GOLD Speakers

Panel Discussion 2024

• Speaker Type: 2024 Main Presentations
• Country: GOLD

Biography:

Augustine is an internationally recognized midwifery educator, experienced business executive, and veteran midwife with a heart focused on the underserved, marginalized, and under-resourced. She respects the importance of being empowered and undisturbed during labor, and balances this attention to the sacred with 20+ years experience attending births in hospitals, birth centers, and homes in rural, urban and suburban environments in the US and abroad. Augustine's focus is finely attuned to the process of letting go and opening to the unknown in labor and in life.Additionally, Augustine has a master's degree from Bastyr University in Seattle, WA where she majored in Maternal/Child Health Systems.

Her life's mission is to mainstream midwifery and deconstruct the culture of fear and misinformation that surrounds the maternity world globally. To that end, Augustine 'midwife's the midwife' through her many education programs, consulting services, product development, podcasts and video production, business site visits, and with private coaching services for midwives, students, maternity practice owners,&birth center administratorsthrough her consulting firm, The Midwifery Wisdom Collective. It is her profound honor to illuminate the sacred path to joyful and sustainable midwifery practice.

Dr Hazel Keedle, PhD, is a Senior Lecturer of Midwifery at The School of Nursing and Midwifery, Western Sydney University. Hazel has more than two decades of experience as a clinician in nursing and midwifery, educator and researcher. Hazel's research interests are vaginal birth after caesarean, birth trauma and maternity experiences explored primarily using feminist mixed methodologies. Hazel's work is recognised nationally and internationally, with many invited conference and seminar presentations including academic publications and a book for women based on her PhD findings 'Birth after Caesarean: Your Journey to a Better Birth'. Hazel is the lead researcher on the largest maternity experiences survey, The Birth Experience Study. Hazel is also the Co-Editor in Chief of The Practising Midwife Australia from All4Maternity which was launched in September 2022.

Cassandra (pronouns: she/her) is driven by her lived experiences as a survivor, midwife, and advocate, to draw attention to the intersectionality of gender-based violence during the perinatal period. she is passionate about investigating stakeholder responses and their impacts on sexual, reproductive, and overall health outcomes. Her work is informed by an inclusive and anti-oppressive lens to identify responder-inflicted harms, barriers, and facilitators to help-seeking and health equity.

She is passionate about initiating innovative strategies that narrow gaps in access to culturally sensitive responses to gender-based violence. Cassandra believes in survivor autonomy and seeks to decrease revictimization, morbidity, and mortality using survivor-centered approaches in tandem with trauma-informed practices that emphasize the complexities of gender-based violence. She is a blissfully happy military spouse and mother of 4 incredible children who inspire her daily. Cassandra has her Masters in Maternal-Child Health Systems from Bastyr University, is a Certified Professional Midwife (CPM)