In this episode, I speak with award-winning journalist, author and an internationally-recognized speaker, strategist and advocate for maternal and infant health, Kimberly Seals Allers.

A former senior editor at ESSENCE and writer at FORTUNE magazine, Kimberly is a leading voice on the socio-cultural and racial complexities of birth, breastfeeding and motherhood. She is the director of the Maternal and Child Health Communication Collective, a national consortium of over 80 organizations working collectively to shift the narrative of maternal and infant health issues, funded by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation.

Kimberly was recently named one of “21 Leaders for the 21st Century” for 2018 by Women’s eNews for her decades of media advocacy work. A frequent contributor to The New York Times , Washington Post, Slate and others, her online commentaries received over 10 million page views last year. Kimberly’s fifth book, The Big Let Down—How Medicine, Big Business and Feminism Undermine Breastfeeding was published by St. Martin’s Press in January 2017. In 2018, she founded Narrative Nation, a non-profit that creates community-centered media and technology to eradicate health disparities.

A graduate of New York University and Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, Kimberly is a divorced mother of two who lives in New York City.