Steering Committee
Dr. Jallicia Jolly
Dr. Jallicia Jolly is a writer, poet, and reproductive justice (RJ) organizer who is an Assistant Professor in American Studies and Black Studies at Amherst College. She merges community-based research on Black women's health, grassroots activism, and political leadership with RJ organizing and practice in the United States and the Caribbean. Dr. Jolly is the founder and director of the Black Feminist Reproductive Justice, Equity, and HIV/AIDS Activism (BREHA) Collective — a new interdisciplinary, medical humanities lab that bridges research, advocacy, student collaborations, and high-impact learning experiences on the health and movement-building of Afro-diasporic girls, women, and gender diverse people. A 2022-2023 Ford Postdoctoral Fellow, Dr. Jolly’s first book manuscript, Ill Erotics: Black Caribbean Women and Self-Making in the Time of HIV/AIDS, is an ethnography of the reproductive justice organizing of young Black Jamaican women living and loving with HIV that chronicles their everyday confrontations with illness, reproductive violence, and inequality in neocolonial Jamaica. A public scholar invested in research-informed political action, she leads with justice and joy as her core intention while centering new legacies of equity and holistic wellness beyond inequality and violence.
Dr. Jolly is currently Co-Chair of Birth Equity and Justice Massachusetts (BEJMA) - an interdisciplinary body that brings together clinicians, researchers, community organizations, advocates, legislators, and stakeholders to implement evidence-based interventions to improve birth outcomes while addressing structural racism and medical violence in the care that birthing people receive. Her research has been supported by grants and fellowships such as The Fulbright Scholar Program, Ford Foundation, Mellon Mays Foundation, the National Women’s Studies Association, Yale University’s LGBTQS Center & REIDS Public Health Fellowship, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts Foundation, Boston Women’s Fund, and the Wagner Foundation. She has written for and her work has been featured in various media outlets such as USA Today, The Washington Post/The Lily, The Boston Globe, Huffington Post, Rewire News, Ms. Magazine, Nursing Clio, and Black Youth Project. Her work has also been supported by grants and fellowships such as The Fulbright Scholar Program, The Mellon Mays Foundation, National Women's Studies Association, Yale University, Brown University, and the University of Michigan.
Dr. Jallicia Jolly, Co-Chair
Yaminah Romulus
Yaminah Romulus has almost a decade of experience working in the health policy and advocacy space. She believes healthcare is a human right and is passionate about advancing policies that improve the wellbeing of all people, particularly marginalized and oppressed groups. She currently serves as Manager of Government Affairs at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. In this role, she supports the Institute's local, state, and federal policy and advocacy efforts focused on improving the lives of those impacted by cancer.
Prior to joining Dana-Farber, she served as Policy Manager at Health Care For All (HCFA), where she was responsible for providing strategic support and operational direction for HCFA’s children’s healthcare advocacy work and helping lay the foundation for the organization’s maternal healthcare advocacy work. While at HCFA, Yaminah led an advocacy campaign that resulted in the signing of a new law that helps address maternal racial health inequities and promotes uninterrupted care and support for pregnant and birthing people.
Prior to her role at HCFA, Yaminah worked as a Health Policy and Program Associate at the Network for Excellence in Health Innovation, where she supported research, analysis, and policy activities related to a wide range of areas, including population health and social determinants of health.
Yaminah currently serves as Co-Chair of Birth Equity & Justice Massachusetts (BEJMA)—an interdisciplinary and multisector coalition that aims to elevate the voices and experiences of birthing people, advance maternal health policy, and build community power through a lens of justice and equity.
Yaminah earned her master’s degree in Public Health with a focus in Health Policy at Emory University and her bachelor’s degree from the University of Pittsburgh
Yaminah Romulus, Co-Chair
Dr. Ndidiamaka Amutah-Onukagha
Ndidiamaka N. Amutah-Onukagha 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. She received her Master’s in Public Health from The George Washington University School of Public Health and Health Services in Maternal and Child Health in 2005. Dr. Amutah-Onukagha also received a BS in Public Health and BA in Africana Studies from Rutgers, The State University of NJ. Ndidiamaka has a longstanding commitment to public health that spans over 15 years of experience. Her current research interests include health disparities, reproductive health, maternal and infant mortality and HIV/AIDS in women of color. Ndidiamaka is a member of the American Public Health Association and is currently the co-chair of the Perinatal and Womens Health committee in the Maternal and Child Health section.
Dr. Amutah-Onukagha is the former President of The Society of African American Public Health Issues (SAAPHI) and currently serves on the Board of Directors for the National Women’s Health Network. Additionally, Dr. Amutah-Onukagha is an Associate Professor in the Department of Public Health and Community Medicine at Tufts University School of Medicine. In this capacity, her research focuses on HIV/AIDS and women of color in an urban context, adverse birth outcomes for women of color, and community based participatory research.
For the past three years she has planned and hosted a Black Maternal Health conference in Boston, MA aimed at increasing awareness around the inequities that place Black women at increased risk of maternal mortality and morbidity. This conference, one of the largest in the country has reached 700 people in the past three years and continues to grow every year. The focus of the conference is to create a moving and community led social justice conference that seeks to galvanize community members, stakeholders, students, doulas, and community health workers in order to bring more attention to the state of Black maternal health in the United States. Ndidiamaka lives in Boston with her husband and beautiful baby boy.
Dr. Ndidiamaka Amutah-Onukagha
Dr. Renée Boynton-Jarrett
Renée Boynton-Jarrett is a practicing primary care pediatrician at Boston Medical Center, a social epidemiologist and the founding director of the Vital Village Community Engagement Network. Through the Vital Village Network, she is supporting the development of community-based strategies to promote child well-being in three Boston neighborhoods. She joined the faculty at Boston University School of Medicine in 2007 and is currently an Associate Professor of Pediatrics. She received her AB from Princeton University, her MD from Yale School of Medicine, ScD in Social Epidemiology from Harvard School of Public Health, and completed residency in Pediatrics at Johns Hopkins Hospital. Her work focuses on the role of early-life adversities as life course social determinants of health. She has a specific interest in the intersection of community violence, intimate partner violence, and child abuse and neglect and neighborhood characteristics that influence these patterns.
Dr. Renée Boynton-Jarrett
Lucia ‘Soraya’ DosSantos
Lucia ‘Soraya’ DosSantos is a mother, a birth keeper, and a family wellness advocate. She is on fire about creating a paradigm shift around how we understand the changes during and throughout childbirth and the essentials to support mothers to thrive throughout their motherhood journey. Soraya co-founded Maternal Nurturing Collective, which provides Afro-Rooted holistic, spiritually connected, and evidence-centered nurturing support to help mothers feel connected, liberated, and thrive. She is also the founder and program director of Sacred Birthing Village Southcoast, bringing joy, dignity, and liberation through SisterFriending for pregnant and birthing families.
Soraya believes that if the mother is well, so are our communities, societies, and the world! Soraya lives in New Bedford with her family, although she calls Cabo Verde home
Soraya DosSantos
Rev. Barbara Ann Groover
Rev. Barbara Ann Groover is a native of Sparta, GA. When Barbara was seven years old, Barbara moved to Brooklyn, New York. Growing up in Brooklyn, Barbara attended New York City public schools, graduating from Bushwick High School. She continued her education by attending Fashion Institute of Technology where she concentrated in Textile Design. In addition, she matriculated at Bernard Baruch College in New York majoring in Marketing, where she earned her B.S. in Business Administration. Barbara received her Master of Divinity from Andover Newton Theological School.
Her professional career involved working in several women’s apparel companies in New York Fashion Industry. During her time as a showroom account executive, she participated in styling merchandising and direct sales. This career afforded her the opportunity to travel extensively throughout the country and abroad. Barbara is currently the Head Manager for one of the stores for GAP, Inc. a multinational clothing store.
Rev. Barbara was mentored and influenced by her now grandmother Rosa Lawrence, who taught her to love Methodism. The foundation of her Christian experience occurred at People’s Institutional A.M.E. Church in Brooklyn, where she served as Y.P.D. President, Sunday school teacher, choir member, usher, Pastor’s Aid President, Senior Steward and Church Clerk. While she fulfilled her many responsibilities as the first lady of Bright Temple A.M.E. Church in the Bronx, Barbara served as chairperson for the New York Conference WMS Affiliated Groups and Ecumenical Relations, and president of the A.M.E. Ministers Wives and Widows of New York and Vicinity. In 1993, she represented the Connectional WMS at the First National Consultation of Young Women, sponsored by the Church Women United.
During her membership at Bright Temple, she received her call into the ministry. She began her ministerial studies in the New York Annual Conference and was ordained an Itinerant Deacon at the New England Annual Conference by Bishop Philip R. Cousin, Sr.. Among her many sermons was a Mother’s Day sermon in 1994 A Flight Without a Fight which was written about in Jonathan Kozol’s bestseller Amazing Grace.
At present she serves as Minister to Women and Families at the Historic Charles Street A.M.E. Church, in Boston. In addition, she has served as a board member for Boston Aging Concerns, The Hyams Foundation Black Church Capacity Building Program and board chairperson of the Mothers Mentor Project.
Rev. Barbara is married to the Rev. Dr. Gregory G. Groover, Sr., pastor of the Historic Charles Street A.M.E. Church. She and her husband share two adult children who are professional musicians, daughter Gerami-Greer and son Gregory, Jr. (G-Man).
Rev. Barbara Ann Groover
Dr. Favorite Iradukunda
Dr. Iradukunda is a Licensed Registered Nurse and Assistant Professor at UMASS-Amherst in the College of Nursing. Her research focuses on fostering health during pregnancy and motherhood for Black immigrant women who experience the intersection of home and host cultures, while reinforcing protective cultural practices and supporting the development of community-based, culturally appropriate interventions for health maintenance. Through her advocacy work addressing inequities in our healthcare system, Dr. Iradukunda hopes that educating a new generation of nurses will allow her to address several troubling trends in healthcare: a lack of representation and cultural understanding in treatment. She is invested in practicing cultural humility in care and in developing programs that are diverse and that educate nurses of color to represent the population that we have. Dr. Iradukunda received her Ph.D. from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She holds a Master of Science in Nursing from the University of Cape Town and a BSN from the University of Rwanda.
Dr. Favorite Iradukunda
Wilberthe Pilate
Wilberthe Pilate RN, IBCLC is a registered nurse, lactation consultant, and full-spectrum doula working in the hospital setting at Boston Medical Center, as well as in her own private practice Quiet Moon Postpartum Care. She is based in the greater Boston area. She cares deeply about helping families have nourishing, empowering experiences in the postpartum time, and fully believes that "postpartum is forever" and can have a deep and transformative impact on families for months, years, and generations after birth. She has volunteered with various community organizations including Collective Power for Reproductive Justice (formerly known as CLPP), the Center for Women and Community at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, the Prison Birth Project, and the Boston Abortion Support Collective. She also served as one of the co-founders of the Breastfeeding Equity Center at Boston Medical Center. She lives in Cambridge, MA with her partner and 4 year old. Some other things she enjoys and cares a lot about are camping, painting her nails, composting, and eating/sharing good food.
Wilberthe Pilate
Maia Raynor
At a time on our world’s stage when conflict is our sole method of engaging across difference, Maia’s critical lens, at the core of which lie care, equity, and liberation, are essential to rethinking how to work amongst teams, organizations, and communities to carry out change - big or small.
From her experience organizing successful legislative campaigns in Massachusetts, providing direct care to clients as a doula and lactation counselor, and evaluating health interventions and programming as a consultant and researcher, Maia unlocked core insights about leveraging the mechanisms of power to deliver for communities of color. She is happiest when pursuing justice for those most directly impacted by systemic barriers. She is a policy wonk, project manager, doula, and organizer fueled by the desire to address and dismantle systems of oppression within institutions. Maia is a lover of Beyonce and bell hooks who lives in Boston, MA with her dog.
Maia Raynor
Jo-Anna Rorie, CNM, MSN, MPH, FACM, PHD
Dr. Jo-Anna Rorie is the nurse coordinator for the Bridges to Moms program, one of three programs offered by Health Care Without Walls, a nonprofit volunteer program of physicians and nurse practitioners and community health workers who offer free medical care to homeless women across the lifespan. The Bridges to Moms is a program specifically designed to support pregnant and postpartum women homeless and their families around 4 key social determinants of health, housing, food security, transportation and personal safety. She 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. Dr. Rorie began her career in the late 1980’s at a time when Massachusetts was faced with an infant mortality crisis, especially in the Boston neighborhoods of North Dorchester, Mattapan and Roxbury. An extensive needs assessment 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. Her zest to be part of the next generation of solutions to public health challenges has not wavered in the 35 years of on the front line work even during the Covid 19 Pandemic. She continues to do clinical practice as the post-partum rounder for the Nurse Midwifery practice at Boston Medical Center.
Dr. Jo-Anna Rorie
Tiffany Vassell, RN
Tiffany Vassell is a registered nurse who has worked as a labor and delivery nurse for several years. She has also served as a substance use nurse assisting patients with their recovery. She is a Black maternal health advocate who supports midwifery care, equity, justice, autonomy, and access to home births and birth centers.
She is a board member of the Bay State Birth Coalition and advocates for An Act promoting access to midwifery care and out-of-hospital birth options and establishing the Neighborhood Birth Center in Boston. She is the founder of Nurses for Black Maternal Health and Equity Organization, which seeks to diversify the perinatal workforce. She also recently served as Chair at the 5th and 6th Annual Black Maternal Health Conference at Tufts University, the country's largest Black maternal health conference.
She is the co-author of 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 to create a safer and more autonomous experience.
She serves as a member of the steering committee for Mind the Gap, which advocates for the Massachusetts Moms Matter Act that would diversify the state's perinatal mental health workforce and invest in community-based organizations supporting perinatal people. She is a Harvard Catalyst Community Coalition for Equity in Research member, which gives 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 and has written several articles. She is a member of the Sigma Theta Tau Nursing Honor Society for leadership. 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.
Tiffany Vassell
Emily Anesta
Emily Anesta is a passionate advocate for maternal health and justice, especially access to midwifery care. Emily birthed her two children at home attended by midwives and was herself born at home with a midwife. These experiences with midwifery care inspired her to join the movement to improve maternal care. In 2016, she founded Bay State Birth Coalition, a 501c4 non-profit leading advocacy to expand access to midwives and birth options in Massachusetts. Emily is also a steering committee member and co-founder of Birth Equity and Justice Massachusetts.
Emily is part of a collective of nine women who co-founded national midwifery funder Birth Future Foundation (BFF) in 2020, and she currently serves as board president. BFF uses innovative grantmaking approaches to shift power and resources for a racially just and equitable future for birth and midwifery. Prior to BFF, Emily served as a board member and then president of the Foundation for the Advancement of Midwifery from 2017-2020. Emily was an Executive Producer of the 2016 documentary “Why Not Home.”
Prior to becoming a birth justice advocate, Emily led technology research and development projects for over a decade at MIT, and holds an MS and BS in Electrical and Computer Engineering.
Emily Anesta
With deep gratitude for former Steering Committee members who helped create this Coalition & carry our work through the first intense months of the pandemic: Dr. Allison Bryant, Marianne Bullock, Liz Friedman, Nneka Hall, Dr. Pooja Mehta, Katie Shea Barrett, Dr. Kate White, and Christian White.