Bernadette Greene
Bernadette Greene currently serves as the Executive Director and Board Member Breastfeed Durham. Also serves on the board of Fatherhood of Durham. Bernadette’s background is in childcare working with the Durham Headstart program and serving as a Community Health Worker with Durham County Department of Public Health. Bernadette continues to provide technical assistance to both DCoDPH Headstart in her role as a breastfeeding advocate.
Bernadette Is a mother and grandmother who has breastfeed 5 children. Her motto is “A happy mom breastfeeding is a happy baby eating.” She offers great support to our local parents and is a fountain of advice on finding local resources. She currently serves as the executive Director of Breastfeed Durham and regularly attends community events. She enjoys working with the community, sharing information on chest/breastfeeding, as well as other relevant resources. She also serves on the board of fatherhood of Durham and is known in her community as the “resource lady.”
Becca Brandt French
Becca Brandt French is a Public Health Social Worker with over a decade of experience advancing maternal and child health, education, and community-based initiatives. She brings expertise in stakeholder engagement, technical assistance, program sustainability, and group facilitation—and is excited to channel those skills into her volunteer work with Breastfeed Durham.
A proud Durham resident since 2011, Becca is raising two young children (ages 4 and 20 months) alongside her husband, Billy. Between nursing her youngest and doing the important work of showing up in community spaces—talking with neighbors at the sandbox, sharing resources with other parents, and listening deeply—Becca is supporting families in real time. These everyday moments fuel her commitment to expanding breastfeeding support and pursuing certification as a lactation counselor. As a volunteer, she’ll help strengthen Breastfeed Durham’s business outreach and elevate the voices of families across the region.
In her free time, you’ll find Becca running, sewing, or thrifting for treasures around town.
Claudia Hines
Claudia Hines is a Certified Birth Doula (CD, DONA) and Prenatal Yoga Teacher with a passion for supporting first-time mothers and empowering families through pregnancy, birth, and beyond. With a holistic and personalized approach, Claudia guides birthing individuals toward positive birth experiences, emphasizing advocacy, education, and compassionate care.
As the Coordinator for the Black Breastfeeding Coalition, Claudia brings her deep experience in community-centered support and her commitment to improving maternal and infant health outcomes. In this role, she leads community engagement initiatives, promotes breastfeeding equity, and fosters supportive spaces for Black families.
Claudia’s extensive professional background spans over two decades of experience in human services and corporate finance. She currently works with Life Based Conceptions, providing one-on-one support to a neurodivergent individual who resides in her home. Previously, she served as an Autism Support Professional at the Autism Society of North Carolina, offering individualized care and life skills coaching. Her finance and payroll experience includes roles at Reichhold and Clarkston Consulting, where she honed her organizational and leadership skills.
Claudia holds an Associate’s degree in Accounting from Durham Technical Community College and studied Early Childhood Education at North Carolina Central University. Her diverse skill set and dedication to community well-being make her a vital advocate and leader in the breastfeeding community. When she’s not working, Claudia enjoys teaching yoga, homesteading, and creating nourishing spaces for families to thrive.
Fariha Rahman
Fariha Rahman served as the Chief Operations Officer for Breastfeeding Family Friendly Communities and she coordinates the day-to-day operations for Breastfeed Durham (the pilot project). Fariha graduated from Duke University with a Masters of Science in Population Health Sciences and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with a Bachelor of Science in Health Policy and Management. Throughout her course of study, she gained invaluable experience as a birth doula at UNC Hospitals and contributed to research understanding the impact of social determinants on women’s mental health. These experiences, particularly her work with new mothers from diverse backgrounds, fueled her passion for maternal health equity and policy advocacy.
Fariha believes that effective policy changes are essential to addressing the social and structural determinants that contribute to maternal health disparities. She is excited to contribute her expertise and dedication to Breastfeed Durham, where she is committed to making a lasting impact on maternal and child health in the community.
Janiah Fladger
Grounded in reproductive justice and a deep love for community, Janiah Fladger is passionate about Black maternal health, comprehensive sexual health education, and ensuring equitable access to lactation support and family resources. Her work centers on advocating for Black birthing people and other marginalized communities.
As a birth doula, Janiah has found a deep calling in walking alongside families from pre-conception through postpartum and beyond. She knows firsthand how transformative it is when people are held by a true network of support, and she is passionate about the way interdisciplinary work weaves together to create that for birthing people and their communities.
Janiah holds a Master of Public Health degree specializing in Maternal, Child, & Family Health from the Gillings School of Global Public Health at UNC-Chapel Hill, and currently serves as Recruitment Coordinator for Breastfeed Durham, focusing on expanding breastfeeding-friendly initiatives among historically underutilized businesses (HUBs) in Durham County.
A New Jersey native who found her home in North Carolina, Janiah spends her free time tending to her plant collection, hiking, and reading new books in her collection.
Jess Woon
With a deep commitment to ensuring equitable infant feeding support within the healthcare system, Jess is passionate about promoting breastfeeding-friendly healthcare environments in Durham. As the Coordinator of the Breastfeeding Friendly Healthcare Coalition, her work focuses on creating systemic change to improve access to high-quality, culturally competent lactation support for all families.
Jess’s background as a Labor and Delivery Nurse and Postpartum Nurse for over six years has provided her with invaluable hands-on experience in maternal and newborn care. Through her work on the frontlines, she’s seen firsthand the barriers that many families face in accessing breastfeeding support, particularly in marginalized communities. This drives her dedication to advancing equity in infant feeding, ensuring that all families, regardless of background, receive the guidance and resources they deserve.
She has specialized lactation training through the UNC Gillings School of Public Health’s MRT-TI program, where Jess honed her skills in providing evidence-based lactation care. For over a year, she has served as an inpatient Lactation Consultant, working directly with families to provide support, education, and guidance during their breastfeeding journeys.
Through her role with the Breastfeeding Friendly Healthcare Coalition, Jess strives to foster collaborations and initiatives that make Durham a more breastfeeding-friendly community, ensuring that every family has access to the support they need for a healthy start.
Kimberly Glover
Kimberley Glover has a master’s degree in public health at Temple University. Her concentration is social and behavioral sciences. She received her bachelor’s degree in cognitive science from Rutgers University and her master’s degree in bioethics from Wake Forest University. She is excited to work with Breastfeed Durham for her culminating fieldwork project. She is passionate about using health policy and health advocacy to advance maternal, child, and family health.
Linels Higuera Ancidey
Linels Higuera Ancidey, IBCLC, MPH-MCFH, is a bilingual public health professional, International Board Certified Lactation Consultant, and Certified Spanish Healthcare Interpreter with more than a decade of experience supporting families in their infant feeding journeys. She holds a Master of Public Health in Maternal, Child and Family Health from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and serves as a Social/Clinical Research Specialist and bilingual Ready Set Baby Facilitator at the Carolina Global Breastfeeding Institute.
Linels is the co-facilitator and co-founder of Un Dia a la Vez, an initiative of Breastfeed Durham Lactancia Latina that provides culturally responsive support to pregnant and postpartum Spanish-speaking families in Durham. She serves as a preceptor for aspiring lactation consultants, a board member of Breastfeeding Family Friendly Communities, and a volunteer IBCLC with the Breastfeed Durham Lactation Collaborative. In December 2024 she volunteered with the SAFE Team – Infant Feeding in Emergencies to support Hurricane Helene relief efforts in Western Carolina, providing lactation support, interpretation, and community education on safe infant feeding practices during emergencies.
A bilingual presenter and educator, she has presented at the 47th Annual Minority Health Conference, the MaryAnn Black Symposium, and continuing education sessions for NC WIC Region 1 and Region 2 peer counselors, and contributed to community education at the UNC Science Expo. Her passion is ensuring that every family, regardless of language or background, receives the support they need to meet their infant feeding goals.
Love Anderson
Love co-founded Breastfeed Durham and helped grow it into a coalition strong enough to spark the creation of Breastfeeding Family Friendly Communities (BFFC), a 501(c)(3) that now supports 21 community-led projects across the country. She became involved with the second city to pilot the Ten Steps work, even before BFFC had a bank account, and has continued to serve on both the Breastfeed Durham and BFFC boards.
Her lived experiences as a parent of two spirited boys and as a Black-Cherokee woman raised in the rural South shape her approach to advocacy. Professionally, Love’s background spans system analytics, physics, and education. Her work in lactation began when she breastfed her two children with special needs, which inspired her to volunteer in lactation support, universal access, and emergency preparedness for infant and young child feeding (IYCF-E).
Each stage of Love’s career has equipped her to build a national movement: as a scientist she learned system analytics, as a business owner she gained the skills to run a nonprofit, as a teacher she became an educator of parents and policymakers, as a Community Health Worker she walked alongside families and learned the health system from the ground up, and as director of Breastfeed Durham she helped launch what is now a national model. Now as a national leader in perinatal equity, Love continues to focus on policy, digital strategy, and collaborative advocacy. She believes breastfeeding-friendly communities can help reduce inequities, and she works to strengthen support systems for families who provide human milk while advancing policies that protect family rights—so every family can meet their own feeding goals.
Nicola Young
Nicola Young is an IBCLC and full-spectrum doula currently studying medicine at Duke University School of Medicine. Prior to moving to Durham, she spent time working with Latinx parents in Boston, MA, and conducting research in Lima, Peru. She grew up speaking Spanish with her Peruvian family members and is passionate about equitable care for Spanish-speaking populations. A self-proclaimed “lactivist” and postpartum health enthusiast, Nicola leads the Lactancia Latina Coalition to help address the breastfeeding needs of Durham’s Latinx community.
Nicola Young es una asesora de lactancia, doula de parto y posparto, y estudiante de medicina en Duke University School of Medicine. Antes de mudarse a Durham, pasó tiempo trabajando con familias Latinas en Boston, MA, y conduciendo investigación en Lima, Perú. Creció hablando castellano con su familia peruana y su pasión es la equidad en el tratamiento de poblaciones hispanohablantes. Una autoproclamada “lactivista” y entusiasta de la salud posparto, Nicola lidera la Coalición de Lactancia Latina para apoyar a la lactancia en la comunidad Latina de Durham.
Rachel Lewis
Nikki Bronson is a second-year MPH candidate at the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health where she is pursuing a concentration in Maternal, Child, and Family Health. Nikki is especially interested in studying breastfeeding disparities, maternal and infant health outcomes associated with breastfeeding, and improving birth outcomes across NC. She brings her experience in community outreach and her love for the Durham area to her role as Breastfeed Durham’s Recruitment Coordinator, where she works to ensure businesses in Durham offer welcoming environments for breastfeeding patrons and employees.
Nikki is a New Hampshire native who has called North Carolina home for almost 6 years. When she is not working, she spends her time painting, baking sourdough, and reading murder mysteries.
Rachel Lewis
Rachel is a mom of two and a passionate advocate for parents and families in Durham. She has been volunteering with BreastfeedDurham since 2019 and is proud to be a Board Member. When not volunteering at her daughter’s school or for local advocacy and support organizations, she can usually be found playing with her kids or curled up on the couch with one of her dogs, a mug of coffee, and a good book.