had planned to give birth just as our ancestors had done, with limited, if any, medical intervention, only to have that option quickly taken from them, just as it had for her. Te-Ana believes that her calling has always been in health care and caring for people. Te-Ana is a Certified Full Spectrum Labor & Birth, and Postpartum doula. Te-Ana is also a Hypno birthing doula, and is using the tools that she’s learned to assist in labor & during birth. Te-Ana also adds a component of Childbirth Education to her prenatal appointments with clients, in the hopes of helping families better understand the process of labor and birth and birthing without fear!

In an effort to continue to support families, and reach further into marginalized communities, to make us (support) visible to those who don’t see us, but need us, in 2017, The Arch App, LLC was founded and launched on October 16, 2018. The Arch App is “Where Access and Support Meet.” Our mission is to continue to improve birth outcomes for ALL who wish to have a healthy and safe birth. Who are often unsupported, deterred, and less prepared or educated when it comes to understanding their bodies and the strength that they have within and ultimately their rights to birth the way that THEY want to. And ultimately eradicate incidences of maternal mortality and morbidity for ALL. The Arch App connects clients directly to individualized support, through our curated directory of vetted birth professionals (ie. Doulas and other non-clinical birth professionals) who provide physical, mental, and emotional support, along with information and resources, as well as direct access to equitable care options.