Victoria Reese, MPA

Victoria Reese is the founder of ChangeWorks LLC ~ Coaching & Nonprofit Consulting a company specializing in building human and organizational capacity. With 30 years of mission-driven work encompassing equity, social justice, and expanding economic opportunities for vulnerable populations, Victoria has been at the forefront of many community development issues. She has developed many programs, obtained a federal charter to operate a credit union, and spent 4+ years focusing her energy on creating strategies to decrease disparities in maternal and infant child health. She has a niche for moving programs from inception to fruition. She is actively engaged in the community serving on numerous agency boards, committees, coalitions, and grantmaking bodies. Victoria has experience with organizations at every stage of the nonprofit lifecycle and specializes in individual and peer coaching, organizational development, strategic planning, board development, fund development, and program development strategies. Victoria holds a Master’s Degree in Public Administration from Western Michigan University and has two passions: Building capacity within nonprofits and awakening the purpose in women enabling them to walk boldly and authentically in the world. She is a certified professional coach, and has wide-ranging facilitation instruction from Thinking Collaborative and the Interaction Institute for Social Change and holds a certificate in fund raising management from The Fund Raising School.

Session Summary:

Black Mothers’ Breastfeeding Association has designed the Birth & Breastfeeding Leadership Institute, a virtual national leadership development program for emerging, developing and established leaders.  The Institute builds community leadership at the intersection of racial equity and maternal-child-health with a special interest in birth and breastfeeding outcomes.  The Institute hosted regional community conversations from each of the 5 United States regions with a diverse group of Black maternal child health leaders.  These conversations helped to inform the core competencies and topics for the Institute’s curriculum. BMBFA has also published an overview of these conversations in a publicly accessible document.

Learning Objectives:

1. State the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats of the landscape for the Black maternal-child-health community.
2. Explain regional trends and points of pride for Black maternal-child-health communities.
3. Describe how the curriculum for the Birth and Breastfeeding Leadership Institute was informed by centering the community voice.