Molly Pessl
Molly is a registered nurse, childbirth educator and IBCLC. She has spent most of her 60+ year nursing career with a focus on family-centered maternity care. After 5 years as a health educator, clinician and lactation consultant for a hospital midwifery service, Molly moved to Evergreen Hospital Medical Center in Kirkland, Washington, a suburb of Seattle. During her years there, Molly developed comprehensive parent and professional education programs, a regional breastfeeding center, a postpartum follow-up clinic and Baby-Parent Groups. These programs led to the first US designation of “Baby Friendly” by UNICEF and the World Health Organization. Molly served on the US Breastfeeding Committee and the International Board of Lactation Consultant Examiners and is a past president of that board. Molly is currently the owner/director of Evergreen Perinatal Education, a consulting and education program for health professionals.
Helen Ball
Helen Ball is professor of anthropology and director of the Infancy & Sleep Centre (DISC) at Durham University. She founded Basis, the Baby Sleep Information Source in 2012 as an outreach project of DISC, and was awarded the Queen’s Anniversary Prize for Further & Higher Education in 2018. Her research examines the sleep ecology of infants and their parents including attitudes and practices regarding infant sleep, behavioural and physiological interactions of infants and their parents during sleep, infant sleep development, and the discordance between cultural and biological sleep needs. She conducts research in hospitals, the community, and her lab, and she contributes to national and international policy and practice guidelines on infant care. She is a board member of the International Society for the Study and Prevention of Infant Deaths (ISPID), chair of the Scientific Committee for the Lullaby Trust, and qualifications board member for Unicef UK Baby Friendly Initiative, and associate editor for the journal, Sleep Health.
Julie Stufkens
Julie has worked in dietetics for over 30 years, and was awarded a Medal of the New Zealand Order of Merit in 2009 for her services in New Zealand to dietetics and Paediatric nutrition.
She is the New Zealand Breastfeeding Authority’s (NZBA) Executive Officer and has overseen the development of the World Health Organization/UNICEF Baby Friendly Initiatives in New Zealand since it began in 1999.
Julie represents New Zealand at the International BFHI Coordinators for Industrialized Countries meeting and is the International Coordinator for their BFHI Country Network.
Rachel McDonald
Rachel qualified as a Barrister and Solicitor in the ACT in 1995. After 5 years of practice as a litigation lawyer with the Commonwealth Government, Rachel had her first baby and joined the Australian Breastfeeding Association. Rachel qualified as a Breastfeeding Counsellor in 2003. The legal issues of breastfeeding have interested Rachel since she became a breastfeeding mother, particularly the issues of breastfeeding in public, breastfeeding at work, family law and the regulation of the marketing of artificial breastmilk substitutes. Rachel’s PhD concerns the regulation and legislation of issues concerning breastfeeding. Rachel aims to publish a book addressing these issues.