Meet Cohort 5 Graduates

The Inaugural Detroit Cohort

Micia Eddins, MPH, IBCLC, BS, CD, CHW, CLS
 J.O.B. Lactation Foundation
Detroit, MI

 

Micia is the Founder and CEO of both the nonprofit and for-profit organizations, Joys of Breastfeeding Foundation. In this role, she is responsible for the foundation’s impact, purpose, program development, finances, grant writing, administration, and marketing. For nine years, Micia worked as a nutritionist and breastfeeding coordinator for one of the largest nonprofit organizations, WIC. She honors her long-term role at the Detroit Health Department and WIC, where she earned her Master’s degree in Public Health and became an International Board Certified Lactation Consultant. This experience has equipped her to successfully operate her own organization.

As a public health professional, Micia is deeply committed to empowering Black families in maternal and infant health. After earning her Master’s at Wayne State University, she became a devoted, full-spectrum certified doula. Micia continues to navigate ways to better support families both prenatally and postpartum during their most vulnerable moments. She took the initiative to enhance the maternal-infant space through advanced technology by completing the Start Studio Discovery program at Techtown Detroit.

Micia is a trailblazing innovator, a self-determined community advocate, leader, and motivator. She served as the co-chair for the Wayne County Metro Detroit Breastfeeding Coalition for three years. As an innovator, Micia completed a coding program where she learned design and business skills. She also completed the Minimal Viable Product program, where she developed her Virtual Reality Breastfeeding Simulator through the Oculus Headset.

Micia is a child of God who takes pride in being both a wife and a mother. 

Personal Mantra: Be anxious for nothing, Pray about everything.

Cynthia Jackson, LM, CPM
Sacred Rose Midwifery
Southfield, MI

Cynthia Jackson is a Licensed & Certified Professional Midwife at Sacred Rose Midwifery, specializing in homebirth midwifery care, providing prenatal care, labor & birth care, waterbirths, immediate postpartum care, and 6 weeks postpartum care. Cynthia has 20 years of experience as a birth worker and started out with doula training in 2005, childbirth educator training in 2010, and by 2011, she launched her own professional independent doula & childbirth education business, while also starting a rigorous midwifery apprenticeship.

A purpose-driven leader who knew her life’s purpose was to serve as a midwife, so she embraced the ancestral legacy of Black Granny Midwives and founded Sacred Rose Midwifery in 2016. Although the road to midwifery had its challenges, Cynthia triumphantly overcame the obstacles, and in 2019, she passed the national exam to become credentialed as a Certified Professional Midwife (CPM). And she also holds a Midwifery License in the state of Michigan.

Today, with experience in over 485 homebirths, Cynthia is a well-loved and respected midwife and is highly recommended in her community. Families love her because of her ability to think quickly and communicate effectively with humor and intelligence.

Cynthia is actively involved and influential in the birth & breastfeeding community. She has been sharing her knowledge and expertise as a co-trainer for BMBFA’s Community-based Doula Training and Breastfeeding Peer Counselor Training Programs, a Birth Assistant Trainer in collaboration with other community midwives, and as a guest lecturer at U of M and MSU.

Cynthia is a birth worker trailblazer, and her most exemplary work that she’s proud of besides midwifery is the development of her own Advanced Doula Training curriculum Launched in 2024 at BMBFA.

Cynthia is enjoying her 40s, living a purpose-driven life with a philosophy that centers around her passion for personal/professional development and community engagement. Professionally, she stands ten toes down to provide compassionate, informed, and culturally appropriate care for her clients.

Personal Mantra: I got this!!

Jayne Jackson, EOLD, ADS
Motor City Doula Association
Detroit, Michigan

Jayne Jackson is a highly experienced birth doula and doula trainer, bringing two decades of expertise to her role. She has dedicated herself to training over 150 Black birth workers through the Black Mothers' Breastfeeding Association (BMBFA), across 11 cohorts. Her work spans beyond traditional birth support as she also assists mothers through perinatal loss, offering crucial support during times of grief and pregnancy after loss. Jayne is a pivotal figure in the Motor City Doula Association (MCDA), where she serves as the board's secretary and leads two important programs. Her commitment to bridging gaps in perinatal care for families is evident through her comprehensive approach a s a full spectrum doula. Beyond her professional endeavors, Jayne is a proud mother of two and enjoys biking, crafting plant-based medicines, and indulging in car concerts. Her multifaceted role and extensive contributions to doula training, community support, and personal interests underscore her dedication and impact in the field of maternal and perinatal health.

Personal Mantra: “People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” -Maya Angelou

Rita Little, MS, CHES, CLC, CPST, CHW 
Corewell Health
Detroit, MI

Rita is a passionate, creative and driven leader that brings with her a colorful career in public health spanning back to her teenage years. Rita is passionate about improving systems and implementing programming to uplift the wellness of our communities. She does this by listening to and learning directly from those who are impacted by her work. Work done with the community and not simply for it. This model proved successful in implementation of a Produce Prescription program where there was a 60% completion rate among participants. She was also a part of implementing a mobile health initiative in Detroit’s Palmer Park, an area experiencing increased rates of HIV transmission and decreased access to care. Although Rita’s career has garnered experience in many different areas of public health, her deepest passion lies in maternal child health as highlighted in her breastfeeding work. She is an active Mommy Ambassador for Black Mothers Breastfeeding Association and holds an active certification as a lactation counselor. In her current role as a Community Health Program Manager at Corewell Health East, Rita has built and implemented two pillar programs for the Healthier Communities East department. Safe Cargo, a car seat safety initiative, includes training key community members as child passenger safety technicians and launching monthly car seat checks in partnership with George Matick Chevrolet, James Martin Chevrolet and other community partners. Created, implemented and manages Prescribe Life, a produce prescription program that launched in July 2023 serving over 200 participants since its inception. Rita has also been identified in her role as a subject matter expert on maternal and infant health with a focus on the Black community and the City of Detroit. As such, Rita has participated in many efforts internally and externally to support this vital work. Rita’s history of working with community partners and building relationships alongside community members is one of her absolute favorite parts of doing her work. Strong relationships foster an environment for collective work for the betterment of the community.  In addition to her role full time role at Corewell Health, Rita serves as part time faculty at Wayne State University helping to shape the mind of future public health leaders through an equity lens. All of these things are possible in part due to her academic accomplishments, receiving a Bachelor’s of Science from Saginaw Valley State University (2011) and a Masters of Science from Eastern Michigan University (2019). As much as she loves the work in public health and the classroom, her most important title is “Mommy” to her six-year-old son, Khari. Rita owes her resilience, drive and dedication to people to her beautiful mother Charlene Hall Little, who transitioned in January of 2023.

Personal Mantra: In the words of Issa Rae...."I'm rooting for everybody Black!"

Danae Ross, MSW, MA
University of Michigan
Detroit, MI

Danae Ross is a Ph.D. Candidate in Social Work and Sociology at the University of Michigan, a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health Policy Research Scholar, and a Birth and Breastfeeding Leadership Institute Detroit Black Maternal-Child Health Leader. Grounded in Black feminism(s), her research examines antiblack culture's influence on Black maternal-infant health outcomes and healthcare practices. Her work seeks to expand global perinatal and maternal mental health discourses by integrating antiblack racism and reproductive justice frameworks in order to honor the agency and autonomy of Black mothers in navigating structural racism in medicine and ultimately to advocate for transformative community health policies and practices. Using a conceptual framework rooted in fundamental cause, Black feminist, and antiblackness, and medical/cultural sociological theories, her work interrogates the lived experience of Black mothers and birthers across temporal boundaries using an array of methods including archival materials, case studies, interviews, focus groups, and self-reports. More specifically, her current work focuses on Black women’s experiences of antiblackness, medical mistrust, fugitivity, and self-diagnosis relative to postpartum mood and anxiety disorders (PMAD)--both contemporarily and historically. Thus, it attempts to integrate into and bolster the question of Black maternal mental health within the global Black maternal health discourse while also interrogating the lived experience of Black maternal fugitivity across temporal boundaries using an array of a mix of non- and experimental methods. Danae values collaboration not only interdisciplinarily, but also interprofessionally and cross-sectorally and has served on Black maternal-child health teams in clinical, research, advocacy, and evaluative capacities. Certified in various healing modalities, including as a registered yoga teacher and in the Shades of Blue Project in the I.N.S.P.I.R.E. Method (a model for utilizing compassionate care methods to serve Black mothers experiencing difficulty with postpartum adjustment), Danae has provided therapeutic support to families via in-patient psychoeducation on postpartum mood and anxiety disorder (PMAD), individual family support, and postpartum adjustment support group facilitation as a mental health and wellness practitioner.

Personal Mantra: "To rescue our children we will have to let them save us from the power we embody: we will have to trust the very difference that they forever personify." - June Jordan