Co-founder and Trainer/Consultant of Heartland PMAD Consultants, llc, serving as an expert in perinatal mental health. Founder, Lead Therapist and Clinical LCSW Supervisor of Sage Tree Therapy, llc a private psychotherapy practice specializing in perinatal mood and anxiety disorders, birth and pregnancy trauma, infant and pregnancy loss, fertility challenges, and other women’s issues. Executive Board member of the Hyperemesis Education and Research Foundation. Adjunct Faculty Professor at Washington University Brown School of Social Work.

Kim has been serving perinatal women for 23 years as a childbirth educator, birth and postpartum doula, and perinatal mental health peer specialist. Besides being the Co-Founder/Co-Owner of Heartland PMAD Consultants she is the Senior Community Outreach Coordinator at SSM St. Mary’s. In this position, Kim is responsible for The MOMS Line Programs which includes recruiting, training, and managing over seventy volunteers that provide peer telephone support and peer led group support for perinatal women in the St. Louis Metro Area.

Kim’s first passion of educating expectant families continues to be one her top priorities. She can be found most Monday nights teaching Calm Confident Childbirth, her proprietary birth education curriculum which includes the following topics; physiologic birth, evidence-based practices related to labor and delivery, parental wellbeing, relaxation, and mindfulness.

Kim also serves as the Secretary of the Wise Women Council at Jamaa Birth Village—Missouri’s first equal access midwifery care center.

Dr. Diane Sanford is a psychologist, author and educator whose work in women’s health psychology has received local, national and international attention. In practice for 30+ years, she is an internationally recognized expert in perinatal mood and anxiety disorders. She is co-author of Life Will Never Be the Same: The Real Mom’s Postpartum Survival Guide (2010), Midlife and Menopause: A Celebration of Women’s Health (1998) and Postpartum Survival Guide (1994). Her newest book, Stress Less Live Better for Pregnancy, Postpartum and Early Motherhood is coming out in 2019.

For the past 30 years, she has studied mind-body and integrative health, and the interplay of hormones, mood and situational stress on women’s health and adjustment across the lifecycle and specifically during the perinatal period. She served on both the Boards of Postpartum Support International and Depression After Delivery in the early 90’s when public awareness and education about PMAD’s was scarce. With Dr. Anne Dunnewold, their 1994 book Postpartum Survival Guide was one of the first books to discuss PMAD’s and describe self-care strategies and clinical interventions for women suffering from clinical conditions. She is a recognized media expert on this topic and has appeared in interviews from print to radio to TV to online publications including NPR and Good Morning America.

Dr. Sanford has spent the last 15 years studying mindfulness-based skills to reduce stress, anxiety and depression, and promote health and well-being. In 2012, she opened the Midwest Mind Body Health Center where she provides counseling and classes in her mindful stress reduction program “Stress Less. Live Better.” Her newest book, “Stress Less. Live Better: 5 Simple Steps to Ease Anxiety, Worry and Self-Criticism” that is a step by step guide to her mindful stress reduction program was published by Praeclarus Press in 2018.

Dr. Sanford obtained her Masters and PhD degrees in clinical psychology from Syracuse University. She completed her internship in 1984 at the Oklahoma Health Sciences Center. She is an adjunct faculty member of St. Louis University’s School of Public Health, Department of Community Relations, and on the Medical Advisory Board of BabyCenter.com.

Erin is a Licensed Professional Counselor and has worked in mental health for over 15 years. She received her Master’s degree in Art Therapy and Clinical Counseling from Southwestern College in Santa Fe, NM. Erin is currently a therapist for the Women’s Reproductive Maternal Mental Health program at St. Louis Behavioral Medicine Institute and specializes in the treatment of Perinatal Mood and Anxiety Disorders (PMAD’s). Prior to her newest adventure, Erin was the sole therapist for Mercy’s Mother Baby Intensive Outpatient Program, supporting both pregnant and postpartum women as they transition into motherhood. She has advanced certification in the treatment of PMAD’s and values the opportunity she has been given to journey with women and families as they move toward healing.

In addition to her interest in working with perinatal mood and anxiety disorders, Erin also has extensive experience in suicide intervention and prevention. 10 years ago, Erin spearheaded an annual suicide awareness and prevention conference for one of the major health systems in the community, touching thousands of members of the community to provide hope after a suicide loss. As a survivor of suicide loss, Erin is committed to helping men and women process their tragic loss and learn to pick up the pieces after losing a loved one to suicide.

Erin is passionate about empowering those she works with to be accountable to themselves for the changes they want to create in their lives. Brene Brown said “we are all hard-wired for struggle” and Erin believes it is her role to hold space for those struggling, so they may feel seen and heard. She works to meet her clients where they are at and to provide them with reminder that they are not alone, they are not to blame and in time, they will be well.

Brittany “Tru” Kellman, CPM, CD, CLC is a Midwife, CEO & Principal of Brittany “Tru” Kellman Consulting Firm & Founding Director of Jamaa Birth Village, a non-profit Midwifery & Doula organization in Ferguson. Tru felt her calling and dug deeper into traditional midwifery care after two traumatic non-medically indicated c-sections as a teen. After her successful and healing VBAC2 homebirth, she committed her life to being the change that she wanted to see.

Melanie McKean, D.O., Ph.D. is a psychiatrist for St. Louis Behavioral Medicine Institute, as well as an adjunct faculty member at Saint Louis University. She earned her medical and graduate degrees from Oklahoma State University-Center for Health Sciences, College of Osteopathic Medicine. She completed a combined Internal Medicine-Psychiatry residency at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago. She is board-certified by the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology. Dr. McKean has clinical expertise in women’s mental health and primary care, and she specializes in the treatment of mood and anxiety disorders in women of reproductive age. Her areas of interest include preconceptual counseling, antepartum and postpartum mood and anxiety disorders, female sexual dysfunction, pelvic pain, and infertility.