Saraswathi Vedam, PhD, RM, FACNM, Sci D (hc)
Principal Investigator
Saraswathi Vedam is Lead Investigator of the Birth Place Lab and Professor of Midwifery, at University of British Columbia. She has been a clinician and a health professional educator for 35 years. Professor Vedam has successfully coordinated multi-stakeholder and community-led research projects in provincial, national, and international settings. Professor Vedam is currently PI of a CIHR-funded national research project to evaluate respectful maternity care, Research Examining the Stories of Pregnancy and Childbearing Today (RESPCCT). In 2017, she was selected as one of the inaugural Michael Smith Health Research Institute Health Professional Investigators.
Dr. Vedam has applied her expertise with instrument development and psychometric evaluation to the development of clinical screening tools, MAPi, the Movement and Pulse index to assess fetal well-being, and scales to measure provider attitudes to home birth (PAPHB, PAPHI-i), and autonomy (MADM) and respect (MORi) during pregnancy and childbirth. She led the multidisciplinary development of the MISS index, an evidence-based composite measure of the integration of midwives into health systems. She also led a Delphi team of multi-disciplinary experts to develop and validate the Birthplace ResQu Index, the first critical appraisal tool for research on safety of birth place; and a global Delphi process to develop the first international Registry of validated measures of respectful maternity care. The application of these measures, also led to the development of an interprofessional online course, Dialogue and Decisions, to teach health professional trainees the process of person-centred decision making, transdisciplinary collaboration, and conflict transformation.
Professor Vedam has been active in setting national and international policy on place of birth, and midwifery education and regulation. She has provided expert consultations to policy makers in Mexico, Hungary, Chile, China, the Czech Republic, Canada, the US, and India. She was Convener and Chair of 4 national Home Birth Consensus Summits. At these historic national Summits a multi-stakeholder group of leaders (clinicians, consumers, policymakers, legislators, researchers, ethicists, and administrators) crafted a common agenda to address equitable access to high quality care across birth settings in the United States. She is convener and chair of the Global Perinatal Task Force on Quality of Maternal Newborn Care during COVID-19.
Operations and Administration
Ali Tatum
Equity and Operations Manager
Ali Tatum provides strategic direction and expertise on justice in community-centered, health services research and knowledge translation. She designs and leads implementation of best practices for inclusive excellence in BPL activities, including community engagement, participatory action research, and knowledge translation. She advises on implementation of best practices to facilitate equity, inclusion, and respectful community partnerships across the program of research. Ali has provided her expertise on anti-racist action to the University community through various roles, including serving on the inaugural Black Caucus Executive team, serving on the Academic Advisory Council of the Peter Wall Institute, and in designing and delivering the first Black Mental Wellness program at UBC, where culture matched counselling services were provided for Black UBC students, faculty and staff.
Maryam Dehnadi
Project Coordinator
Maryam Dehnadi (she, her) is a Projects Coordinator, Research at the Birth Place Lab, where she helps bring people, projects, and communication together. She holds a Master of Public Health and has a background in research, evaluation, and community engagement. Maryam enjoys bringing structure to complex work, connecting people and ideas, and helping projects move forward.
Having worked across different health and community settings in Canada and internationally, Maryam has developed a strong interest in health equity and in how research and evaluation can help create health services that are more responsive to the people and communities they serve. She is especially drawn to collaborative, people-centred approaches that bring different perspectives and lived experiences into the work.
At the Birth Place Lab, Maryam is excited to bring her experience and curiosity to research in perinatal care and to contribute to work that can support meaningful change in care, services, and systems.
Communications
Jeanette McCulloch
Communications Consultant
Jeanette McCulloch provides communications support and knowledge translation for the Birth Place Lab. She is the co-founder of BirthSwell, which is improving infant and maternal health - and the way we talk about birth and breastfeeding - through strategic digital communications. With more than 20 years experience in communications and women’s health advocacy, she provides consultation to local, statewide, national, and international birth and breastfeeding organizations and small businesses. She has published research and spoken at national conferences on reaching millennial parents online. She is passionate about health equity and ensuring that all families have access to high-quality, culturally sensitive birth and lactation care. Jeanette has two children, both born with the support of a midwife.
Researchers
Kathrin Stoll, PhD
Senior Research Associate
Kathrin has a background in psychology (BA), family studies (MA) & reproductive health (PhD), and fifteen years of experience collaborating with clinicians on perinatal research, education and policy projects. She finished her PhD in 2012, then completed a five-year postdoctoral fellowship in Population and Public Health at the University of British Columbia (UBC) and a one-year CIHR fellowship in primary health care research.
Her area of expertise is midwifery and reproductive health research, specifically midwifery outcomes, midwifery workforce issues, respectful perinatal care, gender based violence, reproductive justice, and evaluation of perinatal services. Kathrin has also published extensively on fear of childbirth, perinatal mental health, rural perinatal services, and home birth. She has worked with interdisciplinary research teams and emerging scholars in Canada, the US, Australia, South America and Europe.
Kathrin has been the lead researcher on several research, policy & education projects locally and globally, including an international study of attitudes of young adults towards birth, an evaluation of collaborative models of maternity care in British Columbia (Canada) and an assessment of the quality of midwifery education in Somalia and Somaliland.
She led the Sustainable Midwifery Practice Taskforce which used an appreciative inquiry framework to identify solutions to occupational stress and burnout among BC midwives. See midwifery workforce section of BPL website for details: https://www.birthplacelab.org/projects/
With a strong publication record (75+ peer reviewed publications), 5 years of experience as a midwifery journal editor; and 15 years as a reviewer she is well positioned to support BPL team members and trainees with dissemination of research findings. Kathrin is committed to centering the voices of racialized scholars and students and enjoys mentoring trainees and early career scholars.
Maryam Sarfjoo Kasmaei
Research Assistant
Maryam Sarfjoo Kasmaei holds a Master of Health Sciences from the University of Northern British Columbia, as well as undergraduate and graduate degrees in Civil and Environmental Engineering. Her interdisciplinary academic training bridges technical and social sciences and informs a systems-oriented approach to public health research, health equity, and implementation.
Her graduate research examined the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on care aides working in long-term care facilities in Northern British Columbia, with a focus on job satisfaction, burnout, and structural conditions shaping workforce well-being and mental health. Using qualitative secondary data and thematic analysis, her work contributes to understanding psychosocial stressors experienced by frontline care providers in under-resourced settings. She has contributed to peer-reviewed publications in both health services and engineering. A list of her publications is available on her ResearchGate profile:
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Maryam-Sarfjoo-Kasmaei
As a Research Assistant at the Birth Place Lab in the University of British Columbia Faculty of Medicine, Maryam contributes to qualitative and mixed-methods research across maternal health and health equity initiatives, including the RESPCCT project on respectful and culturally safe perinatal care. Her work includes data analysis, literature synthesis, manuscript development, stakeholder engagement, and support for knowledge mobilization activities.
Her broader interests include mental health and well-being, prevention across the life course, chronic illness, and equity-focused approaches that strengthen collaboration between health systems and communities. She also serves as a UBC Workplace Wellbeing Ambassador, supporting initiatives that promote healthy, inclusive, and supportive work environments.
In addition to her research, Maryam is a certified squash coach and referee in British Columbia and values sport as a pathway to community connection, youth development, and holistic well-being.
Celina Solís, PhD, MSc, BSc
Research Associate, Qualitative Methods
Celina is an interdisciplinary researcher and community engagement specialist with a robust background in holistic community well-being, social equity, racial healing, and food colonialism. She is skilled in qualitative research methods with experience in participatory-action research, and ethnographic and Indigenous research methodologies in Canada and Mexico.
As a Hispanic-American scholar, Celina's commitment to improving community well-being was recognized through the Latin America and Caribbean Social Leadership Scholarship awarded by the W. K. Kellogg Foundation in the USA, to pursue a PhD in integrated food studies at UBC. Recently, she completed this doctoral degree where she focused on capturing the complexity of the relationships between people and their context by listening to and analyzing the voices of underserved communities to improve experiences of equitable and culturally safe access to traditional foods.
In addition, Celina has experience in interdisciplinary research project coordination in Canada having worked at the UBC Indigenous/Science research cluster, where she served as a manager of a multi-partnership initiative addressing Indigenous-led research questions.
Celina has a long-term relationship with the Birth Place Lab. Starting in 2020 when she was one of the BC Regional Recruitment Coordinators for the RESPCCT Study. Then, as a Postdoctoral Fellow, and now as a Senior Research Associate in Qualitative Methods with a particular interest in fostering equitable and respectful care experiences for all families by addressing the disconnections between health services and the cultural needs of patients from different ethnic backgrounds.
Yeganeh Dadkhah
Research Assistant
Yeganeh Dadkhah (she/her) has a background in health sciences and public health and is currently a third-year midwifery student at UBC and a research assistant at the Birth Place Lab. She has been involved with the lab for the past two years, supporting research focused on reproductive health and respectful maternity care.
Her work includes contributing to literature reviews, data analysis, and coding, as well as supporting projects aimed at improving care experiences and advancing equity in perinatal health. Alongside her research, she is involved in community-based volunteer work focused on youth education and fostering connection through grassroots, community-building initiatives.
She is passionate about reproductive health and wellness, with a focus on promoting autonomy, informed decision-making, and culturally safe care for diverse communities.
Graduate Students
Bhavya Reddy, MPH, PhD Candidate
Graduate Research Assistant
Bhavya Reddy is a public health researcher with over a decade of experience in global perinatal health, with a focus on evidence-based obstetric care and respectful intrapartum care. Her research engagements have included risk assessment in pregnancy, social and health system determinants of maternal mortality, and capacity-building of community health workers in low-resource settings. She has served as an external reviewer for WHO guidelines and resources on antenatal care and respectful care, and with a WHO working group to synthesize evidence to address mistreatment in childbirth. She has also been a faculty member for a course on gender and intersectionality in health policy and systems developed for the WHO Alliance for Health Policy and Systems Research. Bhavya is a PhD candidate at UBC’s School of Population and Public Health and a Vanier Scholar. Her doctoral research with UBC’s Birth Place Lab explores relationships between mode of birth, intrapartum care experiences, and postpartum PTSD.
Prisha Vaidya, MA Candidate
Graduate Research Assistant, Project Coordinator
Prisha Vaidya (she/her) is a Graduate Research Assistant at the Birth Place Lab and Project Coordinator for the Justice and Equity in Perinatal Services Hub. She is completing her MA exploring how integrative reproductive care in India unfolds as a complex, improvisational practice shaped by institutions, culture, and social expectations, revealing the nuanced ways doctors navigate these systems. Driven by a passion for equitable, accessible, and person-centred care, Prisha blends qualitative research expertise with creative knowledge translation, bringing critical health insights to both academic and community audiences. At the Lab and Hub, she applies this lens to advance justice, inclusion, and innovation in perinatal health.
Tamar Austin, MPH, PhD Candidate
Graduate Research Assistant
Tamar Austin (she/her) holds a BSc from the University of Toronto and a MPH, with a focus in social inequities in health, from Simon Fraser University. During her masters, Tamar focused on exploring community-based participatory research methods and the utilization of intersectionality to address race and gender-based health inequities within Canada. Her academic background led to diverse research opportunities that focused on the experiences of historically marginalized communities navigating healthcare systems and services, especially that of women and African, Caribbean, and Black (ACB) communities. As a research coordinator with the Birth Place Lab, Tamar coordinates multiple maternity research and implementation projects while supporting students and trainees. Tamar is currently a doctoral student in interdisciplinary studies at UBC. As a researcher, Tamar is interested in the ways racism, gender-based discrimination, and other axis of oppression impact birthing experiences of ACB people in Canada, as well as the implementation of strategies and tools to improve the quality of maternity care.
Honorary Research Associates
Kaveri Mayra, PhD
Dr. Kaveri Mayra is a midwifery, nursing and global health researcher from India with a PhD in Global Health from the University of Southampton, UK, where she explored the experiences and determinants of obstetric violence in India through an arts-based method called ‘birth mapping’. She won the Research Trainee funding from the Michael Smith Foundation for Health Research (MSFHR) to work as a postdoctoral fellowship at the Birth Place Lab, University of British Columbia, where she is leading the Continuum for Respectful Care (CORE) initiative alongside supporting the team at lab on other respectful care related initiatives. She has extensive research experience on nursing and midwifery workforce policies, regulation and practice; sexual, reproductive and maternal health care and the underlying gender-based challenges. Dr. Mayra is a global speaker and has delivered guest lectures in universities and at conferences around the world on obstetric violence; orgasm equality, nursing and midwifery governance, the inequities, sexism and discriminations in health policy-making. Dr. Mayra was recently recognized as one of the 100 outstanding global midwife and nurse leaders by Women in Global Health, WHO, ICN, ICM, Nursing Now and UNFPA to mark the Year of the Nurse and the Midwife 2020.
Dr. Mayra serves on the board on Human Rights in Childbirth (HRIC), White Ribbon Alliance UK and Academy for Nursing Studies and Women's Empowerment Research Studies. She also runs the Obstetric Violence Journal Club and the Birth and Body Book Club. Dr. Mayra also consults as a Subject Matter Expert with the WHO HQ to create a toolkit for WHO Academy on Essential Respectful Care Course (ERCC). When she is not doing any of the above, she is dancing.
Mimi Bhatt, PhD, CNM, MPH
Dr. Paulomi Niles (she, her) is Assistant Professor of Midwifery at New York University, and Certified-Nurse-Midwife in a large urban public health care network in New York City that primarily serves BIPOC and immigrant communities. Her work explores the potential of integrated models of midwifery care in creating health equity. Her dissertation titled ‘Kairos care in a Chronos world: An analysis of midwifery care in urban public hospitals’ examined both the potential and challenges of practising midwifery in historically disenfranchised communities. This research was funded, in part, by the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health. Dr. Niles has extensive expertise in utilizing critical feminist theory and qualitative research methods to generate policy and programming that is rooted in intersectional and anti-racist frameworks. Dr. Niles serves on the NYC Department of Health Maternal Morbidity and Mortality Review Committee and has received various awards including the Johnson & Johnson Minority Faculty Award, Jonas Nurse Leaders Scholar Award, Macy Foundation’s Biggs Health Policy Scholar, and ACNM’s 2018 Carrington-Nieves-Hsia Doctoral Student of Color award. Dr. Niles serves on the Board of Directors of the National Association of Certified Professional Midwives. Following a Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Birth Place Lab (2019-2021), she remains an active collaborator, leading qualitative analysis and providing mentorship to trainees and community researchers as they engage with the BPL datasets.
Keisha Goode, PhD
Keisha Goode, PhD (she, her) is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the State University of New York-College at Old Westbury and Adjunct Assistant Professor of Sociology and Women’s Studies at the City University of New York--Lehman College. Her work is centered on issues related to pregnancy and childbirth in the United States with specific attention to black midwives. Her dissertation, Birthing, Blackness and the Body: Black Midwives and Experiential Continuities of Institutional Racism, has been widely disseminated and discussed within the birth community; she is currently working on its publication into a book. She, along with Barbara Katz Rothman, are the co-authors of Pregnancy and Childbirth in the United States: A Reference Handbook to be published by ABC-CLIO press in Spring 2021. is the first Public Member of the Board of Directors of the National Association of Certified Professional Midwives, and is currently serving as the Board Vice President.
Tanya Khemet Taiwo, CPM, MPH
Tanya Khemet Taiwo, CPM, MPH, PhD lives in Sacramento, CA where she has practiced in community clinic settings for over 20 years and counts herself blessed as the mother of three beautiful girls who were all born at home into the hands of midwives. She comes from a family tradition of midwifery stretching back at least two generations, was trained at Seattle Midwifery School, and apprenticed with midwives in Seattle, Senegal and Jamaica. An Associate Professor in the Department of Midwifery at Bastyr University in Kenmore, WA, Dr. Taiwo is an epidemiologist whose dissertation research examined the role of maternal prenatal stress on child neurodevelopment, and how these stressors interact with environmental exposures. She serves as co-lead of Project TENDR (Targeting Environmental Neuro-Development Risks) a unique collaboration of leading scientists, health professionals and children’s and environmental advocates. She currently works in a Federally Qualified Health Center, caring for low-income families in a multi-disciplinary setting, where reproductive health care is enhanced with health education, nutrition and social services.
Michael Rost, PhD, MSc, MA
Michael is Co-Head of research at the Institute of Midwifery and Reproductive Health at Zurich University of Applied Sciences, and Senior Researcher at the Institute for Biomedical Ethics at the University of Basel, Switzerland. He was a visiting researcher at the Birth Place Lab (2020-2021). As an interdisciplinary researcher with degrees in Psychology (MSc), Applied Ethics (MA), and Bioethics (PhD), his overarching interests relate to reproductive health and reproductive rights. Integrating ethical and empirical analyses, his research particularly focuses on person-centered decision-making in birth, midwives’ moral distress, and perinatal mental health. At present, he is working on his habilitation thesis on autonomy in birth at the medical faculty of the University of Basel.
Michael’s publications in several peer-reviewed journals include quantitative, qualitative, and theoretical work. He has been awarded funding from the Swiss National Science Foundation, the Swiss Cancer League, the Cancer League Basel, the Swiss Academy of Medical Sciences, and the University of Basel’s Research Fund Junior Researchers. He has lectured in universities on various subjects, such as bioethics, research ethics, behavioral ethics, coercion in medicine, autonomy in birth, or non-beneficial research with children. He also has been invited to deliver presentations and expert opinions in numerous non-academic contexts. Besides his academic work, Michael has served as a family-psychological expert witness for family courts in Germany.
Collaborators
Rachel Olson, PhD
Director, The Firelight Group
Rachel is a citizen of the Tr’ondek Hwech’in First Nation from the Yukon territory. She has been a researcher in First Nation communities since 1998, working on various projects, from oral history, traditional land use and natural resource management to First Nations health issues. She has a Master of Research in Social Anthropology from the University of Aberdeen, Scotland. In May 2013, Rachel completed a PhD in Social Anthropology from the University of Sussex, looking at the politics of midwifery care and childbirth in Manitoba First Nations communities.
Rachel has worked as a consultant for the LINKS (Local and Indigenous Knowledge Systems) program at UNESCO in Paris, France and at the First Nations Centre at the National Aboriginal Health Organization on their maternal care file. She works closely with the National Aboriginal Council of Midwives (NACM) as a researcher and writer for their Aboriginal Health and Human Resource Initiative projects.
At Firelight, Rachel is a technical lead of the Traditional Knowledge and Use Study team, and the lead on Health-related projects. She has authored numerous Traditional Knowledge (TK) / Traditional Land Use (TLU) reports for First Nation communities in BC, Alberta, and the NWT. Her work has focused on knowledge and use in relation to a number of different industries including: pipelines, wind farms, and mining. She has also testified at environmental review board hearings on Firelight TUS methods, analysis, and assessment.
Indra Lusero, JD, MA
Founder, Elephant Circle and The Birth Rights Bar Association
Indra Lusero is founder of Elephant Circle and the Birth Rights Bar Association. As a Queer, Genderqueer, Latinx parent rooted in the Rocky Mountain West, Indra is attuned to the importance of people on the margins and our role in leading the dismantling of oppressive systems to build a more equitable world. Indra helped pass legislation in Colorado to eliminate the shackling of incarcerated women during pregnancy and birth, to improve midwifery and birth center regulations, and to create more humane policies for families impacted by substance use. Indra also spearheaded the creation of "Birth Rights: A resource for everyday people to defend human rights during labor and birth," and is interested in developing accountability mechanisms for disrespect and mistreatment during birth.
Nisha Malhotra, PhD (Economics)
Dr. Nisha Malhotra previously headed the data analysis team at the Birthplace Lab as a Senior Research Associate. She is an interdisciplinary researcher with a focus on global health, gender, and development. Her research explores the role of socio-economic factors, individual identities, and policies on decisions and behaviour from maternal dietary habits, infant feeding practices in India to smoking behaviors among Canadian youth. You can find more on her research here.
Dr. Malhotra earned her master's degree at the Delhi School of Economics and doctorate in Economics at the University of Maryland, college park. Her background includes a tenured faculty position at Vancouver school of economics, teaching experience at Delhi University, consulting experiences at the World Bank, DC, and the Indian council-ICRIER.
Elizabeth Nethery, MSc, MSM, PhD
Elizabeth is a direct-entry midwife and a health researcher skilled in quantitative analysis, GIS, data visualization and has experience in research methods and has published over 10 papers. Her recent research used US data (MANA Stats) to explore rural birth outcomes for women who planned community births. She is interested in research on place of birth, access to care and perinatal outcomes and is a current PhD student in the School of Population and Public Health at UBC. She recently graduated from the Masters of Science in Midwifery at Bastyr University (Seattle, WA) and has started the process to become certified as a Registered Midwife (RM) in British Columbia.
Lesley A. Tarasoff, PhD
Lesley A. Tarasoff is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Department of Health and Society at the University of Toronto Scarborough and the Azrieli Adult Neurodevelopmental Centre at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health. She leads the qualitative component of a NIH-funded project on the perinatal health of women with disabilities in Ontario and her own CIHR-funded research on the preconception health of women with disabilities.
In 2018, she completed her PhD in Public Health Sciences from the Dalla Lana School of Public Health at the University of Toronto, as well as a Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in the Department of Psychology at Ryerson University.
Primarily drawing on qualitative methodologies, her program of research aims to understand and address disparities and inequities in reproductive and perinatal health and health care experiences among often-pathologized and stigmatized populations, chiefly women with disabilities and sexual minority women.
She is a Co-Investigator on the RESPCCT study.
Melissa Cheyney
Co-Director, Uplift Lab, Professor of Clinical Medical Anthropology
Melissa Cheyney PhD, LDM is a Professor of Clinical Medical Anthropology at Oregon State University (OSU) and a community midwife (on sabbatical). She co-directs Uplift—a research and reproductive equity laboratory at OSU, where she serves as the Primary Investigator on more than 20 maternal and infant health-related research projects, including the Community Doula Project. She is the author of an ethnography entitled Born at Home (2010, Wadsworth Press), co-editor with Robbie Davis-Floyd of Birth in Eight Cultures (2019, Waveland Press), and author or co-author of more than 60 peer-reviewed articles that examine the cultural beliefs and clinical outcomes associated with midwife-attended birth at home and in birth centers in the United States. In 2019, Dr. Cheyney served on the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine’s Birth Settings in America Study and in 2020 was named Eminent Professor by OSUs Honors College. She also received Oregon State University’s prestigious Scholarship Impact Award for her work in the International Reproductive Health Laboratory and with the Midwives Alliance of North America (MANA) Statistics Project. She is the Editor-in-Chief of the journal Birth: Issues in Perinatal Care and the mother of a daughter born at home.
Molly Altman, PhD, CNM, MPH
Lead Investigator, Birth Includes Us Study
Molly Altman (she/her) is an assistant professor in the School of Nursing at the University of Washington (US). Her work has focused on respectful care during pregnancy and childbirth for marginalized communities, with a focus on the interaction between individuals and their health care providers. She completed a post-doctoral fellowship with the Preterm Birth Initiative at the University of California, San Francisco exploring how low income women of color experience interacting with health care providers in the Bay Area, leading to important work describing how providers use information and knowledge sharing to influence how patients make decisions and experience their care. She is currently leading the Giving Voice to LGBTQ+ Families study, which is using participatory methods to adapt the RESPCCT study specifically to capture the experiences of pregnant people and their families during the perinatal period (preconception to postpartum).
Dr. Patricia Janssen, RN (non-practicing), BSN, MPH, PhD (Epidemiology)
Dr. Janssen is a Professor in the University of British Columbia School of Population and Public Health. She is a Perinatal Epidemiologist and Senior Scientist at the BC Children’s Hospital Research Institute. Trained in nursing and midwifery, Dr. Janssen leads a Centre of Research Excellence entitled Advancing the Science of Physiologic Birth. Patricia is currently studying the utility of SMS text messaging as a modality to improve health literacy and motivate health behavior change among expectant and new parents. Most recently, she has developed and implemented SmartParent, Canada’s first prenatal and parent education program delivered by text messaging. She is a past recipient of the YWCA Women of Distinction Award for Research in the Sciences and in 2020 was named one of the top 50 Changemakers in Public Health among alumni of the University of Washington School of Public Health. She was recognized by UBC in 2022 with a Faculty of Medicine Distinguished Achievement Award for Service to the University and Community. In 2024 she was designated as one of ten Canadian women leaders in digital health by Digital Health Canada.
Courtney Broten, RM, McAC, MHPE
Courtney Broten completed a degree in Midwifery and has since cared for diverse groups of people throughout pregnancy, birth, postpartum, and newborn periods in both rural and urban settings in British Columbia. She has served as faculty with the Division of Midwifery at UBC since 2010. Her professional responsibilities have included working for the Midwives Association of BC on provincial access issues for midwives. She is particularly interested in health professional education research and design. Courtney has completed a Master’s in Health Professional Education through Maastricht University in the Netherlands, and she is a member of UBC’s Centre for Health Education Scholarship.