Certifications.

In addition to my work as a doula, I am a doctoral candidate in Art History, where I research contemporary community-based art, archival practice, and collaborative cultural work in Chicago. Though these worlds may seem distinct, they have always been connected by a shared set of questions: How do we care for one another? How do we build meaningful relationships? What does it mean to put our values into practice, and to do so creatively, bravely, and with presence? How might we collectively move toward new futures from where we stand here and now?

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Art historians work with theory, but also with people, objects, places, institutions, and polyvocal histories. I have spent years teaching, conducting archival research, and working closely with artists, students, and community organizations.  My research has focused on artists who seek to build new forms of community and belonging, often through deeply collaborative and participatory practices. As I embarked on writing my dissertation (a frequently isolating practice, and even more so following the pandemic), I found myself fixating on the question of how these ideas might take shape beyond the archive, classroom, and the page. And, having worked in institutions whose racist colonial legacies too-often constrain the possibilities of truly radical scholarship and pedagogy, it was critical to me to find a way to engage this question outside their confines.

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Around that time, a dear friend was pregnant and had recently completed a postpartum doula training. Inspired by her experience, I enrolled in my own training through DONA International and began supporting families as a postpartum doula. I later completed additional training in labor and birth, fertility, and loss support through Sokana Collective, a birth justice–oriented organization based in Evanston, Illinois.

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What I discovered in birth work was not a departure from the questions that had long animated my academic life, but another way of engaging them. Like the most generative scholarship and impactful works of art, birth work is grounded in relationality, trust, and a commitment to community. This is not to say that the contemporary landscape of building families is inherently a liberating one. In fact, as so many of my clients know, it bears its own scars of violence and oppression But, I believe that birth work invites us to imagine how care might be practiced differently, and how people might be supported in exercising greater autonomy over their lives, bodies, and futures.

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That said, if you aren’t the kind of person who wants to wax poetic about creativity and political imagination, I would still be honored to help you bring your beaming, bright dreams of family to life with deep listening, a grounding and thoughtful presence, lots of practical guidance, and a little wry humor.