About the Founder
Rebecca Smith CNM CDCES
Certified Nurse Midwife
Certified Diabetes Care and Education Specialist
Before I became a healthcare clinician, I was a patient. After being diagnosed with type 1 diabetes at age 11, I had the great fortune of going to Clara Barton diabetes camp, which opened my eyes to the importance of community and understanding the human response to an illness or condition. I did "Adventure Camp" as soon as I was old enough, and spent 2 weeks each summer backpacking, white water rafting, rock climbing, and camping under the stars with a bunch of other teen girls with type 1 diabetes! Through my teen years I worked at that same camp as a counselor, and then after graduating from Colgate University with a BA in psychology I moved from New Jersey (home since age 5) to San Francisco (place of my birth) to "retrace my roots" as I liked to call it.
In San Francisco, like any uncertain college grad, I worked a ton of random jobs. First as an office manager for an HIV/AIDS physician, while waitressing on the side; then billing and front desk at a chiropractor's office; then I went to massage school and bartended on the side! After a few years, I discovered the Diabetic Youth Foundation (now Diabetes Youth Families) and began a 3-year stint of running the programming for their residential summer camp and year-round weekend programs. I worked with many healthcare folks - doctors, dietitians, social workers, pharmacists - but I was most drawn to the nurses who I felt best balanced the clinical and the personal, whose philosophy of care felt aligned with my own. The philosophy that we are more than just our illness or conditions; we also all have strengths and potential that deserves to be tapped. That is what led me to nursing school and the University of Illinois at Chicago.
At UIC, I had the luck during my pregnancy rotation to shadow a midwife in outpatient clinic. We saw a postpartum patient whose body had changed during her labor and delivery, and she expressed feeling self-conscious and like something was wrong with her. The midwife supported the patient with the perfect blend of compassion and information-sharing, and the patient left reassured and informed. I thought - I want to spend my days empowering people to feel good about their bodies! I want to help people through their challenges and show them that being strong and being vulnerable are wrapped together! I started midwifery school the next year.
Since graduating, I have spent over 10 years working at community health centers around the country - from South Carolina, back to Chicago, the Los Angeles area, and now rural northern California amongst the beautiful redwoods. A couple of years into being a midwife I felt frustrated by the lack of opportunity that I had to move into leadership positions; not all organizations see the value that midwives and nurses can offer. I decided to go back to school "on the side" and completed a masters in Health Leadership at Western Governors University. That (along with being perhaps sometimes annoyingly persistent) helped me to move into positions where I grew and built an expertise in clinical operations, onboarding/training new clinicians, and trauma-informed care, along with continuing to deepen my diabetes and reproductive health knowledge. I am incredibly excited to use everything I have learned over the past 2 decades to help clinicians build more thoughtful practices, become a part of change-making within their organizations, and advance justice in healthcare and in the communities we serve.
In my free time I love to hike, lift weights, read, and just relax with beloved friends & family & animals!