Wendy Davis PhD, PMH-C, is the Executive Director of Postpartum Support International (PSI), the world’s largest organization focused on perinatal mental health. Dr. Davis provides leadership and strategic direction to the network of PSI chapters and experts to advance the mission, vision and purpose of PSI.  She leads PSI’s delivery of vital perinatal mental health information, education, support, and services to pregnant and postpartum women, fathers and partners, and families.  Wendy began her career as a psychotherapist, and  became a specialist in perinatal mental health after recovering from postpartum depression and anxiety.

Wendy works with health care systems, sectors and government agencies, and serves on national advisory boards providing expertise on policy and practice for perinatal mood and anxiety disorders.  Dr. Davis and PSI partner with advocacy and professional organizations to advance policy, training, and services.  Dr. Davis leads the PSI Mind the Gap National Initiative with a coalition of stakeholders to ensure Perinatal Mental Health is a national priority.

Christena Raines, RN, MSN, APRN-BC, PMH-C, is an adjunct professor in the department of psychiatry at UNC Chapel Hill. She is a dual trained nurse practitioner in women’s health care and board-certified psychiatric nurse practitioner. At UNC she helped develop an intergraded perinatal mental health model within the OB-GYN High-risk clinics and founded the UNC Perinatal Depression Support group. She was a member of the planning team instrumental in opening the 1^st in-patient Perinatal Psychiatric program in the US. She is considered a subject matter expert (SME) and currently serves as the board chair emeritus for Postpartum Support International.

Executive Director, Lifeline for Families Center and Lifeline for Moms Program
Professor of of Psychiatry, Obstetrics & Gynecology, and Population & Quantitative Health Sciences Medical Director of Research and Evaluation, MCPAP for Moms

Nancy Byatt, DO, MS, MBA, DFAPA, FACLP, is a Tenured Professor at UMass Chan Medical School, perinatal psychiatrist, and physician-scientist focused on improving systems of care to promote the mental health of parents and children. She developed the Massachusetts Child Psychiatry Access Program (MCPAP) for Moms MAP for Moms , now a national model for perinatal mental health care.  She is the Founding Executive Director of the Lifeline for Families Center and Lifeline for Moms Program at UMass Chan Medical School. Her research uses implementation science methods to design, implement, and evaluate scalable approaches for improving parental and child mental health services and outcomes. With over ten years of federal funding, her research had led to over 90 peer-reviewed publications and book chapters.

Director, Women’s Behavioral Health, Zucker Hillside Hospital, Northwell Health
Medical Director, Reproductive Psychiatry, Project TEACH NY
Professor of Psychiatry, Molecular Medicine and Obstetrics & Gynecology, Donald and Barbara Zucker School of Medicine at Hofstra/Northwell
Professor, Feinstein Institutes for Medical Research, Northwell Health Adjunct Professor of Psychiatry, UMass Chan Medical School

Dr. Kristina Deligiannidis is the Director of Women’s Behavioral Health at Zucker Hillside Hospital, Northwell Health and a Professor of Psychiatry, Molecular Medicine and Obstetrics and Gynecology at the Donald and Barbara Zucker School of Medicine at Hofstra/Northwell.  As Director, she leads a clinical/translational research program and advises on policies and services promoting women’s behavioral health at Northwell Health, the largest health system in NY state.  Dr. Deligiannidis additionally serves as the Medical Director for Reproductive Psychiatry for the perinatal psychiatry access program, Project TEACH, funded by the NY State Office of Mental Health.  For Project TEACH, Dr. Deligiannidis leads a team of 16 reproductive psychiatrists/psychologists to provide education and phone consultation to maternal health clinicians on perinatal mood and anxiety disorders, across all 62 counties of NY. As a reproductive psychiatrist, she has expertise in treating women with mood and anxiety disorders linked to the menstrual cycle, perinatal and perimenopausal periods.

Dr. Deligiannidis is a nationally recognized leader in the field of perinatal depression and in novel therapeutics research. Her research program includes a focus in psychoneuroendocrinology, particularly neurosteroids and hormones, and multimodal neuroimaging in women’s behavioral health. Dr. Deligiannidis’s research is supported by NIH, foundation and industry funding, including prestigious K23 and R01 grants. Her efforts have been nationally recognized with many awards for research and medical student and resident teaching.  Her recent publications have been in high impact journals including the Lancet, Lancet Psychiatry, JAMA Psychiatry, Am. J. of Psychiatry, Neuropsychopharmacology and Psychoneuroendocrinology. Her research has been covered by major media outlets, including CNN, the Associated Press, NPR, the Boston Globe, Boston and New York ABC and CBS News, Time Magazine, Good Morning America and others.

Dr. Deligiannidis actively contributes to national scientific committees and gives scientific presentations nationally and internationally. She is a past Council member of the Society of Biological Psychiatry, a past Board member for the American Society of Clinical Psychopharmacology and currently is a full member of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology where she serves on several committees.  Dr. Deligiannidis also serves as a reviewer on over 20 scientific journals and on Editorial Boards of national and international journals.  She serves as a federal grant reviewer for the Center for Scientific Review at NIH. Locally she serves on steering committees in both the Departments of Obstetrics & Gynecology and Psychiatry at Long Island Jewish Medical Center and Zucker Hillside Hospital and at the Katz Institute for Women’s Health on Long Island.  She additionally serves on Faculty Council and the Zucker Women in Medicine and Science (ZWIMS) Gender and Equity committee at the Zucker School of Medicine at Hofstra/Northwell.

Dr. Deligiannidis received her medical degree from and completed her psychiatry residency and chief residency in psychopharmacology research at the University of Massachusetts Medical School.  Prior to and during medical school she trained in neuroscience research at the National Institutes of Health. After residency she completed additional research training in behavioral endocrinology and experimental therapeutics at the NIH and in neuroimaging at the Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging at MGH.

Assistant Professor, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Director, Perinatal Psychiatry Program
Medical Director, NC Maternal Mental Health MATTERS Program

Mary Kimmel, MD is an Assistant Professor in the tenure track in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC).  In her first five years at UNC, she served as Medical Director for the UNC Perinatal Psychiatric Inpatient Unit, a national referral center for treatment-resistant perinatal mood and anxiety disorders and postpartum psychosis. Dr. Kimmel in partnership with North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services, obtained United States Health Resources & Services Administration (HRSA) funding and developed the NC Maternal Mental Health MATTERS program, a statewide consultation program providing support to any provider screening, assessing and treating mental health needs of pregnant, postpartum or early parenting individual; continuing to serve as NC MATTERS Medical Director. Her research is focused on improving screening and assessment in order to improve personalization of treatment through the blending of patient’s history, self-reported symptoms, and biomarkers. Her biomarker work strives to better understand the role of the microbiome, immune system, and stress on the current and future mental health of the parent-child dyad.

Assistant Director of Perinatal Health Equity, St. Louis Integrated Health Network

Kelly McKay-Gist is the Assistant Director -Perinatal Health Equity at the St. Louis Integrated Health Network. Primarily, she works coordinating the EleVATE Collaborative: Elevating Voices, Addressing Depression, Toxic Stress and Equity. Her work focuses on community based participatory research, implementation, catalyzing racial equity to eliminate inequitable patient outcomes, systems and policies. Previously, she has held a range of direct service leadership positions focused on implementing mental health interventions and managing community led projects focused on mental health treatment for children, adults, and young families.

She earned her undergraduate degree in human development and family studies from University of Vermont and Master of Social Work from Washington University in St. Louis. She is also a licensed clinical social worker.

Director, Division of Clinical Research, Obstetrics & Gynecology, Washington University in St. Louis School of Medicine

Dr. Carter is known for her research involving community-based interventions to promote health equity for pregnant women and their babies. She is the director of the Division of Clinical Research in the Department of Obstetrics & Gynecology at Washington University School of Medicine. Her research focuses on evidence-based methods to optimize management of medical complications in pregnancy and translating knowledge of adverse pregnancy outcomes into risk-reduction strategies for future cardiovascular disease.

Assistant Professor, Assistant Program Director, Departments of Obstetrics and Gynecology, University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Medicine

Dr. Traci Johnson was born and raised in rural Texas, and her skill as a left-fielder earned her a softball scholarship to Prairie View A&M University outside of Houston.

She attended MCP Hahnemann College of Medicine in Philadelphia, now Drexel University College of Medicine, due to its rich history of paving the way for women in medicine and women of color. She entered residency at the vigorous Washington University in St. Louis, where she was honored to serve as Administrative Chief Resident. 

After repaying her service as a National Health Service Corps Scholar at a rural Federally-Qualified Health Center, she slowly migrated to the private practice sector of Kansas City but felt the pull of academics where she feels most impactful.

At University Health, she oversaw a busy Labor and Delivery Unit as the Director for L&D while serving as Associate Program Director for the OBGYN residency program. Her passion, however, is her work in population health equity and special communities. She serves as a leader in Missouri’s Hospital Association's Perinatal Quality Review Board, overseeing efforts to decrease maternal and infant mortality in the state. She also was appointed as a member of the Pregnancy-Associated Mortality Review Board in Jeff City, reviewing all pregnancy-related deaths in Missouri. She was recently elected Chair-Elect of this prestigious board and will focus the next two years on health equity. 

She recently completed a life-long dream of subspecialty training in Maternal-Fetal Medicine at the University of Missouri-Kansas City and will return to academics this summer.

When she is not doing all this, you will see her and her husband cheering their two sons and daughter emphatically at soccer or gymnastics.

Adrienne Griffen, MPP, is the Executive Director of Maternal Mental Health Leadership Alliance (mmhla.org), a nonpartisan nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting the mental health of mothers and childbearing people in the United States with a focus on national policy and health equity. 

MMHLA advocates for improved maternal mental health care and serves as a clearinghouse of information related to maternal mental health. MMHLA's advocacy efforts have led to almost $200 million in federal funding for maternal mental health programs at the national and state levels. 

Adrienne serves on the Boards of Directors of the Marce Society of North America and the Mental Health Liaison Group.   She also founded Postpartum Support Virginia (postpartumva.org), which she led for ten years (2009-2019), building a statewide network of support groups and maternal mental health coalitions which have helped thousands of new mothers.

Adrienne graduated from the US Naval Academy and has a Masters in Public Policy from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. She lives in Arlington VA with her husband and three young adult children.

Aminat Balogun is a passionate maternal health advocate and Program Manager for the Maternal Mental Health Leadership Alliance. In this role, she  assists senior staff with managing a variety of programs and initiatives, including supporting the Board of Advisors and the Screening Project. She joined MMHLA in October 2020 as a graduate school intern when she was studying for her Masters in Public Health at the George Washington University, specializing in Maternal & Child Health. Aminat’s professional interests include patient-centered reproductive health care, community-based perinatal care, and improving pregnancy and childbirth experiences for Black women in the United States. Aminat lives in Arlington, VA.