Leseliey Welch is a public health strategist, social entrepreneur, and professional dreamer who holds Love as a guiding value, a way of being, an action and a politic. As a founder of Birth Detroit and Birth Center Equity, her work is grounded in making communities stronger, healthier and more free – starting with ensuring all people have access to all safe birth options. Birth Detroit opened its first freestanding community birth center in 2024, and Birth Center Equity is a national effort to invest in Black, Indigenous, people of color-led birth centers at scale to make birth centers a real option in all communities. Leseliey takes pride in creating the seemingly impossible, and speaking and writing the unspoken to inspire us all to embody the freedom and courage necessary to create the futures of our dreams. Leseliey is the vision behind National Birth Center Week and the collective impact initiative Beloved Birth 50 by 50, which invites us all to the audacious goal that by 2050, 50% of babies in the US will come into the world with the care of midwives.

She has nearly two decades of leadership experience in city, state and national health organizations. She served as interim executive director of Birthing Project USA, Deputy Director of Public Health for the City of Detroit, and consulted in the development of Michigan’s first comprehensive LGBTQ health center.

Leseliey taught at the university level for over fifteen years, and contributed to the development of Wayne State University’s Bachelor’s in Public Health Program where she created undergraduate and master’s level public health courses on numerous health equity topics. She also lectured in the Women’s and Gender Studies Department at the University of Michigan, where she developed practicum courses on women’s leadership, nonprofit, management, community engagement and feminist practice.

She earned her undergraduate degree in Women’s Studies, Masters in Public Health with a certificate in Women’s and Reproductive Health, and Masters in Business Administration from the University of Michigan. Leseliey is also a poet and an Aspen Institute Ascend Fellow.

Dr. Diana N Derige is Birth Center Equity’s (BCE) Chief Strategy Officer, where she leads the articulation and implementation of BCE’s strategic vision through burgeoning enterprises including the Beloved Economy Studios to accelerate progress towards BCE’s audacious goal. Dr Derige brings not only her vision and passion to BCE but over the past twenty years of experience designing and managing private philanthropic, government, and non-profit programs. Diana has held numerous positions most recently as the Vice President of Health Equity Strategy at the American Medical Association’s inaugural Center for Health Equity. Throughout her career Diana has supported local and national investments by serving as a convener, collaborator, and catalyst, responsible for nurturing opportunities for affecting positive systemic change in communities. Throughout her career, she has concentrated on promoting public health and social equity for marginalized communities.

Her passion is maternal and infant health with a focus on creating a world where women of color thrive. She was the senior editor of the 2018 Latina Maternal Review and has held positions of adjunct faculty at the University of North Carolina’s Gillings School of Global Public Health and as co-director of the Center for Latina Maternal and Family Health Research at the University of Houston. Dr. Derige also served as a program officer at the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, the Chicago Community Trust and as National Director of MCH Initiatives at Urban Strategies. Dr. Derige holds a Bachelor’s degree in sociology and women’s studies, a Master’s degree in public health from the University of Michigan, and a Doctor of Public Health from the University of North Carolina.