Michel Odent, MD
Obstetrician, midwife, teacher, author and international lecturer, Dr. Odent is a famous childbirth pioneer determined to bring the respect of birth back to women. His books including Birth Reborn, The Caesarean, The Farmer and the Obstetrician, Breastfeeding, and The Scientification of Love, have influenced doctors, midwives, and mothers around the world. Before our very eyes, he is helping birth to be reborn as a normal, natural, safe and confident part of life. He is founder of the Primal Health Research Center that explores health during the primal period (fetus through first year of life), with health in later life. Dr. Odent has been a long-standing member of the Birth Works ® International Board of Advisors. (Read More).

Bethany M. Hays, MD, FACOG
Dr. Hays is the co-founder and Medical Director of True North, a teacher and a lecturer. She has practiced obstetrics and gynecology, and now Functional Medicine, over a career lasting 32 years. In describing the focus of her career at present — she said: “I went into medicine to help people be healthier, but what I found in medicine was a system that was as sick as the people it was treating. Ultimately I realized that my calling was to heal the system as well as the patients. I have three areas that I feel are important enough to put my time, energy and monetary resources into. They are: 1) Creating a model for integrative care that treats illness upstream before it requires drugs and surgery, 2) Finding better ways to train physicians, and 3) Providing better end of life care, essentially, learning to die better.” She adds, “My interest in birthing has been rekindled by the birth of my grandson, whose mother did a brilliant job birthing him and continues to mother him from profound resources of love and self-confidence that fill me with awe and gratitude. Being at her labor and birth was the best thing I’ve done in years. My son didn’t do to badly either!” Her practice includes comprehensive women's health care, Functional Medicine, non-surgical gynecology, and mind-body medicine.

Mary Zwart, Midwife
Mary Zwart is an independent midwife from The Netherlands. She graduated from the Amsterdam Midwifery School in 1969. She received her nursing training at the Leiden Academic Hospital. After traveling, she practiced privately, in the Netherlands, from 1973 to 1996. She then became involved in changes in Eastern Europe and Russia. Since 2000 she has participated in a movement to humanize the birth process in Brazil. She is the founder of the European Perinatal School, as well as a member of the European Network of Consumers and Childbirth Educators and the Coalition for Improving Maternity Services. She is also a board member of Humpar the NGO to humanize birth in Portugal www.humpar.com and Eu Forum for Primary Care. Mary enjoys teaching midwifery internationally and recently began practicing again, in Portugal. She has one daughter, and she collects all kinds of midwifery objects.

Susan Ludington, PhD, CNM
Dr. Ludington is a nurse, midwife and the Walters Professor of Pediatric Nursing at Case Western Reserve University. Dr. Ludington began Kangaroo Care studies in 1988 and continues doing so today. She wrote the book Kangaroo Care: The Best You Can Do to Help Your Preterm Infant in 1993 and most recently she wrote the National Clinical Guidelines of the International Network of Kangaroo Mother Care with Preterm Infants for the United States. She is a founding member of the International Network of Kangaroo Mother Care and recently received the Excellence in Research Award from the National Association of Women’s Health, Obstetric and Neonatal Nurses for her kangaroo care studies.

Heloisa Lessa, CNM
Heloisa Lessa was born in São Paulo by caesarean. She is a mother of three children. Her first birth was a caesarean due to a breech presentation. The second birth was a normal birth in the hospital and the third birth was an unassisted birth at home. Heloisa is a nurse midwife and earned her masters in the field of homebirth in an urban area of Brazil. She is an autonomous midwife doing homebirth in Rio de Janeiro, a city with over six million people, and is the coordinator of ReHuNa, the national net for Humanizing of Birth in Brazil. She also works with indigenous tribes and traditional midwifes in the Amazon forest and is coordinating a randomized trial with the participation of Michel Odent and The Primal Health Research Center about nutrition in pregnancy. She is a very active midwife and has organized many large conferences about childbirth. The last conference in 2005 was attended by 2,136 persons from 15 countries.