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President Felisha is an author, speaker, trainer, and consultant and an award-winning hospital-based IBCLC celebrated for her work in the health/racial equity and food justice fields. She is the owner of Beyond Breastfeeding and the founder of Our Brown Baby. She serves as the President of the National Association of Professional and Peer Lactation Supporters of Color (NAPPLSC) and is an active member of the CSI/Race Forward First Food Racial Equity Cohort. Her career as a peer counselor and breastfeeding coordinator for WIC led to her work as a consultant with Boston Medical College’s notable program, Communities and Hospitals Advancing Maternity Practices program (CHAMPS). She still consults for WIC within the WIC Loving Support Program. She is well known as the social media guru who founded Blactavist, an online breastfeeding cultural support group with a continually growing audience of more than 40,000. Felisha’s passion for advocacy fuels her desire to serve in multiple roles such as the advisor/group member of the World Breastfeeding Trends Initiative (WBTI), the Education Director for Mom2Mom Global, the Immediate Past Advocacy Chair for Florida State Breastfeeding Coalition, March of Dimes Fellow and former Board of Directors for United States Breastfeeding Committee. Her championing of families is additionally informed by her important roles as an Air Force active duty military spouse and proud mom of three breastfed children. 
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President-Elect Camie Jae Goldhammer, MSW, LICSW, IBCLC (Sisseton-Wahpeton) is a licensed clinical social worker, lactation consultant and breastfeeding activist. She is a first generation college student who received her Bachelor's of Science in Psychology and Sociology from Portland State University in 2004. She then received her Master of Social Work from the University of Washington Graduate School of Social Work in 2006. After receiving her MSW she was hired by the Snoqualmie Tribe as a child and family therapist working with state involved families. Much of her clinical work has focused on the affects of historical and complex traumas on attachment, bonding and parenting practices among American Indian/Alaska Native families. In 2010 Camie took a position with King County Public Health as a WIC/Maternity Support Services Social Worker.
In 2009 after the birth of her first daughter, Dylan, Camie discovered a severe lack of breastfeeding support for Native American families in Washington State. It was then that she founded the Native American Breastfeeding Coalition of Washington (NABCWA). Through the NABCWA Camie provides culturally relevant, culturally humble and culturally appropriate breastfeeding education, outreach and support to Native women and their families all over the state of Washington.
Her clinical lactation journey began in 2011 when she was invited to intern at Seattle Breastfeeding Medicine where she spent 14 months training under her mentors Emily Healy, IBCLC and Dr. MaryAnn O'Hara. In 2013, Camie became Washington's first Native IBCLC.
From January 2013 to December 2014 Camie served as the Community Center Breastfeeding Promotion Project Coordinator with the Breastfeeding Coalition of Washington. Here she worked with community health centers and tribal clinics to develop and implement better breastfeeding practices at the primary care level.
Camie is a Great Starts/Parent Trust Breastfeeding instructor providing breastfeeding classes to pregnant families in the Seattle area. She is an active member of the Native American Women's Dialogue on Infant Mortality, the Equal Start Community Coalition and serves on the Local Indian Child Welfare Advisory Committee where she regularly reviews CPS and CWS cases involving American Indian and Alaska Native children for the state. Camie was a key organizer of the 2013 Inequity in Breastfeeding Support Summit as well as a presenter. She has presented at the National Indian Child Welfare conference, the Washington State Indian Child Welfare conference, the American Public Health Association National conference, the Kellogg Foundation's First Foods Forum, the ROSE Summit, ILCA's Equity Summit and USBC.
Currently, Camie provides clinical lactation support as a lactation consultant in private practice serving families that live in South Seattle. She is a full time lactation consultant at Seattle Breastfeeding Medicine and works as a consultant with The Breastfeeding Center's CHAMPS team. Camie along with her colleague Emily Healy also provide lactation education for providers and professionals through their new business Rainier Lactation Resources.
Camie is a proud milk donor who has donated over 7000 ounces of breastmilk over the last 5.5 years to families unable to provide their babies with all the milk they need.
She is a devoted resident of Columbia City (98118!) where she lives with her husband, Eric and her two daughters. Dylan (5.5) who breastfed for nearly 4 years and her current nursling JoJo (3).
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Secretary -Vacant
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Treasurer Andrea Serano, IBCLC, CLC, work in breastfeeding advocacy stems from her passion for addressing maternal and infant health issues, especially among communities of color. Breastfeeding is a preventative strategy for combating infant mortality and the health disparities that disproportionately affect African American families. Ms. Serano is originally from North Hollywood CA. She attended Mount St. Mary’s College with a major in Healthcare Policy and minor in Business Administration. During her course of studies, she participated in the Transforming Communities and Public Policy-Washington Semester Program at American University and interned at the U.S. Department of Health and Humans Services in the Office on Women’s Health.
In 2012, Andrea assisted in coordination of Reaching Our Sisters Everywhere (ROSE) Breastfeeding Summit titled, “Reclaiming an African American Tradition”. Following the summit, she was offered the role as ROSE's Program Manager and relocated to Atlanta, Georgia. In her role, Andrea serves on the coordinating team for all ROSE events, trainings, and program related activities.
In August of 2014, Andrea completed the Certified Lactation Counselor Training course and was awarded her certification in October. She is a member of the Urban League of Greater Atlanta Young Professionals and a member of the Advocacy and Public Policy Committee for the United States Breastfeeding Committee (USBC).
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Membership Chair
Brenda Reyes, RN, CLC, is the Program Manager for HealthConnect One (HC One). A well-respected and knowledgeable breastfeeding advocate, Brenda conducts breastfeeding peer counselor trainings, trainings for front-line staff at health and social service agencies, presents workshops for WIC and MCH case management staff, and collaborates with a variety of partner agencies to provide effective and engaging peer counseling services for breastfeeding women in Chicago.
Ms. Reyes manages partner relationships, creates tools for reporting and evaluation, and works with the HC One program team to develop goals and monitor progress. She also develops systems to monitor program finances and contracts.
Ms. Reyes began her work with HC One as the Peer Counselor Program Coordinator in 2001, designing and delivering training for breastfeeding peer counselors in underserved and economically disadvantage neighborhoods across Illinois. Prior to that, she was trained as a peer counselor by HC One, providing services at Stroger (formerly Cook County) Hospital.
In 2011 - 2012, Brenda worked on Communities Putting Prevention to Work and on Chicago's Healthy Places initiative, and formed part of the team which developed the Hospital Breastfeeding Toolkit for Illinois' State Perinatal Breastfeeding Quality Improvement Project. She describes her work for hospital breastfeeding support on video here.
Brenda has served as both Secretary and Treasurer of the Chicago Region Breastfeeding Task Force, and is a current member. She acted as lead for HC One's Message and Messenger Project to increase umbilical cord blood donations among African-American and Hispanic Families. She has served on the Advisory Board of the Center for Sustainable Health Outreach and on the Illinois WIC Peer Counselor Advisory Committee.
She currently serves as HealthConnect One's representative to the United States Breastfeeding Committee.
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Kimarie Bugg, MSN, MPH, CLC, is Chief Empowerment Officer (CEO) and Change Leader of Reaching Our Sisters Everywhere Inc. (ROSE), a nonprofit corporation developed to address breastfeeding disparities in the African American community. ROSE’s mission is to train healthcare providers and community organizations to provide culturally appropriate encouragement, support and clinical care so that African American mothers will breastfeed at higher rates and sustain their breastfeeding experience to match the goals expected by the Surgeon General of the United States. Kim has worked in a pediatric emergency clinic, special care nursery and has been a bedside breastfeeding counselor in a large metropolitan hospital, managed perinatal and breastfeeding programs at the state level. Kim has served as a technical advisor to Best Start, as well as for the US Baby Friendly Hospital Initiative. Kim was a founding member and officer of Georgia breastfeeding task force (coalition) and SELCA. Kim was trained at Wellstart International and has traveled throughout the United States and several foreign countries training healthcare professionals to manage lactation.
Kim previously worked for Emory University, School of Medicine, as a nurse practitioner. She is a member of the national faculty for NICHQ, Best Fed Beginning’s Baby Friendly Hospital Initiative, She also provides the training for WIC Breastfeeding staff and Peer Counselors throughout the southeastern states, a position held proudly since 2005. Kim recently completed a Community Health Leadership Program, within the Satcher Health Leadership Institute (SHLI) at Morehouse School of Medicine that stressed best practices to provide for global health equity and eliminating health disparities through action oriented projects. Kim subscribes to the SHLI motto that “in order to eliminate disparities in health we must have leaders who care enough, know enough, have the courage to do enough and who will persevere until the job is done.”
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Sahira Long, MD, FAAP, IBCLC, is a board certified pediatrician and lactation consultant. She is a graduate of the George Washington University School of Medicine, where she is an Assistant Clinical Professor of Pediatrics. She is Medical Director for two Children’s Health Centers in medically underserved Southeast Washington, DC and for the Children’s National East of the River Lactation Support Center. She also completed her General Pediatric Internship and Residency at Children’s National. She has served as president of the DC Breastfeeding Coalition since its inception in 2004 and is a member of the Board of Directors for Reaching Our Sisters Everywhere. She has been involved in breastfeeding advocacy on the national, state and local level. Dr. Long participated as a panelist during the US Surgeon General's Call to Action to Support Breastfeeding and is featured as an expert in the OWH It’s Only Natural campaign (www.womenshealth.gov/itsonlynatural) to improve breastfeeding rates among African Americans. Mona Liza Hamlin, MSN, RN, IBCLC, is one of the original mothers and founders of NAPPLSC. She is Christiana Care Health System’s nurse manager for Parent Education and Lactation Services, in the Women and Children’s Service Line. Previously, Hamlin built the A.I. DuPont Hospital for Children’s parent education and lactation services program from 2010-2017, and managed two programs worth approximately $250,000 in grant funding from state and national agencies while in her leadership role at Nemours. Prior to that she was a neonatal intensive care unit registered nurse. Hamlin was recognized as Delaware Healthy Mother and Infant Consortium’s 2017 Kitty Esterly Health Equity Award recipient for her work in providing access to breastfeeding support to African-American mothers throughout the city of Wilmington. As a Center for Social Inclusion First Food Equity Cohort member, Hamlin has provided health equity trainings nationally. Her fundamental belief is that equitable access and high-quality care must be afforded to all families at all times. |
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