Directors and Board​

Lucia Jenkins RN, IBCLC, RLC
Executive Director

Lucia has been an IBCLC for 30 years, prior to which she practiced for six years as a home-birth midwife. She works actively as a Lactation Consultant in the hospital with newborn mother-baby dyads, and trouble-shoots infant and older baby issues in her private consulting practice, North Shore Lactation, which has served the Greater Boston community for the past 17 years. She is a member of the Mass Breastfeeding Coalition and a voting member of the USBC. She is the originator and principal facilitator of both the first USA Baby Café, and the first WIC Baby Café. Lucia lectures at conferences and state coalitions about Baby Cafés, and the process of starting them. She delights in being the mother of five grown children who were all fully breastfed, and currently has ten grandchildren.

Katie Barnes, PhD
Clerk, Administrative Assistant

​Katie earned her doctorate in Chemistry from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2005. After experiencing difficulty nursing her first child, Katie sought out help from the Baby Café and went on to have a wonderful and very successful nursing relationship. Katie is now a full-time mom and lives in Massachusetts with her husband and three children.

Daniel Lieber
Board member

​Daniel is an experienced board member, entrepreneur, and technologist. He is the founder of Innovative Ideas Unlimited, Inc., a software company, and supports a variety of non-profit groups. His business acumen and detailed understanding of various industries are helpful in his role as a Baby Café USA board member. Mr. Lieber gladly devotes his time towards improving the community, including being elected to the local public school board. Daniel resides in Wakefield, Mass. with his wife, two daughters, and loving dog. Since seeing first-hand the benefits of timely professional lactation support for his wife with each daughter, he has become an advocate for educating people about this beautiful maternal capability and the need for local support.

Tom Jenkins
Treasurer

​Tom is retired from his former job as senior vice president and director of a consulting engineering firm, and now fills his time as volunteer treasurer for three non-profit organizations; Wakefield Food Pantry, At Home and Afar, and Baby Cafe USA. Tom lives with his wife of 40 years, Lucia, in Wakefield, MA and enjoys cooking, hiking with their dog, , working on never ending home maintenance and escaping to the Jenkins’ family compound in Fayette, Maine. He also tries to visit and spend time with his 5 children and 10 grandchildren, all within an hour from the family homestead.

James A. George, CPA, CVA, JD
Board Member

​Jim’s legal education culminated with a successful passing of the Massachusetts Bar Examination in February 2014. He is one of two individuals in Massachusetts holding active CPA, CVA and JD titles. He is an avid accountant with the edge of unparalleled legal knowledge, and is the proud father of three Baby Café graduates, two daughters and a son. He is legal and financial counsel for Baby Café USA.

Development Team

Douglas Craig Smith BA, MEE, MBA
​Data Analysis

Craig is retired from an 18 year career working for Verizon as a Data Analyst in their Business Intelligence Application Development division. He has experience particularly with Structured Query Language (SQL) and using Oracle, Microsoft Access & Excel to develop databases. He has been instrumental in building Baby Café USA’s databases for gathering and analyzing Café statistics. When he is not working for BCUSA he is following his passion for skiing (Colorado being a favorite), listening to music, or doing home maintenance in Cambridge, where he lives with his wife and 2 almost-fully- grown children.

Christine Staricka, BS, IBCLC, RLC, CCE
California Advanced Lactation Institute
​Social Media Manager

Christine is a hospital-based IBCLC and a certified childbirth educator, and has extensive experience in both inpatient and outpatient consultation. She has also been involved in the creation of the local chapter of USLCA. As a professional lactation educator, she has seen how a Baby Café location can meet the needs of the professional community as well by providing access to opportunities for clinical experience for IBCLC interns and prospects. Christine has assisted in giving BCUSA a voice and presence on social media platforms and helping train new Café staff, as well as creating her own lactation education blogs.

Sarah Gregory
BCBC Curriculum Coordinator

Sarah has formal education in Communication Management and a Specialty in Middle School Education and Reading. After starting her family, she changed directions to become certified as a Postpartum, Birth and Fertility Doula.  She has continued to add lactation education to her skills by completing the CLC training and embarking on IBCLC certification. She is passionate about all things involving supporting new parents and breastfeeding, and has extensive experience working with students. Sarah has enjoyed nursing her 2 daughters through many challenges and continues to nurse her currently 20 month old. She lives and works in Massachusetts.

Caroline Cohen
Baby Café Website Support

Caroline Cohen teamed up with Baby Café USA to develop and maintain our website. She has been an artist and designer her whole life, but she formally studied graphic design, art and digital photography at Tulane University in New Orleans. For the over 10 years, she has worked at her independent studio, CPDesigns as a graphic designer and web developer for businesses small and large, associations, non-profits and community organizations. She has been connected to Baby Café while receiving breastfeeding support. She lives in Massachusetts with her two wild boys and husband.

State Coordinators

North Carolina - State Coordinator Liaison
Lisa Miller, MA, IBCLC

Lisa is a hospital-based Lactation Consultant providing both in-patient and out-patient services in a rural community hospital that became Baby-Friendly in 2017. She obtained a BS in Nutrition and Dietetics and a Master’s of Arts in Applied Arts and Sciences from The University of North Carolina, and recently was accepted into the Doctorate Health sciences Program of Campbell University. Lisa facilitated the opening of the first Baby Café in North Carolina and now co-facilitates Baby Cafes 4 days per week in 3 separate communities. Lisa actively mentors aspiring IBCLCs and Baby Café Breastfeeding Counselors (BCBC). In addition to the direct care she provides mothers and babies, Lisa is actively engaged in research to better understand professional and community-based breastfeeding support. She is a member of ILCA, USLCA, NC Breastfeeding Coalition, and the NC Lactation Consultants Association. Lisa is the mother of 4 children, including twins, who were all breastfed.

New York
Stephanie Avienu, BS, IBCLC

​Stephanie Avienu currently facilitates 2 Baby Cafes in the Capital Region-one in Troy and one in Albany. She breastfed each of her four children for many years and is still nursing her youngest at 2 ½. Her passion for breastfeeding support work began after the birth of her oldest child in 2007, where she was blessed to live in an area with a long history of community-based breastfeeding support. She has seen the benefits of such a model first hand and so she knows how important groups like the Baby Café are for new and even experienced mothers. She holds a bachelor's degree in Maternal and Child Health: Lactation Consulting, a Master's Certificate in Health Education and Promotion, and has been an International Board Certified Lactation Consultant since 2016.

California
Christine Staricka, BS, IBCLC, RLC, CCE

Christine runs a very popular and successful Baby Café in Bakersfield, California, and also has a role as our Social Media Manager (listed above). She advocates for breastfeeding and for IBCLCs through paid employment, volunteer work, and personal involvement in community organizations.  As an IBCLC who came from a mother-to-mother support background and began her career in lactation as a lactation educator, Christine is passionate about increasing access to breastfeeding support groups. When she first read about the Baby Café model, she immediately realized that a Baby Café would fill many gaps in the breastfeeding environment of care in her community. 

Abby Malman, IBCLC, Birth Doula
Colorado

Abby is the manager of donor relations at Mothers' Milk Bank in Colorado. She is an International Board Certified Lactation Consultant (IBCLC) a birth doula, and was on the board for the Portland Doula Association for five years. Abby worked in her private practice, Bliss Lactation, serving families in the Portland area until moving back to Colorado in 2016.  She has been at Mothers' Milk Bank since 2016 and enjoys working with donors from all over the country helping to steward their generous donation of extra breastmilk to help give babies the best start in life. She lives in Denver with her husband, two sweet sons, and large extended family. Abby is humbled by the wisdom all mama's have, and hopes to provide more breastfeeding education and resources so more women can feel confident in their abilities to initiate breastfeeding and overcome breastfeeding hurdles. ​

Danielle Lugrand, CLC, CLE, DONA
Oklahoma

​Danielle is currently the director of the Coalition of Oklahoma Breastfeeding Advocates Baby Cafés. She has been serving Oklahoma families since 2000 as a DONA Certified Birth Doula. In 2007, she became the first DONA Certified Postpartum Doula in the state. She became a trained breastfeeding educator through the OK State WIC Program in 2001; a Certified Breastfeeding Educator (CBE) in 2014; and a Certified Lactation Counselor (CLC) through the Healthy Children’s Project in 2015. Through the Doula Association of Central Oklahoma, Danielle gained experience in serving both the public and peer professionals as Public Relations Chair, Secretary, Vice President, and President. She also served on the DONA International Certification committee for five years. She is a wife, mother of six, and grandmother of four. Danielle has a passion for serving growing families and increasing the number of Baby Cafés for Oklahoma mothers.

Portia L. Williams, RN, BSN, IBCLC
Louisiana

Portia is located in New Orleans, LA and has been an International Lactation Consultant since 2009 and works as a LC at a local hospital. She is a proud graduate  of the University of Lafayette, and has 13 years of Maternal Child experience. Her personal experience as a NICU mom guides her love for supporting breastfeeding parents. She is currently the CHAMPS Greater New Orleans Community and Hospital Consultant, and the CHAMPS NOLA Baby Café Facilitator. She also worked closely with Greater New Orleans Breastfeeding Awareness Coalition where she initiated a “Breastfeeding Friendly” Child Care Center program. Her career goal is to increase the number of minority Lactation Consultant and increase breastfeeding rates by empowering mom with love, support, and education by providing culturally relevant care. Portia is the proud mom of two healthy breastfed boys, whom she tandem nursed until the age of 3.5 years.

Tawanda Logan-Hurt, BSW, CLC
Mississippi

Tawanda is a native of Greenwood, Mississippi. She has worked in the Mississippi Delta as a Northern Region Breastfeeding Coordinator at the Mississippi State Department of Health (MSDH) since June 2005. She is the CHEER/CHAMPS Mississippi Delta Community and Hospitals Consultant.  In April 2016, she established the first Baby Café in Mississippi, the CHAMPS Delta Hills Baby Café, which she facilitates with her staff. She was the 2016 recipient of the Mississippi Public Health Association (MPHA) Conference’s TaWanda Ferrill Breastfeeding Award. She also established the Delta Breastfeeding Coalition in January 2018 in partnership with the Delta Health Alliance program manager. She is an active church member, wife, biological mother of six children, five of which were breastfed.

Benita Samuel BSN, RN, MHA, MSW
Massachusetts

​Benita resides north of Boston and is a stay-at-home mother of three young children; all have been or are currently breastfed. Benita has worked as an RN in hospital as well as community-based settings and completed social work practicums in Early Intervention and outpatient maternity services. Benita's passion for maternity work began at a young age when she observed her own mother's teaching of birth processes to villagers in India with a handmade shoebox "womb" and stuffed fabric baby doll. The positive and challenging experiences from the births of her own children, one of whom was a planned home-birth, increased her understanding of the support needed by all parents of growing families. Benita continues to assist families with concerns related to prenatal, labor and delivery, postpartum, breastfeeding, mental, emotional, nutritional, and physical wellness. She enjoys traveling, daydreaming, a good book, experimenting with cooking and baking, connecting with friends worldwide, and creating sunny memories with her family.

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Stephanie Avienu BS, IBCLC
​New York

Stephanie currently facilitates 3 Baby Cafes in the Capital Region-one in Troy and one in Albany. She breastfed each of her four children for many years and is still nursing her youngest at 2 ½. Her passion for breastfeeding support work began after the birth of her oldest child in 2007, where she was blessed to live in an area with a long history of community-based breastfeeding support. She has seen the benefits of such a model first hand and so she knows how important groups like the Baby Café are for new and even experienced mothers. She holds a bachelor's degree in Maternal and Child Health: Lactation Consulting, a Master's Certificate in Health Education and Promotion, and has been an International Board Certified Lactation Consultant since 2016. 

Advisory Group

Danielle Lugrand, CLC, CLE, DONA
Community Outreach

​Danielle is currently the director of the Coalition of Oklahoma Breastfeeding Advocates Baby Cafés. She has been serving Oklahoma families since 2000 as a DONA Certified Birth Doula. In 2007, she became the first DONA Certified Postpartum Doula in the state. She became a trained breastfeeding educator through the OK State WIC Program in 2001; a Certified Breastfeeding Educator (CBE) in 2014; and a Certified Lactation Counselor (CLC) through the Healthy Children’s Project in 2015. Through the Doula Association of Central Oklahoma, Danielle gained experience in serving both the public and peer professionals as Public Relations Chair, Secretary, Vice President, and President. She also served on the DONA International Certification committee for five years. She is a wife, mother of six, and grandmother of four. Danielle has a passion for serving growing families and increasing the number of Baby Cafés for Oklahoma mothers.

Mary Starck
Community Outreach

After graduating from Boston College with an A.B. in American Studies and completing a Masters in Library and Information Science from Simmons College, I spent 45 years working in public libraries in Boston and Atlanta. I took positions in many different communities in these metro areas, I focused on strengthening outreach programs to various populations, training and managing change for the organization. My last position with Fulton County brought the challenges of overseeing 32 branches and managing services to children and teens in the county. Since leaving that job in 2013 I have been an outreach advocate for the Women's Resource Center to End Domestic Violence in Decatur, GA, supporting women as they travel the path of putting their lives together after living with domestic violence. I am committed to the work of Baby Cafe USA and the role that it can take in nurturing families to take on the challenges of our future.

Syrah McGivern, MS, RD
Community Outreach

Syrah has experience with community collaboration and building coalitions related to food access, nutrition and physical activity. She is the Mass in Motion Coordinator for the City of Medford, focusing on long lasting systems, environmental, and policy changes for that community. She has assisted in the creation of the Medford Community Garden Commission, grant writing for EBT/ SNAP matching at Medford Farmers Market; coordination of Walk Medford pedestrian advocacy group and Safe Routes to Schools programming, and designing and implementing farm share programs for seniors. She attended the Melrose Baby Café and enjoys being part of the Baby Café community.

Marsha Walker, RN, IBCLC
Government Outreach

Marsha is a registered nurse and international board certified lactation consultant. She has been assisting breastfeeding families in hospital, clinic, and home settings since 1976. Marsha is the executive director of the National Alliance for Breastfeeding Advocacy: Research, Education, and Legal Branch (NABA REAL). As such, she advocates for breastfeeding at the state and federal levels. She served as a vice president of the International Lactation Consultant Association (ILCA) from 1990-1994 and in 1999 as president of ILCA. She is the chair of the Massachusetts Breastfeeding Coalition, a board member of the US Lactation Consultant Association, USLCA’s representative to the USDA’s Breastfeeding Promotion Consortium, and NABA REAL’s representative to the US Breastfeeding Committee. Marsha is an international speaker, and an author of numerous publications including ones on the hazards of infant formula use, Code issues in the US, and Breastfeeding Management for the Clinician: Using the Evidence. ​