Welcome to The Birth Mark

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The Birth Mark is a maternal health equity and safety initiative dedicated to protecting women, birthing people, and families across pregnancy, birth, and the often-overlooked postpartum period. Rooted in evidence, lived experience, and accountability, The Birth Mark exists to confront the systemic failures that contribute to Black maternal mortality, placing mothers—particularly Black and Brown women—at risk.

We focus on the moments when care breaks down.

Across the United States, too many preventable maternal harm incidents lead to injuries and deaths, yet warnings are missed, voices are ignored, and families are left to carry unanswered questions. The Birth Mark was created to bridge that gap—between what families witness and what systems record, between clinical knowledge and human experience, between policy and real lives.

Our work centers on three core pillars:

Maternal Safety & Accountability

We elevate maternal safety as a patient-rights issue. Through obstetric research, research-informed tools, education, and advocacy, we support earlier recognition of obstetric emergencies, clearer escalation pathways, and accountability when systems fail to respond.

Eyewitness & Family Voice

Families, partners, and support persons often witness maternal deterioration in real time—yet their observations are rarely treated as legitimate sources of knowledge. The Birth Mark centers these voices as critical data, honoring the role of witnessing as both truth-telling and prevention.

Education, Innovation & Systems Change

We develop and disseminate educational resources, training models, and innovative solutions that support clinicians, students, communities, and institutions in advancing equitable, trauma-informed maternity care. Our work bridges clinical practice, public health, ethics, and justice.

The Birth Mark is not symbolic. It is structural. It is actionable. It is rooted in the belief that no warning should go unheard, no harm unexplained, and no life lost without consequence.

Birth leaves a mark. So should the systems meant to protect it.

We believe maternal outcomes improve when systems listen, when evidence is paired with humanity, and when prevention begins long before a crisis.

The Birth Mark was established by a nurse scholar who has dedicated over two decades to understanding the complexities of maternal health equity—specifically where maternal care succeeds and where it quietly fails, particularly in the context of black maternal mortality. 

The founder’s journey is shaped by a career in high-risk obstetrics, nursing education, forensic nursing, and obstetric research, but it is defined by a deeper understanding: a sustained proximity to critical moments when warning signs were present, voices were raised, and healthcare systems did not respond in time to preventable maternal harm. 

This initiative did not start as a business idea; it began as a reckoning—a reckoning with how maternal harm is often only investigated after the outcomes become irreversible. A reckoning with how medical charts are treated as absolute truth while eyewitness accounts are dismissed as emotional. A reckoning with the expectation that families must advocate for themselves without being educated on how systems truly fail them. 

The Birth Mark exists because its founder comprehends both sides of the divide: the clinical logic of healthcare systems and the lived realities of those who witness harm unfold in real time. Her scholarship focuses on maternal safety, failure-to-rescue, testimonial injustice, and the ethical use of lived experience as data—not for assigning blame, but for the prevention of further harm. 

As a founder, her role is not to inspire from afar, but to create infrastructure where learning is accountable, witnessing is protected, and education is designed to interrupt harm before it becomes irreversible. 

The Birth Mark is not merely a personal brand; it is a substantial body of work. Its founding principle is straightforward and uncompromising: What we choose to notice, name, and learn from ultimately determines who lives—and who does not.