IBCLC / Lactation Consultants Online Course(s) & Continuing Education

Joy MacTavish, MA, IBCLC, RLC is an International Board Certified Lactation Consultant and certified Holistic Sleep Coach focusing on the intersections of infant feeding, sleep, and family well-being. Through her business, Sound Beginnings, she provides compassionate and evidence-based support to families in the greater Seattle area, and virtually everywhere else. She entered the perinatal field in 2007 as birth and postpartum doula, and childbirth and parenting educator. Joy holds a Master of Arts in Cultural Studies, graduate certificate in Gender, Women and Sexuality Studies, and two Bachelors degrees from the University of Washington. She enjoys combining her academic background, analytical skills, and passion for social justice into her personal and professional endeavors. Joy serves as an Advisory Committee Member and guest speaker for the GOLD Lactation Academy. When not working or learning, she can be found homeschooling, building LEGO with her children, or dreaming up her next big adventure.

Dr. Smaranda Nay is a Family Doctor, an IBCLC, a Personal Development Counselor and a mother. She has been studying Transactional Analysis psychotherapy since 2007 and is now in her second year of training to become a Somatic Experience therapist. She uses her knowledge to teach parents how to connect with their children and how to attune to their babies’ needs, both through individual counselling sessions and in classes. She is part of the Romanian Lactation Consultants Association and holds lactation education courses for future IBCLCs. She gives lactation counselling consults and holds breastfeeding and childcare courses.

She also holds personal development workshops for teenagers and adults, collaborating with non-formal education organizations and schools. She is particularly curious about the development of an attuned relationship between people and building intimacy and trust. Working with babies, she observes the parent-child connection and explores its potential in healing and growth, and how it impacts the future development of the individual. Working with teenagers and adults, she facilitates ways in which childhood disruptions can be healed in the present.

Shondra Mattos is an IBCLC, Entrepreneur & Speaker who delivers progressive, up-to-date lectures that challenge the current standard of Lactation Care. She is widely regarded as the go-to source for those looking for clear, understandable clinical knowledge.

In 2018, Shondra rebranded her lactation practice Mattos Lactation and provided location-independent lactation support to families across the country. In 2020 she founded Lactnerd LLC with the focus of helping healthcare providers gain knowledge while conquering the intimidation of learning the complex science of Lactation.

Through her companies- Lactnerd & Mattos Lactation - she provides tools, resources, education & mentoring to aspiring and established lactation professionals across the USA.

Cynthia Good, MS Clinical Psychology, is an International Board Certified Lactation Consultant, Clinical Counselor, author, consultant, and internationally recognized speaker. She is the Director of LifeCircle Consulting, LLC and is Certified in Acute Traumatic Stress Management. She is based in the Seattle, Washington, USA area, where she formerly served as an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Midwifery at Bastyr University where she taught counseling skills and is a therapist at Sandbox Therapy Group where she works with children, adults, and families. Cynthia has a strong interest in the emerging field of lactational psychology. She brings the evidence and insights of psychology and lactation consulting to her presentations, providing information and teaching skills that are essential to understanding and effectively responding to the complex psychosocial realities of families living in diverse contexts. The focus of her presentations includes communication skills and counseling techniques for perinatal care providers; equity, diversity, and inclusion; infant feeding rhetoric; perinatal mental health; perinatal loss, grief, and trauma; ethics; serving as an expert witness in lactation-related court cases; cultural competence and humility; vitamin D; and more.

Paulina Erices is the mother of three multicultural Latino children and Project Director for Lifespan Local. Paulina earned her BS in Psychology from the Pennsylvania State University, a MS in Organizational leadership from the University of Denver and is completing her PhD in Health and Behavioral Sciences at the University of Colorado - Denver. Paulina has over 18 years of experience working with families with young children. As a Maternal Child Health specialist for Jefferson County Public Health, she developed a NICU follow-up home visitation program and the pediatric emergency preparedness plan, co-founded and coordinated the Conectando Network (former Adelante Jeffco), established community navigation and lactation support groups focused on the Latino Spanish speaking community, and lead other initiatives to support leadership and partnerships among communities and organizations. During the COVID-19 pandemic, she managed the new program Whole Community Inclusion to ensure the pandemic response and recovery implementation included health equity practices that recognize the needs and the strengths of priority populations in the county. Her areas of current work include promoting perinatal and infant mental health along the continuum of care; building community capacity to navigate health and education systems; facilitating organizational change to embrace linguistic and culturally responsive practices; and establishing community-placed participatory programs to strengthen communities. She likes to be with people, learn from and with others, and connect passions for meaningful work.

In 2014, Ghanaian-American mother and photographer, Vanessa Simmons authored the Normalize Breastfeeding™ movement to address the taboo of public breastfeeding in modern society. Her mission was to document diverse variations of normal infant feeding, across cultures and delivery methods of human milk. Through Simmons' viral blog, her photographic speaking tour, philanthropy, and artistic inspiration; she mobilized and motivated thousands of women to share their breastfeeding photos on social media. After a very successful first year, she reached out to the Mayor of San Diego to proclaim June 27th the International Day to Normalize Breastfeeding, in support of the worldwide anniversary event! Lactation educator and activist, Vanessa Simmons, is now speaking out at conferences and events across the country to eliminate general miseducation around the topic. On the Normalize Breastfeeding podcast, she interviews guests about experiences, advocacy, and activism within the infant feeding community worldwide. As a public speaker, Simmons is focused on transforming the modern mindset around the natural, yet difficult task of breastfeeding. Vanessa trains lactation professionals to better understand and connect with millennial families online. She creatively motivates and inspires families to be mindful that this is a time to be cherished, and although fleeting, it is also a time to reinvent what will be acceptable for feeding generations of the future. Simmons is an aspiring author and resides with her supportive husband and three children in San Diego, CA.

Lucy Ruddle is an IBCLC in the UK. She has a thriving private Practice on the South Coast and a busy Facebook page known for it's funny, relevant, and informative memes about breastfeeding and parenting. Lucy qualified in 2018 after 5 years of volunteering as a peer supporter and later as a breastfeeding counselor for a national breastfeeding helpline. She has written a book on relactation, called "Relactation - A guide to rebuilding your milk supply." which was published by Praeclarus Press in January 2020. Lucy's interest in relactation started after she went through the process herself for her eldest baby, and her drive to qualify as an IBCLC came from a second challenging breastfeeding journey with her younger son who was unable to latch for several months. Aside from lactation, Lucy holds a diploma in Child Psychology and worked for 15 years in early years settings, both with the children and in roles supporting parents. She prides herself on her listening focused approach to lactation support, and sees it as the key to good practice in her own work.

Kirsten Hannan is an Australian trained and registered Osteopath with 17 years of clinical practice experience, with a particular interest in pregnancy and postpartum care and working with babies and children of all ages. She has experience in treating babies for a variety of issues, including latching and feeding difficulties, birth trauma, neck tension, flat head syndrome and digestive issues. Kirsten uses a variety of osteopathic treatment methods, including cranial osteopathy. Her passion for education and helping children to develop in the best possible way led her to further her knowledge of breastfeeding and she qualified as an International Board Certified Lactation Consultant (IBCLC) in July 2017. She enjoys integrating the very best of bodywork and evidence-based lactation care and support to help mums and their babies. Kirsten is an author and reviewer for the International Journal of Osteopathic Medicine, a member of Osteopathy Australia and registered with the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency (AHPRA) and International Board of Lactation Consultant Examiners (IBLCE). 

Starting in 1971 as a LPN, Nikki has worked in clinics, homes, city and county health departments, hospitals, intensive care units, medical schools, and universities. Her focus shifted from intensive care to breastfeeding and public health in 1975. She has worked in person and virtually. She is a nurse, a lactation consultant, a bodyworker, an infant massage instructor, a public speaker, the author of two books and a teacher. Her favorite things now are being a grandmother, learning to grow vegetables, playing old-time and cajun guitar, and walking in beautiful places.

Wilai Rojjanasrirat, PhD, RN, IBCLC, FILCA, FAAN is a Professor and Director of Research and Scholarship at Graceland University’s School of Nursing in Independence, Missouri. Her background is in midwifery and maternal and child health nursing.

She is an international board certified lactation consultant. She earned her Bachelor’s in Nursing and Midwifery from Thailand and Master’s and Doctorate and Post-Doctorate in Nursing from the University of Kansas. She teaches in graduate nursing program. Her research focuses on promoting and supporting breastfeeding, psychometric development, and educational outcome evaluation.

Using telehealth in providing lactation support, evaluation of the breastfeeding outcomes among late-preterm, near term, and term infants, and evaluation of the Business Case for Breastfeeding Program’s impact among employed breastfeeding mothers in Kansas are among some of the research projects.

Dr. Rojjanasrirat has multiple publications and recently contributed to a book chapter on Employment and Breastfeeding in Wambach & Spencer, Breastfeeding and Human Lactation, 6th edition in 2021. She served as a former president of the Pi Eta Chapter of the Nursing Honor Society, a board member of the KC Board of Directors of Kansas City, Kansas, and a former president of the Greater Kansas City Lactation Consultant Association for several years.

Liz Brooks is a private practice International Board Certified Lactation Consultant (IBCLC) and licensed lawyer, with expertise in criminal, administrative, non-profit, ethics, and lactation-related law. Liz offers in-home lactation consultations, and bedside care and teaching in two Baby-Friendly-designated hospitals.

She has been a leader in organizations for IBCLCs, breastfeeding promotion, and non-profit human milk banking. She authored the only textbook on legal and ethical issues for the IBCLC, and writes on health care ethics, equity, and conflict-of-interest in several books, blogs, and peer-reviewed journals.

She is a popular international conference speaker, offering practical tips with wit and wisdom for anyone who works with lactating and human milk-using families. Liz self-identifies as a cisgender hetero white woman with unearned privilege, and uses she/her/hers pronouns.

Tom Johnston is unique as a midwife and lactation consultant and the father of eight breastfed children. Recently retired after 27 years in the US Army, he is now an Assistant Professor of Nursing at Methodist University where he teaches, among other things, Maternal-Child Nursing and Nutrition. You may have heard him at a number of conferences at the national level, to include the Association of Woman’s Health and Neonatal Nurses (AWHONN), the International Lactation Consultant’s Association (ILCA), or perhaps at dozens of other conferences across the country. In his written work he routinely addresses fatherhood and the role of the father in the breastfeeding relationship and has authored a chapter on the role of the father in breastfeeding for “Breastfeeding in Combat Boots: A survival guide to breastfeeding in the military”.