Midwives in Focus

Dr. Baloyi is a member of faculty and senior lecturer at the School of Nursing and Public Health at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in Durban, South Africa. She is also a registered nurse educator, advanced midwife, and neonatal nurse specialist. She is an active member of Sigma Theta Tau. As a Nurse Scholar, Olivia has been teaching midwifery courses for 16 years and is a qualitative researcher whose work has focused on improving maternal and infant health outcomes by enhancing higher order critical thinking skills among midwives and strengthening midwifery education and practice in South Africa. Her work in midwifery has been published locally and internationally. Olivia contributed to a World Health Organization (WHO) book chapter on a WHO Afro region activity, with information from this work included in the WHO’s 2020 State of the World’s Nursing Report. In 2022, Olivia participated Visiting Scholar Award Program for Global Partners at Duke University where she received training in data science, which included quantitative methods, implementation science, quality improvement, and artificial intelligence applications for nursing science.

Lisa has worked in healthcare in both the private and public spheres and in higher education for over 20 years. She has been a national director at Health Education England since 2012, leading a transformation in nurse education across the country and introducing the first new nurse role for a generation.

Lisa is currently an Advisor at a WHO Collaborating Centre. Her international experience includes work in West Bengal developing a global learner programme and a strategic leadership programme at Yale.

Professor Grace Edwards is a Professor of Midwifery Education and Practice.

In 1974 I commenced my nurse training and quickly realised that my heart lay in midwifery. I qualified as a midwife in 1978 working as a hospital midwife and a community midwife for 12 years during which time I completed the Advanced Diploma of Midwifery and the Certificate in Education. I took up post as a midwife teacher in 1988 and completed a Masters in Education. In 1993 I was appointed Regional Co-ordinator for CESDI (the Confidential Enquiry into Stillbirths and Deaths in Infancy), a post I held until 2002. During this time, I completed a PhD on Peoples Perceptions of Healthy Pregnancy. In 2002 I was employed as one of the first Consultant Midwives in the UK, specialising in Public Health in Liverpool UK working around all aspects of deprivation and inequalities that affect pregnant women and their families and accepted a joint appointment as Principal Lecturer in midwifery research at the University of Central Lancashire (UCLan) UK. In 2005 I was appointed as national midwifery assessor for the Confidential Enquiry into Maternal and Child Health for maternal mortality. I was recruited to work in the UAE in 2008, firstly as the Midwifery Research and Development Specialist at Al Wasl Hospital (now Latifa Hospital) in Dubai and in January 2011 as Assistant Director of Nursing and Midwifery with responsibility for leading the first 18-month midwifery education programme and coordinating research trials at the Corniche hospital in Abu Dhabi. In 2016 I was appointed to my present post as the Aga Khan University Foundation Professor of Midwifery to lead on midwifery education and practice for AKU in East Africa and in 2017, I was awarded an Honorary post as Professor of Midwifery at Salford University UK. I was also inducted as a fellow of the Royal College of Midwives and a senior fellow of Advance HE, the Higher Education Academy in the UK.

I am a PhD student and Project Midwife in Facemums, an innovative and unique social media service funded by Health Education England and delivered via the University of Salford. My expertise is centred in collaboration and communication in social media, and the benefits of utilising digital platforms to communicate and inform service users and professionals. I drive the operation of the Facemums service which is currently provided within 13 NHS Trusts in England. I train and support the NHS Midwives who provide care via small groups throughout the pregnancy continuum and in addition to their routine care. Furthermore, I am undertaking PhD research to explore the experience of the Midwives who are providing care within Facemums.

Within my Midwifery care I have worked within Birth Centre and Community settings, most recently as a Community Midwife in Warrington and Halton Hospitals NHS Trust. I am a Midwifery Adviser to the charity Mummy's Star for women and their families who experience cancer in pregnancy and up to 12 months later.

Previously I founded and Chaired the University of Salford Midwifery Society. I remain a passionate promoter of Midwifery Societies and the benefit of student-led events in empowering future Midwives and colloborations between future Midwifery Leaders.

Mariama is the Director of Nursing and Midwifery for the Women and Newborn Division Alkhor Hospital, Hamad Medical Corporation – Qatar. She has 20+ years of nursing and midwifery experience and demonstrated history of working in West Africa, the United Kingdom and now the Middle East in varying capacities.

Mariama is currently working in an obstetric-led environment, where she has established the first midwifery-led Vaginal Birth after Cesarean section Clinic (VBAC). She leads group antenatal education sessions for women and works in collaboration with other senior midwives to develop midwifery-led initiatives and projects in Qatar.

As one of the few senior midwives employed to develop a midwifery-led model of care, Mariama is passionate about global interactions and partnerships that will create a legacy and make a real word difference in midwifery and women’s general health.

Sanele Lukhele is a Lecturer in the Nursing Department at the University of Johannesburg. She holds a Masters degree in Midwifery and Neonatal Nursing Science. Her areas of interest are maternal and neonatal health as well as indigenous knowledge systems. So passionate is she about nursing scholarship that she co-founded the South African Nursing Students Association (SANSA).
This is a non-profit organisation aimed at uniting nursing students across the country in order to improve the image of nursing. In 2017, the international community recognised her, as she was invited to be Africa’s sole representative in the Sigma Nursing Next Generation Leaders eight-member task force. In 2018, Sanele made it on to the Mail and Guardian 200 Young South Africans list, an honour that she has dedicated to all nurses who have made it their mandate to restore the image of nursing in South Africa. In 2019, she was awarded the Gauteng Premier’s Excellence Award in the health category. Her collaborative, people-centred nature has allowed her to building strong professional relationships throughout her career. As a testament to this, last year she was appointed as one of two nurses on the Rural Health Advocacy Project (RHAP) Health Reference Group. Sanele was honored to have been a finalist for the Brightest Young Minds 2021 Cohort. Sanele is a passionate midwife who always
advocates for midwifery-led care for all low-risk women. She has made it her mission to educate those within her reach about midwifery-led care.

Dr. McMillian-Bohler received a BSN from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, an MSN in Nurse-Midwifery from Vanderbilt University, and a Ph.D. in Nursing Education from Villanova University.
Her clinical background includes staffing in labor and delivery and working with women and families in full-scope nurse-midwifery practices in South Carolina, Tennessee, and Kentucky. Dr. McMillian-Bohler joined Duke University School of Nursing as an assistant professor in the Healthcare of Women and Children Division in 2017. Before joining Duke, Dr. McMillian-Bohler was on faculty at Spalding University in Louisville, Kentucky. She served as the lead maternal newborn educator in the pre-licensure programme and the Programme Director of the Bachelor of Science in Health Science Program. Her research explores masterful teaching concepts at all nursing education levels. Dr. McMillian-Bohler also explores teaching and evaluation strategies to promote health equity in nursing education. She is a Jonas Scholar Alumnus. She has been recognised for excellence in clinical work by Vanderbilt University and teaching by the American College of Nurse-Midwives, Kentucky African American Nurses Association Educator of the Year Award, and Duke University School of Nursing. She was the PI of a March of Dimes grant on Centering Pregnancy and is currently a Co-I on a Duke Endowment Grant for training doulas to care for black families in labor.

Harriet Nayiga is a Midwife, the founding director of Midwife-led Community Transformation(MILCOT), a community-based organization in Nansana Municipality that brings midwifery services out of labor wards and makes them closer to the community through preventive initiatives, focusing on the provision of sexual reproductive health and rights, vocational skills and psychological support to marginalised adolescents and young adults to prevent teenage and
unplanned pregnancies and sexually transmitted infections.

Dr Sally Pezaro is a Fellow of the Royal College of Midwives (FRCM), a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (SFHEA) and an editorial board member of the British Journal of Midwifery, Evidence Based Midwifery, MIDIRS and the International Journal of Childbirth. She is also a mentor of Mary Seacole Leadership Awardees and the Council of Deans of Health 150 Leaders, and a panellist on the Nursing and Midwifery Council’s fitness to practise Investigating Committee. Furthermore, Dr Pezaro is the lead midwife for www.hEDSTogether.com and an invited member of the Ehlers-Danlos Society's International Consortium.

Dr Pezaro has experience working as a midwife clinically in the United Kingdom, the Gambia and Ethiopia. Reflecting on her own experiences, Dr Pezaro ensures that her work now in research and academia remains challenge led. Dr Pezaro won a 'Midwives Award' from the Iolanthe Midwifery Trust in 2021. In 2019, Dr Pezaro was honoured with a first prize award from the Royal Society of Medicine in 'Leading and inspiring excellence in maternity care' and was also first runner-up for the British Journal of Midwifery's 'Midwife of the Year' 2019. The overriding vision for Dr Pezaro’s ongoing work is to secure psychologically safe professional journeys and excellence in health care.

Gila Zarbiv CNM, MSN is a senior certified nurse-midwife from Israel with a master's degree in women's health on the doctorate track. She is also the head midwife for infectious disease prevention for the labor and delivery ward.
Gila delivered the first COVID-19 positive birth in the country and since then has been the head midwife responsible for leading COVID-19 management, protocol, and implementation. She is published and active in critical research in the field of COVID-19, vaccines, pregnancy, the human microbiome, and birth. Gila has served as an invited lecturer on multiple occasions regarding pregnancy, childbirth, infectious disease, and COVID-19 around the world and is a teacher in nursing and midwifery schools around the country. She is the midwife representative for her hospital as well as the Leading Midwife for Media Affairs, and Midwifery Promotion in the Israeli Midwives Association. Gila is also the Association's International Liaison and represents the Israeli Midwife Association around the world as well as in the ICM. She is passionate about fighting for and promoting midwifery, women's health, and increasing midwives' scope of practice on a national and international level.