Host a Workshop with our Speaker's Bureau
Are you planning a conference and want a topic on trauma? PATTCh board members are experienced, high quality speakers with a variety of topics ready to go to educate your attendees. Our speakers have topics related to primary and secondary trauma, breastfeeding and trauma, posttraumatic growth, life after the NICU, health disparities and trauma, and much more. Click each person’s name to learn more about them and their topics.
Muna Bashir, BS, MA-MCHS, CD (DONA), CCE (CAPPA)
Muna Bashir has been providing professional support and coaching to childbearing families and birth professionals for the past 20 years in diverse maternal-child health settings, both domestically and internationally. She has developed intrapartum tools to facilitate more effective communication between patients and clinicians during facility-based birth.
Muna is passionate about optimizing the perinatal care experience - especially among marginalized groups. She is also interested in conducting research that helps promote the implementation of better health systems, services, and their delivery.
Leslie Butterfield, PhD, Clinical Psychologist
Dr. Leslie Butterfield is a clinical psychologist specializing in maternal & perinatal mental health. In her Seattle private practice she works with women and couples dealing with pregnancy loss (including abortion), fertility issues, the transition to parenthood, perinatal mood and anxiety disorders, traumatic birth, and parenting fragile or medically challenged infants and children. Additionally, she offers therapeutic services to health care providers in the childbirth community.
She has traveled both nationally and internationally in her capacity as a consultant, offering services to a variety of medical and mental health organizations, including: University of Washington Infant Palliative Care Unit, Midwifery Association of Washington State, Association of Women's Health, Obstetric, and Neonatal Nurses, KK Women and Children's Hospital of Singapore, Perinatal Psychiatry Seminars in Turkey and France, and YANMA Parenting Academy in China. She is a trainer for both Perinatal Support of WA and Postpartum Support International. In her capacity as a educator, she has designed and taught the counseling skills curriculum for Seattle Midwifery School and Bastyr Naturopathic University Department of Midwifery for 26 years. She is past Chairwoman of Perinatal Support of WA and the past President and Vice President of PATTCh. She remains active on the boards of both organizations.
Leslie loves to travel widely, to dance energetically, to eat good food, and to scrapbook her adventures with friends, family and colleagues.
Cheryl Chan, CD(DONA), SpBCPE
Cheryl Chan is a birth doula trained under Doulas of North America (DONA). She has attended courses on Spinning Babies, Belly Mapping, and “When Survivors Give Birth.” She has a passion for working on women’s health through gentle birthing techniques, pregnancy, and postpartum support. Cheryl’s passion started with breastfeeding her two children. She is one of the active and passionate administrators of Breastfeeding Pinays, an online breastfeeding support group. In 2014, Cheryl became a Certified Breastfeeding Pinays Counselor. She has attended many lactation courses internationally, including Bastyr University’s (Seattle, USA) “Foundations for Best Practice in Lactation Care” and “Breastfeeding Sick Babies” in Bangkok. She has since then provided postpartum lactation support and assistance to mothers (private and through public outreach projects) locally and internationally.
After two medicated and cesarean births, she now wants to impart her knowledge and undivided support to mothers in similar situations. In 2015, Cheryl opened her arms to new advocacy by spreading awareness on the benefits of natural birth. She promotes and educates expectant mothers on achieving the birth they want. After extensive training, with Penny Simkin and Phyllis Klaus on the course entitled, “When Survivors Give Birth,” learning about how a mother’s previous experiences can affect her pregnancy and birth journey–medicated or otherwise–and breastfeeding, Cheryl looked into becoming a doula as the answer.
With the help and mentorship of Doula Velvet in the Pinay Doulas Collective, Cheryl became determined to ensure that all women get the birth that they wished for–a gentle birth. Before being a doula, Cheryl worked extensively in the financial industry.
Pinay Doulas Collective
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Sabrine Chengane, PharmD, MPH
Sabrine Chengane has a strong record of leadership and taking initiative to identify and create opportunity for improvement in a variety of settings.
She is passionate about maternal and child health with particular interest in global women’s, environmental, and mental health. Sabrine has participated in research projects on contraception, environmental and occupational health, and mental health. She served in different active roles with student organizations, including the International Pharmaceutical Students Federation, in which she served as Chairperson of Public Health in 2016-2017.
Sabrine has a master of Public Health degree with a concentration in Maternal and Child Health from the University of Nebraska Medical Center (USA) and a Doctor of Pharmacy from the University of Algiers (Algeria). In May 2021, she was inducted as an alumni member into the Gamma Omicron Chapter of the Delta Omega Honorary Society in Public Health.
Jess Helle-Morrissey, MA, MSW, LICSW, PMH-C, CBD(CBI), CLEC
Jess Helle-Morrissey is a clinical social worker in private practice, a trainer, teacher, and consultant, an EMDR therapist, a birth doula, a childbirth educator, and a lactation counselor. Since 2005, Jess has provided warm, trauma-informed, practical mental health care for a variety of clients in the Twin Cities metro area, having focused almost exclusively on perinatal and maternal mental health since 2011. Jess has master’s degrees in counseling psychology, clinical social work, and holistic health from the University of Minnesota , the University of St. Thomas, and St. Catherine University. She is passionate about making sure everyone has accurate information and access to support in the perinatal period and beyond and will talk your ear off about it if given the chance.
In her spare time, Jess enjoys running, sewing, cooking, listening to podcasts, and spending time with family and friends. She lives in St. Paul, MN with a supportive spouse, a daughter, identical twin boys, a dog, and a crested gecko.
Annie Kennedy, MA - MCHS
Annie Kennedy is a maternity care advocate based in Seattle, Washington. Annie has worked in education and the birth professions since 1989. She is founding President of PALS Doulas, a Founder of DONA International and former Director of the Simkin Center for Allied Birth Vocations at Bastyr University. She holds a Masters in Maternal-Child Health Systems.
Annie serves on several other non-profit boards and coalitions including Global Perinatal Services and Doulas for All Washington State. She is passionate about humane childbirth, respectful maternity care and health and race equity.
Venus Mahmoodi, PhD
Venus Mahmoodi, PhD is a clinical psychology, researcher, professor, and advocate for perinatal populations. She has a strong interest in the mental health care of women during pregnancy, birth, and postpartum, including depression, anxiety, trauma, infertility, and loss. She is currently an Assistant Professor of Medical Psychology (in Psychiatry) at Columbia University Medical Center and an Assistant Professional Psychologist at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital in New York City, where she provides clinical care to women in the Women’s Program and trains psychology and psychiatry trainees in women’s mental health. Dr. Mahmoodi is also an Adjunct Assistant Professor at Teachers College, Columbia University, where she teaches graduate level courses in perinatal mental health and psychotherapy as well as mentoring students.
Dr. Mahmoodi completed her PhD at Palo Alto University and her clinical internship at Mount Sinai Beth Israel. She has specialized training in childhood trauma, perinatal mood and anxiety disorders, fertility struggles, perinatal loss, and vulnerable populations.
Mora Oommen
Mora Oommen is a maternal health advocate and a nonprofit consultant. She served as the Executive Director of Blossom Birth Services in Palo Alto, CA from 2008-2017. Blossom is a nonprofit organization founded in 1999 with a mission to provide women and their families with a healthy, informed and confident pregnancy and parenting journey.
At Blossom, Mora was responsible for leading a team of part-time staff, instructors and volunteers, overseeing the organization’s financial growth, led the expansion of programs and services and created an atmosphere of warmth and compassion for women during pregnancy, birth and early parenting.
In recent years Mora has participated in a number of trainings including: a birth doula workshop through DONA, advanced doula workshop in Loss and Trauma with Kyndal May, a childbirth education workshop through CAPPA, and a breastfeeding counselor training through Nursing Mother’s Counsel. She has since provided doula support, taught child birth classes and offered breastfeeding support to new moms.
Mora was raised in India and the United States. The birth of her daughter in August 2007 was a transforming experience, giving new meaning to the term miracle of life- every single day.
Qu'Nesha Sawyer, PhD, LCMHC, LPCC, LCAS, NCC
Dr. Qu’Nesha Sawyer is a licensed clinical psychotherapist specializing in reproductive mental health and wellness. For over seven years, she has dedicated her clinical practice to providing culturally responsive perinatal mental health services to women of color and women of traditionally underrepresented and underserved backgrounds.
Through her work, Qu’Nesha is a strong advocate for normalizing a birthing person’s experience before, during and after pregnancy and desires to facilitate a narrative shift about perinatal mental health. She is cross-trained as a birth doula and leverages this background to further support individuals navigating their childbirth experiences. Qu’Nesha resides in Bay Area California and maintains a bi-coastal clinical practice called Bloom: Reproductive Mental Health and Wellness.
Dominique Vincent
Dominique Vincent is a perinatal specialist and equity/diversity advocate with an extensive background in supporting and connecting pregnant and new families with the resources, services and support they need for healthy and satisfying pregnancy and early parenting journey.
Through her work as the former Executive Director of Blossom Birth & Family, Dominique oversaw a team made up of staff independent contractors providing the best in pre/postnatal yoga and fitness classes, childbirth education, support groups, community events and perinatal professional development. Dominique is a DONA trained doula and Commonsense Childbirth trained doula, childbirth and lactation educator.
Laura Vladimirova, LMSW
Laura Vladimirova (she/her) is based in Brooklyn, NY. She is a licensed social worker and therapist, specializing in perinatal populations and the various intersections within the reproductive continuum. Formerly, Laura worked as a birth doula, childbirth educator, and lactation counselor, which both laid the foundation for her current work and still greatly influences it.
Laura is the Director of the Edith and Carl Marks Jewish Community House Women’s Center, a community center located in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn where she offers accessible, targeted programming and counseling services for undocumented expecting and new parents, single parents, immigrant women, survivors of domestic violence, teen girls, and at-risk parents. Laura also works in a group therapy practice and runs support groups focusing on sexual wellness, queer community, trauma healing, and the needs of the birth and postpartum populations.
Laura and her family are Jewish refugees from the former Soviet Union. She is an avid podcast listener, photographer, writer, lover of nature, enthusiastic traveler, and lifelong learner.