Board of Directors

The Board is currently accepting nominations and self-nominations,  you can submit your self-nomination application by clicking here.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dr. Melissa Riley, Board Chair

About Dr. Melissa Riley

Melissa Riley (Mescalero Apache), Ph.D., is the owner/principal of Native Community Development Associates. Dr. Riley is also a consultant to several national/state/tribal agencies and public/private organizations.

Dr. Riley has managed federal projects within the Department of Justice (DOJ), Office for Victims of Crime (OVC) such as the national Counseling & Faith-Based Services for Crime Victims in Indian Country (CFBSCV-IC) Training and Technical Assistance Grant and the Children’s Justice Act (CJA) Partnership in Indian Country Training and Technical Assistance Grant. The two DOJ, OVC-funded projects involved assessing grantee needs, evaluating training and technical services, and recording/analyzing performance measures for project sustainability. Dr. Riley has authored national, produced training and technical assistance videos, and published training guides for the CFBSCV-IC and CJA Projects. She has also serves as a technical consultant for the DOJ, OVC, Training and Technical Assistance Center (TTAC) in areas of evaluation and crime victim services.

Dr. Riley has developed curricula for the New Mexico Department of Health, Gallup Indian Health Services, University of Texas at Arlington, and other organizations. She has also developed sexual assault protocols, behavioral health/social service policy and procedures, and other tribal multi-disciplinary policies and procedures that enhance victim service response and increase prosecution.

Dr. Riley’s experience with research includes her role as a field interviewer for the NIJ funded VAIW National Baseline Pilot Study and lead field investigator and researcher in her graduate studies, as well as the Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act (SORNA) Research Project. Additional experience in research includes Institution Review Board (IRB) applications, National Institutes of Health (NIH) certification, establishing research protocols, conducting research, and using digital equipment such as Computer-Assisted Personal Interviewing (CAPI) and Audio Computer Assisted Self-Interviewing (ACASI).

Dr. Riley has also been responsible for developing and implementing wrap-around services for tribal programs that serve community members impacted by alcohol/substance abuse, crime, and other social issues. She also serves as a direct service provider for several New Mexico Tribal communities, including providing counseling, social work, home evaluations, guardian ad litem services, and family conferencing. She is an adjunct faculty member for New Mexico Highlands University, School of Social Work and serves on the committee for the Native American Social Work Studies Institute.

Dr. Riley also volunteers and offers her skills, knowledge, and abilities to local organizations such as the Roadrunner Food Bank, Joy Junction Homeless Shelter, and Child of All Nations, to name a few. She also is a sitting board member of Paralegal Group Services and has served as a board member to other local, state, and national boards.

 

Pip Howard, Board Secretary

About Pip Howard

Originally from England, Pip Howard has lived in the Four Corners area for the last 30 years. With a lifelong interest in health and birth, she is very happy to work professionally teaching prospective parents about healthy birth practices and assisting new parents in reaching their breastfeeding goals. She is the mother of two grown children who were each breastfed for a year.

Rosalba Ruiz

About Rosalba Ruiz

A Mexican American, Hispanic General Practitioner with a Master’s in Public Health (MD, MPH). She has worked in the area of Public Health for more than 20 years. Committed to improve the health of US- Mexico border residents and believes that we need to change the way we approach “mothers to be” in the area of breastfeeding not only to we need to increase knowledge but also create the environments that foster breastfeeding.

Has worked for more than 18 years in the area of diabetes and believe that if we could only do one thing to prevent diabetes and chronic diseases it is to breastfeed. She is a mother of two, a 20 year old boy that I breastfeed for 2 years and a 9 year old girl that I breastfeed for 4 years.

A founding member of the Binational Breastfeeding Coalition, established in 2012 its mission that all children born across the US- Mexico Border have an opportunity to be breastfeed. To achieve this we have been creating support networks for mothers to breastfeed such as mother friendly establishments, mother friendly worksites, mother friendly hospital. We do considerable amount of promotion and awareness including the Big Latch On.  

Founding member of the Latina Breastfeeding Leader’s (LBL), the group’s goal is to connect with other Latina leaders around the country in order to increase breastfeeding among Latinas.

She received a grant from the New Mexico State University/ Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center partnership to conduct a pilot study to measure increase in the intent to breastfeed among Hispanic women of childbearing age (18-44 years) that receive a brief education intervention that focusses on the important relation between breastfeeding and breast cancer. Initial analysis show that the Hispanic women participating in the BFBCCP learned more about the importance of breastfeeding, particularly as it relates to Breast cancer prevention, reported greater levels of intent to breastfeed, and reported more positive attitudes towards breastfeeding in the workplace compared to the control group.

She was selected by the Center of Social Inclusion to be part of a cross section of breastfeeding leaders, to effective build alliances across divisions and in delivering the message that racial equity impacts and can truly benefit all communities.

She currently works for the Alliance of Border Collaboratives, this non- profit has been designated as a mother friendly worksite by the State of Texas. She has worked extensible with Community Health Workers, and with Coalitions to improve health outcomes in both Texas and the Southern part of New Mexico.

Danny Kirby

Danny Kirby is a nutritionist supervisor for the New Mexico WIC program. Danny was born and raised on the island of St. Croix in the Virgin Islands. After graduating high school in the Virgin Islands, Danny traveled to the U.S. mainland to pursue higher education—first attending Barry University in Miami, FL; second, Fort Valley State University in Fort Valley, GA; and third, Georgia State University in Atlanta, GA where Danny received his Bachelors of Science degree in nutrition. Recently, Danny’s partner opened a plant-based restaurant that serves native pueblo food, where Danny aids as the head nutritionist and helps with kitchen prep. Today, Danny resides in Jemez Pueblo NM, with his partner and 3 daughters. 

Jessica Eva Montoya Trujillo

About Jessica Montoya Trujillo

My name is Jessica Eva Montoya Trujillo, a disabled Chicana from the foothills of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains in unceded Tewa Homelands also known as O’Ga Pa’Geh or White Shell Water Place or La Villa Real de Santa Fe de San Francisco de Assisi or as most people know it, Santa Fe, NM. I am a seventh generation Native New Mexican and have complicated roots embedded in this land, my grandparents lived in humble homes and later my parents living in the same home where me and my siblings were raised. My childhood and teen years were riddled with trauma and survival which led me to a life of advocacy and education on behalf of children living in domestic violent homes. As a result of my work, I have become a vocal upstander for important issues affecting my life and the lives of the people who I live with and by, my fellow community members. I recently became a mother to a beautiful boy named Judah Elias and have shifted my focus to community building and harnessing the village that exists around me. I currently serve my community as the Administrative Director for Chainbreaker Collective which is a membership-led economic and environmental justice organization serving Northern New Mexico. I am passionate about power-building and social justice particularly in the community I belong to, in Santa Fe, NM. I would love the opportunity to serve on the New Mexico Breastfeeding Task Force Board of Directors to learn how best to support breast/chest-feeding parents and supporters in New Mexico.

Elizabeth Koffler

More about Elizabeth Koffler

My interest in the NMBTF initially starts from my perspective as a family doctor. As a physician, I see firsthand the health benefits of breastfeeding for both mother and baby. During my family medicine training, I delivered and cared for many mothers and babies and have experience leading breastfeeding education through the Centering Pregnancy model. During my training, I encountered many mothers who stopped breastfeeding due to either lack of education or support. When I birthed and breastfed my own daughter in 2022, I realized how incredibly difficult breastfeeding is for many women, even with significant education and support. I wouldn’t have been able to continue breastfeeding without a supportive spouse, a lactation consultant, access to the internet, and pumping equipment. My own experience has changed my practice on how I speak with women about breastfeeding, and I hope to be able to be a mentor and supporter to help other moms in our state have access to the education and support that they need to meet their breastfeeding goals. As a family doctor, teacher of family doctors, and current breastfeeding mother, I would be thrilled if I were selected to be part of the NMBTF board.

Saychelle Rincon

Saychelle is a queer, nonbinary birth worker and student midwife whose fierce dedication to reproductive justice is rooted in ancestral Caribbean lineage and traditional Indigenous wisdom. Since 2007, they’ve supported 150+ births across the East Coast, Utah and Hawai’i as a DTI-certified doula and birth assistant, offering care that centers Queer family-making and culturally reverent healing. Now based in New Mexico, they are cultivating sustainable connections within the birth community in the Land of Enchantment.

With a background in English Literature as well as Massage Therapy, coupled with over a decade of experience in holistic perinatal care, Saychelle’s offerings include Full Spectrum Doula support, Placenta medicine, Spiritual Limpias, Bone Closing ceremonies, and Massage Sessions and Platicas specializing in pregnancy and child development. Informed by teachings from Birthwise Midwifery School, Spinning Babies, and Body Ready Method, their practice bridges clinical skill with sacred tradition.

Proud parent to Zeke, born at home in 2015, Saychelle continues to walk the midwifery path with humility, reverence, and a radical love for their communities—ancestral, chosen, and beyond.

Katie Kivlighan

Katie Kivlighan, MS, PhD, CNM, FACNM is an Assistant Professor at the University of New Mexico (UNM) College of Nursing, where she teaches in the UNM Nurse-Midwifery Program.  Her goal is to improve screening, support, and treatment for lactation challenges and she has built a research program focused on clinical, behavioral, and physiological influences on breastfeeding and lactation.  She is the University of New Mexico Site PI for the Breastfeeding CHAMPS Study, an NICHD-funded study focused on mammary epithelium permeability during established lactation and its effects of lactation outcomes and infant health.  She has been serving New Mexico families as a certified nurse-midwife for 11 years.  She is also a co-director of the UNM Birth Companion Program, a birth-justice focused program that aims to provide respectful, compassionate, and non-judgmental care in birth.

Jean Braun

I am a Maternal Child Health epidemiologist in the Family Health Bureau at the New Mexico
Department of Health. I currently serve as a NM PRAMS epidemiologist and data analyst for
the Maternal Health Program in collaboration with the NM MMRC.
As a Maternal Child Health epidemiologist, I have been working with the Albuquerque Area
Southwest Tribal Epidemiology staff to form a Tribal Toddler Survey. I also partnered with the
New Mexico Breastfeeding Taskforce create a campaign to promote breastfeeding. In my role
as data analyst for the Maternal Health Program, I helped prepare recommendations based on
NM MMRC members input and helped draft the NM MMRC Annual Report and presentation for
the NM Legislative Health and Human Services Committee.
During my practicum work with the Postnatal Patient Safety Learning Lab with the University of
North Carolina at Chapel Hill, I analyzed qualitative data from recorded postpartum stays to
assess patient and health care team interactions around newborn heel prick tests and coded
hours of recorded footage and documented notable interactions and care events. My work with
the Postnatal Patient Safety Learning Lab and analysis work with the NM MMRC propels me
assess and address disparities in maternal and early childhood healthcare and outcomes.
Prior to position and NMDOH and obtaining my Master’s of Public Health in December 2022, I
worked as a genetic technologist at CSI Laboratories in Alpharetta, GA for almost eight years. I
analyzed chromosomes and used fluorescent microscopy for cancer diagnostics and issued
genetic reports to our medical team.
Outside of work, I enjoy spending time with my twin boys and husband, playing boardgames
and videogames, crocheting, painting, taking road trips, and learning the ins and outs of hot air
ballooning.