2024 AABC Election Results

AABC recently held elections for the AABC Board of Directors. The ballot included candidates for Director and Alternate Director. The election was close which is an indication of strong candidates all around.  The membership elected the following to serve:

Directors

Amy Goh, PhD, CNM - Amy (she/her) is a midwife at Cambridge Health Alliance and postdoctoral researcher at Yale University. For the past 12 years she has worked as a midwife in diverse settings, including at the Cambridge Birth Center where she had her two children. During her first term on the AABC Board of Directors, she became Co-Chair of the Diversity & Inclusion Committee where she helped to launch the Community Agreements and Inclusive Language Guidelines. She is also a member on the Research Committee and has a manuscript in review examining Asian birthing people outcomes from the AABC’s Perinatal Data Registry. She is Adjunct Faculty at Thomas Jefferson University’s Midwifery program. She was a former Health Equity Fellow through the Center for Health Equity Education and Advocacy and a previous Duke-Johnson and Johnson Nurse Leadership Fellow.

Previous to her midwifery career, Amy worked to improve and better understand the complexities of health and rights in global communities. After her stint as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Cape Verde, she completed her MPhil thesis in International Development on the socio-political aspects of maternal mortality in Brazil. Her subsequent international work gave her the opportunity to observe a midwife in Ethiopia assist her patient to safely birth her baby; after this experience, she knew she wanted to become a midwife. 

Carla Morrow, MSN, CNM -  Carla is a Certified Nurse-Midwife with over twenty-five years of experience providing care to women and their families. She earned her master's degree in nursing from Texas Christian University in 2004 and a post-master’s certificate as a women's health nurse practitioner from the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas in 2006. Recognizing her passion for attending women during labor and birth, she pursued midwifery and obtained her Doctor of Nursing Practice degree from Baylor University in 2010.

As a visionary entrepreneur, she founded the Fort Worth Birthing & Wellness Center in 2013 after successfully establishing hospital midwifery services in Cleburne, Dallas, Fort Worth, and Mansfield. Since its accreditation in 2014, the birth center has received numerous community awards, reflecting its commitment to excellence in care. She enjoys the business aspects of midwifery and designing sustainable practices that ensure long-term community impact. Additionally, she leads and chairs the Texas Sustainability Committee with the Coalition of Texas Birth Centers and serves on the Industry Relations Committee with AABC.

Carla has been married to her husband, Shawn, for 32 years and cherishes the time she gets to spend with her grandchildren. She also enjoys visiting her family farm in Rising Star, Texas.

Meghan Nowland, BS, LCPM, IBCLC - Meghan grew up as the fifth child in a family of fourteen and has always been around babies and loved them. In 2010 she caught her niece at her sister’s home birth in Virginia, which led her down the path of becoming a midwife. Meghan has a bachelor’s degree in midwifery from the Midwives College of Utah and moved to Cincinnati with a passion for improving Ohio’s maternity care. She regularly volunteers to teach community childbirth education classes and for the Kentucky Home Birth Coalition. She is a founder of Ohio’s chapter of the National Association of Certified Professional Midwives and Buckeye Birth Coalition.

Before moving to Ohio, Meghan lived in San Antonio, Texas for two years and worked at Birth Center Stone Oak and with home birth midwives Robin Rabenschlag, Julie Hatfield, and Janet Dirmeyer. She earned her CPM certification in 2014 and has been practicing as a home birth midwife ever since. In 2017, she became certified as an International Board-Certified Lactation Consultant. Most recently Meghan has been involved with legislative efforts to increase access to midwives and serving on the Kentucky Midwives Advisory Council, creating regulations for licensure of CPMs. In August 2020 she became the first Certified Professional Midwife to become licensed in the state of Kentucky!

Meghan founded Cincinnati Birth Center in 2019 because there were no licensed freestanding birth centers in Ohio. She believes her community needs more birth options and midwives need more sustainable employment opportunities. Meghan currently serves on the AABC Government Affairs Committee and on the AABC Board of Directors.

Tiffany Vassell, BA, BSN, RN - Tiffany is a dedicated advocate for maternal health and equity, currently serving as the Manager of Community Engagement and Communications at the Neighborhood Birth Center. With nearly a decade of experience as a labor and delivery nurse, she has also worked as a substance use nurse, assisting patients in their recovery in Boston. Tiffany is a passionate supporter of midwifery care, reproductive justice, bodily autonomy, and access to out-of-hospital birth options, particularly for Black and underserved communities.

She co-authored the award-winning book ‘Preparation for a Hospital Birth’, providing invaluable insights into hospital birthing experiences. Tiffany is the Vice President of the Bay State Birth Coalition's board and founded the Nurses for Black Maternal Health and Equity Organization to diversify the perinatal workforce. She actively contributes to the birth center community as a steering committee member for Mind the Gap and Birth Equity & Justice Massachusetts. Tiffany also serves as Co-Chair of the Harvard Catalyst Community Coalition for Equity in Research and as Chair of the Massachusetts DPH Public Health Data Warehouse Community Advisory Board, where she provides expert input on proposals and protocols.

Tiffany completed the Young American Leaders Program at Harvard Business School and is a member of the Sigma Theta Tau Nursing Honor Society for Leadership. Her book received the 2024 National Black Nurses Association award for exceptional literary work promoting maternal health equity. She has been recognized with the 2022 Image of the Professional Nurse award by the Massachusetts Nursing Association and was named one of the 2022 Ten Outstanding Young Leaders by the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce.

Alternate Director

Rebeckah Orton, BS, RN - Rebeckah is a biologist and registered nurse who founded, owns, and runs Astoria Birth Center & Family Medicine in Astoria, Oregon. She has served for two years on the board of directors for the Oregon Association of Birth Centers and for two years on the Industry Relations Committee of the AABC. Rebeckah has spearheaded various pieces of legislation and regulation regarding Oregon Medicaid doula payments as well as birth center reimbursement and has seen considerable successes related to those efforts. She has co-taught the Birth Center Sustainability workshop for the past year and has consulted and advised on numerous projects, large and small, relating mostly to equitable insurance recognition and contracting and enforcement of the Affordable Care Act.

Congratulations to these new and returning leaders. Their terms begin at the end of the AABC Birth Institute in November.