Hayley Bowman

Project DIRECTOR

Hayley is the incoming Project Director of the Pacifica Family Fund as of March 7, 2022. She is inspired by supportive midwifery care after attending her nephew's birth at Pacifica Family Maternity Center. Hayley's background is in dance/arts non-profit organizations specializing in events, administration, outreach, and teaching. She looks forward to using her versatile skills to further the PFF mission and sustainability.

Jhumpa Bhattacharya 

Jhumpa is the Director of Racial Equity and Strategy at the Insight Center for Community Economic Development. In this role, Jhumpa is a key contributor to the thought leadership of the Insight Center, provides cross-program content support and strategic guidance, and leads the overall strategy of Insight’s racial equity work. Grounded with a deep equity lens, Jhumpa's expertise includes developing equity-based practices, polices and frameworks; conducting equity-based assessments; forging strategic partnerships and collaborations; conducting best practice research; organizational and staff capacity building; incorporating student and community voice into policy and programming; and facilitating complex dialogues on race, culture, and immigration.

A former Director and Senior Program Manager at California Tomorrow, Jhumpa has provided her leadership, racial justice lens, and analytical thinking on various national research and capacity building projects focused on creating systems that address and meet the needs of low-income communities of color and English Learner and immigrant students. For over 17 years her work has included providing professional development and coaching to practitioners and organizations, working directly with youth and community leaders, advocating for and creating policy and system changes, and identifying and highlighting promising practices for communities of color.

MOLLY BRANNIGAN, MA, IBCLC

Molly is a Board-Certified Lactation Consultant in Oakland, a founding partner of East Bay Lactation Associates, and a Childbirth Educator at Loving Arms Childbirth Services. She has been providing non-judgmental care to expectant families, new parents and babies since 2004. She is the mother of three children born at home. She believes that an empowered birth is the beginning of empowered parenting. She is passionate about connecting more parents to the power of respectful birth care.

Samsarah Morgan

Dr. Morgan is an Interfaith Minister and Counselor, Apprentice Midwife, Family Life Coach, Birth and Postpartum Doula and Hypnotherapist. She is the founder and director of Nia Center for birth and family life. She is a birth and postpartum caregiver and childbirth and parenting educator, and is this year will celebrating 36 years as a birth worker and trainer. Her private practice has offered counseling and healing sessions as well as workshops, seminars and retreats for individuals, couples, and families since 1991 with a focus on compassionate care as well as an inner focus and healing of internalized oppression and racism.  Samsarah is the founding director of the Oakland Better Birth Foundation, facilitating the training of birth workers of color, especially traditionally trained midwives and doulas. She is a contributing writer for several on line magazines and is member of the board for the Sacred Birth Angels Foundation, and the founder of The Decolonize (Occupy) Pregnancy Birth and Parenting Caucus of Occupy Oakland. 

MARISSA BOWMAN

Marissa Bowman first walked into to Pacifica Family Maternity Center in 2018, where she had a beautiful birth to her firstborn, Atlas. Her background is in consulting, strategic planning and goal setting and technical project management.  She is a Customer Success Manager in Salesforce, paving the path for more underrepresented talent to join and grow in the company. She is an active leader of the Melrose Community in her East Oakland neighborhood. She is passionate about activating the Pacifica alum families to help bring more diversity to the families the Pacifica Family Fund serves. 

Shelley Hawkins

Shelley is a Bay Area native, mother, story weaver and published writer. With a background in English and Urban food systems coupled with budding doula work, she is committed to uplifting the narratives of Black birthing people and supporting them through prenatal and postpartum nutrition.

Shelley dreams of a world with a deeper connection to words as a tool of healing and community building by way of digital social media. They also work with Pacifica Family Maternity Center as the center’s social media administrator.

Lupita Medrano

Lupita N. Medrano - Hernandez is an East Oakland native, an aspiring physician & professor, and a new mom. She graduated from the University of California Santa Cruz, obtaining a Bachelor of Arts degree in Feminist Studies with a concentration in Science, Technology and Medicine. Last year, before giving birth to her son at Pacifica in May of 2022, she was completing her first year of medical school.

Lupita identifies as a hood scholar, an agent of change, a community health leader, and an advocate. She has worked a multitude of community heath focused roles which include scribing at a CHC, medial assisting at a detention facility, sexual assault crisis counseling, skills lab instructing, doula support, health educating and program coordinating for a youth internship that catered to first generation students of color interested in medicine. In the future, Lupita sees herself working at a FQHC, a public hospital, a federal prison, or a juvenile detention center to help medically care for some of the community’s most vulnerable populations. Her overall goals include serving disadvantaged communities through health practice and health education, advocating for equitable access to care, promoting the diversification of the medical field, as well as supporting the success & wellness of youth in the Bay Area. Her special interests include mentoring, youth development, education, and community engagement.

Andrea clinton

Andrea is a California native and has both an educational background and 10 year career in Marketing and Sales. Andrea has worked to support BLM efforts on multiple fronts, within local churches, the tech industry and through online outlets. She is passionate about driving awareness and increasing access to affordable and safe birthing options within marginalized communities. She holds the belief that the starting place of creating an equitable world starts at birth.

Board Consultant

SIRINA KEESARA

Sirina Keesara grew up in California, attended UC Berkeley, where she earned a Bachelors of Arts  in Anthropology, and then continued her education at UC San Francisco where she completed medical school. During her career she has worked at a Kenyan birth center, Jacaranda Health, where she developed their contraception services.  After returning from Kenya she completed her Obstetrics and Gynecology training at University of Chicago. Now, she is excited to return to the Bay Area to work in the birth world in the East Bay.  Sirina is a non-voting consultant for the Pacifica Family Fund Board of Directors.