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 the exercise of autonomous decision-making about their care.
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.
Christy Tashjian, CPM, LM, APRN, WHNP, Global Activism Director – Christy has been a homebirth midwife in Austin, Texas for 15 years. She recently received her master’s degree as a nurse practitioner specializing in women’s health, which she is using to expand her midwifery practice to include a full range of natural health care for the people she works with. Christy has always sought to have an inclusive practice with informed choice and autonomy as guiding principles in her care. Joining the staff of Human Rights in Childbirth is a natural progression in midwifery and women’s health political activism for Christy. She has volunteered with several midwifery organizations over the years, most notably as the 2nd Vice President for the Midwives Alliance of North America and on the scientific program committee for the 31st International Confederation of Midwives Triennial Congress in Prague, Czech Republic. Christy has supported many people with VBAC after multiple cesareans, and is currently working to provide a more holistic model of fertility awareness and insemination for queer and straight couples. She lives with her two teenage children and her partner, Jenni Huntly, also a midwife, on their farmette where wrangling goats, making cheese, fermenting beverages, knitting blankets, and walking the dogs are a part of daily life.
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 a low-cost (culturally competent, research based, totally awesome) electronic medical record (EMR) software program for birth professionals. In the meantime, she enjoys playing with her cats, playing videogames, learning new things and is currently trying to teach herself computer programming.