Nikki Lee has been a passionate advocate for the mother-infant relationship since the birth of her first daughter in 1975. This
passion was re-dedicated in 1990 with the birth of her second daughter. Her career encompasses teaching, clinical practice,
writing, public speaking, and research.
Nikki’s clinical practice includes work as a childbirth educator, a craniosacral therapy practitioner, an infant massage instructor, a lactation consultant, and a registered nurse. Her personal joy and renewal comes from playing music (back-up guitar in Cajun, Irish and Old-time styles, and bodhran), figure skating (currently working on silver moves in the field),
dancing, hiking, and spiritual growth.
Susan W. Hatcher, RN, BSN, IBCLC, has been a women’s health nurse for nearly twenty years, and an Internationally Board Certified Lactation Consultant since 1992. She has worked in both inpatient and outpatient settings, supporting normal newborns and high risk premature infants. For fifteen years, Susan developed and managed an inpatient and outpatient comprehensive lactation program for a major health system. She is now in private practice and owner of HealthSource for Women where she focuses on infant oral-motor issues, general feeding difficulties, and maternal problems. Susan also has a passion for professional education and has organized a major lactation conference on the East Coast for the last fifteen years.
Micky Jones, BS, CLD, CD(DONA), HCHI, IBCLC, DFB Micky’s career began when she graduated with honors from Middle Tennessee State University with a degree in Consumer and Family Sciences, with emphasis in Child Development and Family Studies. She is a retired La Leche League Leader, Hypnobabies® Childbirth Hypnosis Instructor, Certified Labor Doula with DONA International and CAPPA, Hypnobabies® Certified Hypno-Doula, International Board Certified Lactation Consultant, Dancing For Birth Certified Instructor, DONA Approved Birth Doula Trainer, and perhaps most qualifying, the mother of three young children.
Melissa Clark Vickers, mother of two grown children, is a writer, International Board Certified Lactation Consultant, and longtime La Leche League Leader. She taught high school biology until the birth of her son Dan in 1983. When her second child, Merrilee, was a year old and not sleeping through the night, in desperation Melissa attended her first LLL meeting in Marietta, Georgia, where she found not only support for breastfeeding, but also for a parenting style that resonated with her
Marian Leonard Tompson is best known as one of the Founders of La Leche League International, serving as its President for 24 years. Wife of the late Clement (Tom) Tompson, she is the mother of seven, grandmother of seventeen and great
Maureen Groer is a family nurse practitioner and has a PhD in human physiology. Her work has focused on understanding stress and health in women and infants through the lens of psychoneuroimmunology. She currently runs a large and productive Biobehavioral laboratory at the University of South Florida, College of Nursing in Tampa, Florida, where she holds the Gordon Keller Endowed professorship. She has written three textbooks in Pathophysiology, and has authored over 50 research papers in refereed journals. Dr. Groer has been funded by the National Institutes of Health since 2001 to study the influence of lactation on postpartum stress and immunity. Dr. Groer teaches pathophysiology and philosophy of science to graduate students and breastfeeding to undergraduate students.
Dr. Gail S. Hertz, M.D., IBCLC, FAAP, is a general pediatrician. She attended Penn State College of Medicine, graduating in 1997, and did her residency at Penn State Children’s Hospital in Hershey, PA. She has been an Internationally Board Certified Lactation Consultant since 1998.
Dr. Golder N. Wilson is a pediatrician and medical geneticist who began with interests in research, combining his medical degree with a PhD in biochemistry and collaborating with his mentor Roy Schmickel to publish the first cloning of human DNA in 1978. His participation in weekly pediatric genetic clinics stimulated a switch from laboratory work to scholarship on children with malformation syndromes and birth defects. He was given new focus when he worked with mothers of
Dr. Jack Newman graduated from the University of Toronto medical school in 1970, interning at Vancouver General Hospital. He did his training in pediatrics in Quebec City and at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto from 1977-1981. He became a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians of Canada as well as Board Certified by the AAP in 1981. He has worked as a physician in Central America, New Zealand, and South Africa. He founded the first hospital based breastfeeding clinic in Canada in 1984. He has been a consultant for UNICEF for the Baby Friendly Hospital Initiative, evaluating the first Baby Friendly Hospitals in Gabon, the Ivory Coast, and Canada.
Teresa Pitman is the mother of four children, all breastfed, and the grandmother of two grandchildren, also breastfed. She has been a La Leche League Leader for 28 years and is currently the Executive Director of La Leche League Canada. She is also a certified childbirth educator and doula. She writes for a number of parenting magazines and is the author or co-author of a dozen books on parenting topics, as well as a frequent speaker at parenting, birth, and breastfeeding conferences. Teresa lives in Guelph, Ontario, Canada.
