“It Takes a Village” is a week-long virtual fundraising & awareness campaign from Oct 11-18, 2021.
Every day we will share expert interview & reflections from parents showcasing the breath of wisdom, experience & resources we help connect parents with.
We're thrilled to be announcing our experts!
Henriette, founder of Mama Let’s Read, is working to eliminate inequities and cultural deficit narratives about BIPOC. She regularly shares diverse children’s books with positive Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC) characters. She also manages a Facebook group of over 1,600 members, focused on supporting Bay Area Moms of Color.
Krystal Dawn Peak, Communications & Outreach Specialist with Our Family Coalition, is working to advance equity for the full and expanding spectrum of LGBTQ+ families and children through support, education, and advocacy. Her depth of experience in journalism, marketing, public relations, communications, and event planning has helped foster community-building and resilience among San Francisco LGBTQ+ families.
Dr. Julia Getzelman, founder of GetzWell Pediatrics, has become a pacesetter in the field of integrative medicine for children, offering an unprecedented level of personalized care and accessibility through her practice. By focusing on relationships and taking time to get to the root cause of disease, she provides customized pediatric care through a functional medicine lens — combining the best of conventional and complementary medicine.
Amy Henderson, CEO and co-founder of TendLab, is catalyzing a movement to recognize and realize the value of parents in the workplace. A regular speaker and author advocating on behalf of the power of parenthood at work, Amy wrote “Tending: Parenthood and the Future of Work” and started and co-leads the FamTech Founders Collaborative to further the Tending movement.
Dr. Dhara Thakar Meghani, full-time faculty member at the University of San Francisco. Dr. Meghani promotes infant and perinatal mental health and family relationships through her research of accessible, evidence-based interventions aimed to reduce stress, anxiety, and depression during the transition to parenthood. She founded Parentline, a free telemental mental health service that supports parents of children from birth to three years of age using brief therapy and solution-focused approaches.
Alejandra Siroka M.A., founder of Language Alchemy, is a transformative communication teacher and coach who’s devoted her life to studying and teaching how language and communication shape our lives and relationships. She helps individuals, couples and groups develop thriving conscious relationships by speaking their truth with clarity, confidence and compassion.
Michaela Taylor, Project Manager at Abundant Birth Project, is working to build innovative public health interventions that address systemic racism in maternal, child, and adolescent health. Her work helps provide unconditional income supplementation during pregnancy to 150 Black and Pacific Islander pregnant women in San Francisco. She is a registered nurse and recent MPH graduate from the UC Berkeley School of Public Health.
Aliya Caler and Kara Schamell, founders of Birthing Adventures Midwifery, offer expecting parents in the SF Bay the best of what midwifery has to offer. Their unique partnership enables them to cultivate and model a culture of balance by nourishing ourselves, each other and our clients one family at a time.
- Aliya Caler, MS is a California certified nurse-midwife (CNM) and certified women's health nurse practitioner (WHNP-BC) as well as a registered public health nurse (RN). Aliya has been attending births since 2010 and is honored to have supported hundreds of families during pregnancy, birth and the postpartum.
- Kara Schamell, is a California Licensed Midwife (LM) and Certified Professional Midwife (CPM). Kara has been attending births since 2010 and is happy to support the unprecedented number of families seeking out-of-hospital birthing options due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
