As a part of our Meet the MANA Board series, we've asked Treesa McLean, Director of Public Affairs, to tell us a bit about how she became a midwife and her goals and vision for MANA.

I am a Licensed Midwife in the San Francisco Bay area, with a homebirth practice, Birth With Treesa and I am co-owner of Bay Area Midwifery, A Community Wellness and Birth Center. I live with my husband Charlie, a game publisher; three dogs; and two cats in the town of Hayward. My son Brian, his wife Justine, my daughter Meghan, and her partner Cam all live nearby in Oakland. I am a California native, as are my mom and grandma.

My first job out of high school was working at a women's health clinic, where I learned about advocacy and autonomy. Not long after, I read the book Choices in Childbirth and learned about midwives. What I learned in that book became the foundation of many choices I made in my life. When I became pregnant at 19 my husband and I decided to have a homebirth with midwives. After my son was born, I trained as a "labor coach" (what doulas were called in 1983!) The long journey to midwifery practice included becoming a doula, having another baby, becoming certified as a childbirth educator and a postpartum doula, training as a breastfeeding peer counselor, and working as a representative for California Association of Midwives. I trained locally with a midwife for over 3 years, and completed a clinical internship in Bali. In 2010 I was licensed as a midwife in California. I have had both a homebirth and birth center practice since becoming licensed. I am also the VP of California Families for Access to Midwives, an active and effective consumer organization.

I am the Director of Public Affairs (DPA) for Midwives Alliance of North America. I am working with Midwives Alliance of North America because I believe it holds a unique place in our country - a bridge to all types of midwives; a volunteer-run organization; and now transforming itself to even better reflect the ideals and values of its members. I personally believe the future of MANA is in the student midwives of today. I think that we need to reach out to a young, diverse, creative body of student midwives and invite them to participate, to invigorate a vibrant Midwives Alliance that will continue to support midwives and midwifery research long into the future.

Public Affairs has its hand in nearly all the communication that the Midwives Alliance has with the public, other organizations and the press. Public Affairs creates and distributes our new twice monthly "MANA News" email newsletter and maintains online communities on Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest. As the DPA it is my goal to establish and maintain transparent communication and create avenues for communication to and FROM the membership. I work alongside Jill Breen, CPM, CLC and Jeanette McCulloch, IBCLC, on the communications team. We have also held online social media workshops and have co-facilitated Town Hall Community Meetings with Amy Smith, LM, CPM, Director of Professional Development.

As with all of MANA the Division of Public Affairs could not function without our volunteers. Our Online Community Managers are the heart of our social media presence and directly interact with Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest.They are the nuts and bolts of these communities, monitoring conversations, adding in new content and facilitating the sharing of information to other groups and organizations. They are amazing volunteers and yet are also almost invisible! We want to thank them so much for their time, energy and support of MANA. Each year we look for new volunteers to train for this work and this is a perfect way to support MANA and learn great skills at the same time.

Also working with the DPA is Marie White, who provides administrative support, actually creating the beautiful MANA News emails you receive. Marie is the person we call and say, "Can you make it happen?!?"

As we move forward, I hope to add student midwife interns to our volunteer team, to work on creating a historical timeline of MANA for our website, to continue to update our Midwifery Law State by State with the Director of Health Policy Colleen Donovan-Batson, and also to archive midwifery and homebirth resources across America. If you are interested in volunteering with MANA in Public Affairs, or in another area please email me - I would love to discuss the opportunities with you!