Gabrielle Brennan

A Nurse, Midwife, and Personal Trainer based in Bentleigh, VIC, Gabrielle Brennan is a visionary leader rewriting the narrative around modern birth. Driven by a fierce determination to challenge unnecessary interventions and reverse the deskilling of birth workers, she advocates passionately for the power of physiological birth and the body’s innate capacity to labour effectively.

Through her specialised pregnancy bodywork, Gabrielle empowers women by working with fascia to release soft-tissue tension, re-connect with the nervous system and foster ideal fetal positioning before labour even begins, creating the physical and emotional conditions for spontaneous, empowered birth experiences.

Bernadette Lack

Bernadette is a midwife with 20 years of experience across large tertiary hospitals, Aboriginal communities, international aid, public homebirth and birth debriefing. She holds a Masters of Public Health and is trained as a somatic therapist. She is the creator of Reconnected Birthing™, a somatic and systemic methodology for birth workers. Through her business Core and Floor Restore, she works with practitioners and families across training, mentorship, and direct client care. She is honoured to be with us tonight

Nadine Richardson  - Keynote

Nadine Richardson became a doula to understand birth more deeply - everything else, has been a bonus. She's the founder of She Births®, a scientifically validated childbirth education program, with her randomised trial results published in the British Medical Journal 2016.

Nadine has spent over 20 years teaching birth education, working as a doula, yoga teacher, podcaster, speaker and recently published her first book.

She Births: Your practical guide to a beautiful birth (Murdoch Books / Allen & Unwin) is available now in Australia, Europe and the USA.

Based between Sydney and the Northern Rivers, Nadine's work centres on restoring the sacredness of birth and helping families create a beautiful birth, whatever unfolds.

She is currently working on two exciting creative projects that expand her work into the mainstream. Both projects plan to shift cultural attitudes and change representation of birth in the media.

Janinne Gliddon  - Keynote

Janinne  is a proud Badimia, Yamatji/Ballardong, Nyoongar senior woman who is currently a Senior Lecturer with the School of Indigenous Knowledges, Murdoch University WA. She has completed her Master's of Indigenous Health with Research and her project was on Katitjan Mindamarra Aboriginal Perinatal Navigators.

Janinne has lead the development of a doula/birth navigator education program which  creates a rich and critical enduring legacy of Aboriginal women’s cultural knowledges and practices.

For over 35 years Janinne has had a varied public service career in the  public housing field and since 2008, in the health sector, with a focus on women’s and maternal health and Indigenous health promotion. During her time at KEMH, Janinne initiated a highly successful volunteers’ program, which draws on a group of Aboriginal women who visit women transferred from homeland communities and the regions to Perth for childbirth or women’s health care.

In 2019 Janinne was awarded a prestigious Churchill Fellowship to conduct a study of Aboriginal doula programs in New Zealand, Canada, and the United States. Janinne has been a Chief Investigator on many research projects one being the NHMRC Birthing on Noongar Boodjar project and continues to provide high level advice to a range of Ngangk Yira Institute for Change projects.

Liz Newnham  - Keynote

Flinders University - Adelaide, South Australia

Elizabeth (Liz) Newnham is Associate Professor of Midwifery at Flinders University and a Fellow of the Australian College of Midwives. Over a 25-year career spanning clinical midwifery, academic leadership, research collaboration and theory development, she is internationally recognised for her work on humanising birth and advancing social justice in maternity care.