All our accomplishments are made possible by the continued effort of our US Board who help sustain the project through fundraising, advising, and volunteering in Guatemala.
Board members
James Carbone, MPH, RN
Board President
James is the former President and owner of The Wellness Corporation headquartered in Central Massachusetts. He received his nursing diploma from Somerville Hospital School of Nursing, his undergraduate degree from Worcester State College and his Masters Degree in Public Health from the University of Minnesota in 1984. He is a widower and has three children.
James became involved with the project early in its history as a loyal donor and supporter of the Maya Mam midwives. The construction of the original birth center in the Western Highlands of Guatemala in 2004 was made possible with the help of The Wellness Corporation and many generous donors in the United States.
James has committed himself to the long-term growth of this valuable resource in one of the most impoverished areas of Guatemala and continues to serve as the President of Naye Xjaw Maya Midwifery International.
NIkki May, CNM, FNP, MSN
Nikki is a certified nurse-midwife and educator with over 45 years of experience. She received her midwifery training at Frontier Nursing Service in Hyden, KY, where she also implemented comprehensive pediatric services for a rural Appalachian community, accessible only by horseback or jeep. There, she saw many of the same challenges facing the local population served by Naye Xjaw: environmental and cultural degradation, poverty, lack of education, lack of adequate roads, lack of clean water, etc. After moving to Boston, MA, Nikki was the founder of one of the first comprehensive midwifery services in the area. She also co-founded The Cambridge Birth Center, a free standing Birth Center in Cambridge, MA, which serves many low-income women from Latin America. She speaks Spanish and is slowly learning Mam.
Nikki met four of the Maya Mams midwives at a midwifery conference in Oaxaca, México in 2003. She travelled back to Guatemala with them and was so impressed by the strength, determination and ingenuity of the women that she quickly became a part of the community. She has since become both a board member and a frequent volunteer to the Naye Xjaw Birth and Reproductive Health Center in Guatemala.
Nikki feels lucky to have the opportunity to both share her skills with the midwives of Naye Xjaw and simultaneously learn of their culture, tradition and healing practices.
Mary Ellen Galante, cnm
Mary Ellen is a certified nurse midwife with over 30 years of experience as a nurse midwife and community health educator. Her passion for Global Health led her to work long-term in rural Haiti, Mexico, and Guatemala, with an emphasis on maternal child health and nutrition. After meeting the Maya Mam midwives, she traveled to Guatemala to learn more about their dreams to improve care for the families in their Mam-speaking communities. She began supporting her colleague Nicole May in the founding of Maya Midwifery International, as it grew in partnership with the Maya Mam midwives. In 2016, as MMI's Program Manager, Mary Ellen helped initiate the mobile clinics project. Based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Mary Ellen has cared for immigrant women in the Boston area with the Cambridge Midwives and the Boston Medical Center Midwifery practices. In 2014, she completed her Master of Public Health degree at Boston University, and she now works as a Board-Certified Lactation Consultant (IBCLC), in private practice, in addition to her work with MMI. Mary Ellen is fluent in Spanish and Haitian Creole.
Carol Bedrosian, Board Member
Carol Bedrosian founded Spirit of Change Magazine in 1987 as a holistic resource for New England. The print magazine reaches an audience of 100,000 readers twice a year issue with uplifting, transformative body/mind/spirit health information, and www.spiritofchange.org posts new information and events daily, as well as archiving over 30 years of past articles. Along with her daughter Michella Brudner, Carol is co-producer of the Natural Living Expo each fall, New England’s largest annual holistic event. Carol is a graduate of the College of the Holy Cross, a board member of Maya Midwifery International, and a grandmother. For more information about Spirit of Change or to contact Carol, email carol@spiritofchange.org.
Jan Saunders, DEM, CPMT
Jan has worked in Maternal-Child Health for over twenty years as Home Birth Midwife, Doula, Mentor to Apprentice Midwives and Doulas, Massage Therapist, and Childbirth Educator. In addition to her birth work she is currently Coordinator of the Cambridge Doula Program, a multilingual/ multicultural program at Cambridge Hospital and Cambridge Birth Center in Cambridge, MA. Jan has been a Board Member since 2004. She participates in educational exchanges in Guatemala, planning, and fundraising efforts.
Cheryl Hamlin, OB/GYN
Board Clerk
Cheryl Hamlin is an Obstetrician / Gynecologist working at Mount Auburn Hospital. She did her residency at Boston Medical Center (previously Boston City Hospital). With an ongoing interest in Global Health, Cheryl has traveled to offer her expertise in Africa and Latin America. Cheryl speaks advanced-level Spanish and enjoys utilizing this skill to bridge barriers to care for Latina women.
She originally learned about the project from Nikki May. Upon first visit to Guatemala, she was very impressed by how it really is a Guatemalan-run organization with the Maya midwives there providing direct care to women and babies, incorporating modern medicine with their traditional practices. She has learned a lot from the Maya Mam midwives during her annual visits and shares her knowledge of gynecology themes of interest with them during her stays. She is looking forward to returning to visit them in their new space at the end of 2025.
Judy Luce, CPM
Judy Luce is a homebirth midwife with over 35 years of experience and the original founder of the project. Judy was present at Weston Priory when Guatemalan families arrived in 1984 as part of the Sanctuary Movement. She and her husband, Tom, were part of the original support group for Guatemalan refugees via Guatemala Watch of Vermont. In August,1999 she accompanied one refugee couple on their trip home after 17 years of exile. During this visit, she met with the original group of Mam midwives, where she helped them explore their dream to have their own birth center. An exchange that began small, with North American midwives donating midwifery supplies to Maya midwives and inviting them to midwifery and herbal conferences in the US, rapidly evolved into plans for a birth and midwifery education center that was dedicated in 2004. Judy has traveled to Guatemala over a half dozen times and is continuously inspired by the creativity, ingenuity, and skill of Maya midwives. She remains a board member of Naye Xjaw Maya Midwifery International.
Jane Carbone
Jane Carbone is Director of Development at HRI, a non-profit affordable housing development company in Cambridge, MA, and has over 32 years of experience producing affordable housing. During her tenure at the organization, she has participated in the growth of HRI’s portfolio to over 1,500 units. She is responsible for managing HRI’s development staff of project managers and overseeing their work, from all aspects of the development process (pre-development through construction). She is a pioneer in incorporating sustainable and environmentally friendly building practices into their new developments, as well as the adoption of green, healthy renovation practices in the entire portfolio, including Passive Haus. Jane received her BA in Environmental Design and City Planning from UMass Amherst and is a licensed construction supervisor and LEED AP.
susannah E. Canfield Hurd, MPH
Susannah Hurd has more than 15 years of experience in reproductive, maternal, newborn, child, and adolescent health (RMNCAH) and global development. She has worked across a range of organizations, including The Population Council, Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains, and International Planned Parenthood Federation, leading programs and direct service delivery that span financial oversight, research, evaluation, training, advocacy, and communications in diverse global contexts.
Her work is grounded in a deep understanding of multi-stakeholder engagement and consensus-building, with expertise in designing and facilitating high-level workshops and meetings that bring together diverse perspectives to identify priorities, align strategies, and define concrete actions. She has advised global health and development partners on advocacy strategies, policy analysis, investment cases, communications, and landscape analyses, with a focus on advancing equity and improving health outcomes for women, children, and adolescents.
Susannah’s issue expertise spans the RMNCAH continuum of care, with a particular passion for elevating the voices, rights, and needs of women and girls. Her portfolio includes collaborations with organizations such as The Gates Foundation, Hôpital Albert Schweitzer – Haiti, PATH, RESULTS, the Global Financing Facility, the Partnership for Maternal, Newborn, and Child Health (PMNCH), and the International Confederation of Midwives (ICM).
She holds a Master of Public Health degree from Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health and a Bachelor of Science degree from Bates College, graduating summa cum laude. Outside of work, she enjoys hiking with her dogs, snowboarding, cooking, travel, and design.
Elisa vandervort, FNP, CNM
Elisa Vandervort is a certified nurse midwife and family nurse practitioner who has worked with community-based organizations engaged in issues of social justice for more than two decades. She joined our Board of Directors in 2019. Elisa speaks Spanish and has extensive field work in Latin America and East Africa as a frontline clinician and educator with additional experience in cervical cancer program implementation in low resource settings.
Elisa holds a degree from Cornell University in English and Latin American Studies. She completed training as a family nurse practitioner at Yale University School of Nursing and later as a nurse-midwife at the University of Utah after being inspired by Tanzanian nursing students at the University of Dodoma where she has served three times as a Peace Corps Response volunteer. Elisa provides full scope hospital-based midwifery care in Vermont and remains dedicated to supporting capacity building efforts in the global south, with an emphasis on strengthening maternal child health life-saving skills and respectful maternity care among frontline health workers, especially midwives.
Kimberly Navarro, cnm
Kimberly is a Certified Nurse Midwife, Women’s Health Nurse Practitioner, poet and scholar, who is passionate about ameliorating maternal health racial disparities, combating maternal mortality, and providing high quality healthcare to marginalized communities globally. Kimberly has over 10 years of experience in diverse fields of healthcare including women's health, school health, public health, global health and has experience as a community activist domestically and globally. Her career trajectory shows her dedication to underserved communities began as a student nurse partnering with non-profit organizations and churches to provide free health screenings and education to her community. Kimberly’s commitment to the underserved extends into her professional career with her work in Federally Funded Health Clinics, scholarly writing and entrepreneur endeavors. As founder of Haven of Maternity Experience (HOME), LLC, Kimberly envisions a world with a safe haven for the maternity experience of all women. Her goal is to defend and protect the health rights of women and families globally.
Kimberly obtained a Bachelor’s in Nursing from William Paterson University, and a dual Masters in Science of Nursing as Women’s Health Nurse Practitioner and Certified Nurse Midwife from Rutgers University. She then obtained a masters certificate as teacher of health education and school nurse from Felician University. Finally, she completed two years of study at Rutgers University’s PhD in Urban Systems before she relocated to Los Angeles, California, and transferred to Pepperdine University’s PhD program in Global Leadership and Change, where she is completing her dissertation on the topic of maternal mortality racial disparities and alternative prenatal care strategies using a diversified and inclusive midwifery workforce, collectivism, global mind and cultural competence.
Timothy Frey, MD, MPH
Tim is an interventional radiologist working in Beverly, Massachusetts. He completed residency at the University of Massachusetts Medical School and fellowship at Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center. Prior to training in radiology he worked as an emergency physician, dividing his time between practicing emergency medicine in the United States and participating in global health projects in a several different countries. The projects ranged from village level primary care to construction of and measuring the impacts of water and sanitation systems. As a radiologist, he continues to work internationally through training of indigenous midwives and village health care workers in the use of ultrasound to improve prenatal care.
Tim holds a BS in Chemical Engineering from the State University of New York at Buffalo School of Engineering, and an MD from the SUNY/Buffalo School of Medicine and Biological Sciences. He also earned a Master of Public Health degree with a concentration in international health from the Harvard School of Public Health. He speaks Spanish and serves on the boards of Maya Midwifery International and Partners in International Development.
Kc Bly, CNM
KC Bly is a Certified Nurse Midwife with two decades supporting maternal healthcare initiatives around the world. He has worked and volunteered as a clinician, researcher, translator, and educator in underserved communities from California to Texas, Mexico, Guatemala, and Indonesia. KC was first introduced to Maya midwives of the rural Guatemalan highlands in 2010, as a volunteer on a project evaluating the relationship between poor air quality and birth outcomes. He earned his Bachelor's Degree in Women's Studies and Latin American & Latino Studies from University of California Santa Cruz and his Master's in Nursing from University of California San Francisco. He started his healthcare career as an EMT and worked as a nurse before becoming a CNM. He served as co-chair of the Gender Bias Task Force of the American College of Nurse Midwives' Ethics Committee. In the fall, he will be returning to school to study Public Health Management & Policy. He joined the MMI team in March 2020, assuming the roles of Midwife Mentor, Program Manager, and now Board Member.
