Linda Jones

Co-Fouonder and Executive Director

Black Women Birthing Justice

Linda Jones is a Birth and Postpartum Doula, Photographer, and mother of two, grandmother of four, and great-grandmother of four, who lives in Oakland, CA. She founded and owned Waddle and Swaddle Baby Boutique and Birth Resource Center in Berkeley, CA from 2000 to 2010 and has been a part of the natural birth advocacy and reproductive justice community in the Bay Area for over three decades. She was one of the founders of a volunteer doula group that provided services for low-income, uninsured, and teen moms who birthed with midwives at Alta Bates Hospital in Berkeley in 1991. Linda is the Executive Director and one of the co-founders of Black Women Birthing Justice (BWBJ) (http://blackwomenbirthingjustice.com/) (2011-present) and co-author of Battling Over Birth: Black Women and the Maternal Health Care Crisis in California. She is also the Doula Coordinator for the BWBJ Doula Collective and a facilitator/trainer for the BWBJ Black Doula Training Program. Linda’s recent work has been centered around training and mentoring women of color to be doulas for low-income women of color. This began in 2014 when she was a part of the East Bay Community Birth Support Project. This group has since morphed into the Roots of Labor Birth Collective (RLBC) ](http://rootsoflaborbc.com/) (2016-present). Linda was a part of the group that helped formulate this organization and hire the people that are now members of the collective. Her current role in the collective is as a support person. Linda was part of the UC San Francisco Preterm Birth Initiative Community Advisory Board (UCSF Preterm Birth Initiative-CAB) (http://pretermbirth.ucsf.edu/) for six years (2016-2022). In this capacity, she reviewed grant requests and co-authored research studies on the impact of preterm birth on women of color. Linda is the Director of Community Collaboration and Board Member for Mothers for Mothers Postpartum Justice (MPJ) (m2mpostpartum) (2020-present), working on a program that provides restaurant meals to postpartum women for six weeks after the birth of their child (NOURISH). This program supports BIPOC women and BIPOC-owned restaurants. MPJ collaborates with established organizations in the Bay Area to address disparities during the perinatal period. Linda also coordinates, assembles, and distributes postpartum care products to new mothers through the NURTURE program. Linda is also a consultant and photographer with BelovedBirth Black Centering (2020-present) at Highland Hospital (http://www.alamedahealthsystem.org/family-birthing-center/black-centering/). She helps develop curriculum for their sessions and attends several to offer input on Reproductive Justice and doula work. Additionally, she provides maternity or birth photos for participants at no charge and coordinates providing participants with a free doula. Linda feels that her current work with these organizations fulfills the legacy of her work over the past three decades. Helping families bring babies into the world and supporting them during the early postpartum period has also contributed to her healing from her own traumatic birth experiences.