00:00All right, here we go. Hello, everyone. Okay, how good does it feel to be surrounded by
00:10like-minded community in a moment like this? I just want to take a moment to thank everyone
00:16for being here. I don't know about you, but I needed this. All right, so let's kick off.
00:22How many parents do we have in the room? You guys deserve a round of applause. We are doing
00:28the hardest job in the world, especially right now. All right, now parents or not, how many of you
00:33by a show of hands knew that America is the deadliest place to give birth in all of the high
00:41income countries across the world? You guys are a smart group. Most people don't. And it's not just
00:50by a little. It's actually by 10 times. I know I'm jumping right in with the depressing stats,
00:56but they gave me five minutes, so we're diving right into the deep end. Come with me.
01:01Now, how many of you all knew that midwives could actually avert 80% of maternal deaths?
01:08Let that sink in. 80%. Now, midwifery care is actually the default birth care model in every
01:17other high-income country across the world. But here in America, most insurances do not cover it.
01:25Now, it's not a coincidence that most of us didn't know this. It's actually by design.
01:32Before I became a mother, I'd heard whispers of the maternal mortality crisis. And as a journalist,
01:39I'd read the data. 50% of mothers describe their births as traumatic. Black women are dying at three
01:46to four times the rates of white women during and after childbirth. But somehow, the conversation
01:53always stops at the problem. Instead of rallying resources around solutions, known solutions like
02:02midwifery care. Much like the women's health issues broadly, maternal health has been falsely framed as
02:11a fringe issue. Something that's left to somebody else to fix. Despite the fact that everyone on the
02:19planet and everyone in this room came from a woman's womb, right or wrong, it's a crisis that's painted
02:27in statistics that are too heavy for some, too sterile for others to actually feel until it becomes your
02:37issue. When I became pregnant, I thought, how hard could this be? I did what most Americans do. I looked
02:45for a good OB. And even as someone who had access to the best, I dated eight different doctors. And yes,
02:52I call it dated because you need to know who's going to be there during your most vulnerable
02:56experience in your life. Except the problem is I was having terrible experience after terrible
03:01experience, including one who told me that I had exceeded her two to three question max before she
03:07escorted me out of her office. And that's the moment when I realized just how broken the system is.
03:17Now, what's broken about birth in America is that it's treated like a business. One that prioritizes
03:25profits over people. It thrives on our lack of knowledge and it incentivizes unnecessary medical
03:33intervention and it leaves families and women feeling powerless over the very thing our bodies were built
03:41to do. Meanwhile, midwives and community-based providers and birth workers who save lives are
03:51underfunded and ignored. Thankfully, in my third trimester, y'all, I was finally introduced to
04:00the midwifery model of care. A model that centers humanity, dignity, education, and choice. And it
04:09changed everything. It actually changed my life. It gave me a safe, sacred, and transformative birth
04:17experience. And I got to tell you of all of my career accomplishments and all the titles that I have held,
04:24pushing out a nine-pound baby in my home, unmedicated, was the most badass thing I've ever done and the most
04:34empowered I have ever felt in my life. Thank you. Add that to my resume. But then came the grief.
04:46Why did I only find out about this care through chance? Through a whisper network? Why isn't this
04:54the norm for low-risk pregnancies? Especially when midwifery has been proven to be safe, more affordable
05:03in some cases, and a lot of times much more humane. And most of all, why with all of our medical advances
05:12and our access to technology breakthroughs are so many women still dying in childbirth in one of the
05:19richest countries in the world, when 80% of maternal deaths are preventable. Make it make sense, y'all.
05:28The math isn't math-y. So I put on my journalist hat, and I dug deeper to find answers. And one thing
05:35became clear. This is not just a public health crisis. This is a storytelling crisis. We have
05:43normalized traumatic birth. We have stigmatized midwifery and care models that are saving us.
05:53We've let profit-driven systems dictate outcomes that should be rooted in dignity. And we've let the
06:00story stop at the fear instead of the fix. So I decided to start somewhere with what I had.
06:10On my birthday in December 2023, I launched an Instagram fundraiser, just hoping to cover the
06:17cost of one family in my neighborhood. And in 16 hours, we raised enough to fund two families' births.
06:24From that small seed, Birth Fund was born. With my background in storytelling and brand building,
06:32I knew we could scale this. Because one thing is for sure, there is nothing a pissed-off mama cannot do,
06:40okay? Now, Birth Fund is one year old, by the way. We just celebrated our first year,
06:47first anniversary. And now Birth Fund is a non-profit organization investing in midwifery care for
06:54families all across the country who couldn't otherwise afford it. We're working to mainstream
06:59midwifery through storytelling in order to help make this gold standard care accessible, covered,
07:06and celebrated. But I couldn't have built this alone. I called on my network, public figures,
07:12executives, journalists, moms like Serena Williams. You may have heard of her. Carly Kloss, Chrissy Teigen,
07:20and yes, dads like John Legend, who's here today, and Alexis Ohanian, who joined our very first
07:29funding circle to help solve this crisis one family at a time. Then came the brands, SoFi,
07:36Road, Mac, Pampers, Babyless, and so many more. And then we have institutional support.
07:42From the Gates Foundation and Pivotal Ventures, shout out to Allison Felix, who you'll hear from in a
07:48second, who leveraged her fund to invest in this work. And one year later, we've raised over three
07:56million dollars to support families and midwives all across the country. Thank you. And we're just
08:03getting started. Together, we are rewriting the story, one birth at a time, one family at a time,
08:12because a mother's life should never be the cost of bringing new life into this world. Thank you so much.
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