“My passion for helping women and families has been in my heart for as long as I can remember. My first love for breastfeeding came into play when I was nine years old and saw my cousin being breastfed. From that moment on I knew exactly what it meant to be a woman and I wanted to be nothing less. My dream is to help other women realize this as early as possible in their lives.
theVillage has been growing inside me for almost five years. This baby was definitely overdue. I have asked a number of women in the past five years what helped them most or what did they need in order to have a successful breastfeeding experience. I have taken what they have told me and given birth to theVillage – Where BREASTFEEDING is the norm . . . after all it is TheirBirthRight. So welcome to our Village … come in, sit a spell, breastfeed your infant, toddler or pre-schooler in the comfort of our loving support.”
Kimberley has a Master’s Degree in Human Development from Pacific Oaks College, Pasadena, California that encompassed an independent study specialty in human lactation. She has devoted well over 2000 hours to consultations with pregnant women as well as lactating mothers with newborns and older babies. She has experience in the public health sector of breastfeeding; social and nutritional issues as well as techniques; basic techniques of suck training and anatomical/physiological impairment; lactation challenges for healthy infants and infant dysfunction; and maternal lactation challenges such as milk production and maternal illness.
Kimberley was employed with the County of Riverside’s WIC (Women, Infants and Children) Program as a health and lactation educator where she facilitated nutrition education and pregnancy and breastfeeding workshops at ten of the County’s 15 WIC clinics. Upon completion of a Doula’s of North America (DONA) approved Doula training course, Kimberley served as a Doula (labor/delivery and postpartum care) for 15 mothers in a 15 month period. During this time, she also completed research for her master’s thesis conducting 28 in-depth interviews with mothers who were currently breastfeeding or previously breastfed. This culminated in July 2003 when Kimberley’s thesis was published entitled, “Reuniting the Culture of Breastfeeding and the African American Culture”.
Kimberley is a facilitator for the March of Dimes. She has planned, organized and facilitated the March of Dimes “Pregnancy Workshops” with underprivileged teen mothers. She also interned at three outpatient breastfeeding clinics in San Bernardino County. Coming to the end of her tenure in San Bernardino County, Kimberley agreed to fill a temporary position in maternal-child health as a lactation educator at Community Hospital of San Bernardino (labor/delivery and postpartum). Kimberley instructed these mothers in breastfeeding, some of whom had no prenatal care and no breastfeeding information disseminated to them before the birth of their child. Kimberley has been assigned SW Regional Director for the African American Breastfeeding Alliance, Inc. Prior to returning to school to pursue her Master’s Degree, Kimberley devoted over ten years in business operations, human resources, and marketing, supervising employees and administering programs with two non-profit organizations.
