Global Staff:
Hermine Hayes-Klein, Founder Program Director, and Board Chair – Hermine Hayes-Klein is an American lawyer, mother, and founder of the international organization, Human Rights in Childbirth. Hermine has represented children as their attorney or guardian ad litem, litigated for LGBT rights, and mediated family disputes and divorce, among other things. Hermine lived in the Netherlands from 2007 – 2012, where both of her children were born at home with a Dutch midwife. She taught international law at the Hague University, and before moving back to the US, helped organize the first Human Rights in Childbirth conference in The Hague. Hermine’s practice now focuses on advocating for the legal and human rights of birthing women, including the defense of midwives and doctors who support women in non-mainstream birth choices.
Roanna Rosewood, Operations Director -Roanna never meant to become a birth advocate. She was a restaurateur and real estate entrepreneur who considered birth to be nothing but the unfortunate means to a baby. A glorious home birth after two cesareans converted her. Roanna contributes proven entrepreneurial success to the birth movement and inspires international grassroots activism through her award-winning speeches. Roanna’s book, Cut, Stapled, & Mended: When One Woman Reclaimed Her Body and Gave Birth on Her Own Terms After Cesarean (Confluence Press, 2013), shot to the top of the Amazon bestseller list, selling out of it’s first printing in six weeks. When she’s not in her café or traveling, you will find her and her kids at the barn playing with the horses.
Paola Hidalgo, Global Activism Director – Paola is a social anthropologist. Since 2010, has been working on childbirth-related projects from a feminist perspective in Europe and South America. She has also worked as a consultant for the United Nations Population Fund in the Ecuadorian Province of Manabi evaluating maternity wards from a patient-centered-care perspective (2011). She is currently a member of Belgian and Latin American grassroots organizations that focus on childbirth advocacy and women’s health (AlterNatives, Plateforme pour promouvoir la santé des femmes, Relacahupan-Ecuador). She is also a Human Rights and Secular Humanism worker in a Belgian organization.
Nicola Philbin, EU Legal Advocacy Director, Board Secretary and Acting Board Treasurer – Nicola Philbin qualified as an English solicitor in 1993, and worked as a telecommunications lawyer for fifteen years, first in the City of London and then as in-house counsel for companies in the UK and United Arab Emirates. After having her third child, she took a new path and trained first as a doula and then a childbirth educator, in the meantime moving to the Netherlands. She now works supporting international couples as they become parents through doula support and birth preparation courses, while also exploring the legal implementation and practical recognition of human rights by maternity systems around the world.
Amy Rae Zimmerman, Website Manager and World Map Coordinator – Amy received her B.S. in Anthropology in 2009 and worked her way through school as a computer support technician at Oregon State University (OSU). After discovering a passion for maternal-child health, she trained as a midwife for two and a half years (Bastyr University), as a peer reproductive health advocate (OSU), as a doula (DONA and BAI) and childbirth educator (ICEA) between 2007 and 2012. After leaving her midwifery program to take time off, she began working as a medical receptionist in a small medical clinic. In her free time, she looks for ways to merge her passions for technology & birth and dreams of creating low-cost (culturally competent, research based, totally awesome) electronic medical record (EMR) software program for birth professions. In the meantime, she enjoys playing with her cats, playing videogames, learning new things and is currently trying to teach herself computer programming.
Legal Advocacy Coordinators
Alessandra Battisti, Regional Legal Advocacy Coordinator (Western Europe) – Alessandra Battisti is an Italian Lawyer with expertise on both judicial and extrajudicial activities, mainly in the Civil Law context. Since 2005, she has been extensively lecturing Italian and International Senior Officers, at various Defense Institutions, on a wide range of topics including negotiation techniques and leadership, governance and democracy, consensus building and team working. She collaborates with the Political Sciences Faculty at the University “Roma TRE” in the field of Public and Constitutional Law, carrying out classes and research activities. In the past, she advised as juridical consultant, the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the field of Cooperation and Development, managing relations with several international financial institutions including the B.afD. (African Development Bank) and the World Bank.
When she gave birth to her child, she was subjected to unnecessary interventions and suffered a severe violation of Constitutional and Human Rights. The event made her aware about the need to advocate women rights in childbirth. Alessandra is very committed to promoting and defending Human Rights in Childbirth, devoting most of her time to raising awareness amongst key Italian private and institutional stakeholders.
Elena Ateva, Regional Legal Advocacy Coordinator (Eastern Europe) – Elena is an American lawyer with deep understanding of violence against women issues and the role of patriarchal structures in perpetuating violence. She is the co-founder of Rodilnitza, a Bulgarian non-profit organization that has advocated for women’s rights in childbirth since 2009. Campaigns Elena has worked on include the right to informed consent, the right not to be separated from your baby, and the right to privacy and respect during childbirth. Elena is a passionate advocate for the human rights approach to the provision of maternity services. She has experience with U.S. and international women’s rights organizations and the United Nations system.
Elizabeth Prochaska, Regional Legal Advocacy Coordinator (United Kingdom) – Elizabeth is a London-based barrister specializing in human rights law. She founded Birthrights in 2013 to promote human rights in UK maternity care and has since advised hundreds of women and health professionals about dignity and choice during childbirth. Elizabeth writes and lectures worldwide on maternal rights and will be coordinating HRiC’s advocacy in the UK.
Indra Lusero, Regional Legal Advocacy Coordinator (United States) – Indra has been a teacher, a performance artist, a doula, a wall-paper hanger, a non-profit manager, and a counselor at law (among other things). This interdisciplinary approach is part of what makes Indra a Social Midwife: a term coined by Civil Rights leader and longtime Denver, Colorado activist Vincent Harding to describe people who help give birth to a new way. This term captures the way Indra works, whether it is as a volunteer helping to give birth to a new organization, or as a doula supporting a family through labor: Indra listens deeply and assumes that the organism in question knows what it needs. Indra’s interdisciplinary toolbag includes a B.A. in Creative Writing, an M.A. in Theatre, and most recently a law degree. Indra is published in various places including the William and Mary Journal of Women and the Law, The Journal of Democracy and Education, Educational Insights, and Revolutionary Voices: A Multicultural Queer Youth Anthology. As a genderqueer parent with a diverse family of people from all over the world, Indra is committed to building “a world in which all worlds fit.”
Priscila Cavalcanti, Regional Legal Advocacy Coordinator (Latin America) – Priscila graduated in Law School at Universidade de São Paulo, in 1992. She primarily worked with administrative law litigation regarding taxes. In addition, she has drafted, edited and negotiated terms of agreements for all transaction and business types. Having given birth to two kids in a hospital natural birth, she had contact with non-justifiable C-sections and obstetric violence issues in Brazil. Starting in 2007, Priscila worked as a doula for six years. In 2012, she started Priscila Cavalcanti e Advogados Associados law firm, in order to attend women who were obstetric violence victims. She is a Masters degree program student, at Faculdade de Saúde Pública – USP, studying Brazilian Law regarding birth matters, and why health care professionals ignore human rights in childbirth.
Bashi Kumar Hazard, Regional Legal Advocacy Coordinator (New Zealand & Australia) – Bashi Hazard is an Australian lawyer and the principal of B W Law, a legal practice established to support and assist women and children, and the Legal Director of the ANZ arm of the Human Rights in Childbirth (HRiC) International Lawyers Network. Bashi’s background is in competition and consumer law, and litigation, developed while working for several years with Allens in Sydney, immediately after graduating with first class honours in Law and Economics from the University of Sydney. Under her maiden surname “Kumar”, Bashi has written and spoken on issues relating to competition and trade practices law, legal professional privilege, and the ethics of free speech and philosophy of law. Bashi’s focus in law expanded soon after she had her first child. From her own experiences, Bashi became aware of the widespread impact of current obstetric models of care on the emotional health and wellbeing of mothers. That awareness took her back to working with fundamental ethical principles and human rights law, and forming networks with human rights lawyers in the USA, Netherlands, UK and Europe, with whom she now works closely to develop a legal discourse about the human rights of women in pregnancy and childbirth. Since then, Bashi has presented papers and keynote speeches at the following conferences:
- March 2012, “Why does it matter where and how women give birth?” Place of Birth Conference (Keynote Speech), University of Westmead, Sydney;
- August 2012, Childbirth and the Law Forum (Panel Speaker), Homebirth Australia, Sydney;
- March 2013, Human Rights and Childbirth: Dignity, Respect & Responsibility (Panel Speaker), La Trobe University, Melbourne;
- June 2013, “Human Rights in Childbirth: The Future is Now”, 5th Annual Obstetric Malpractice Conference (Presenter), IIR Healthcare Conferences, Melbourne;
- March 2014, “Human Rights and Legal Perspectives on Maternity Care for the Future”, Remembering the Past and Creating the Future for Maternity Care: 25 Years since the Shearman Report (Presenter), University of Technology Sydney & NSW Kids and Families, Sydney.
When she is not working for someone else, Bashi is raising 3 young children, teaching ethics and building an ecologically sustainable house.