Nia Harris is a storyteller, land steward, birth-worker, and founder of community health practice Healing Us Evergreen. Her community work centers on devising restorative approaches to socioeconomic health disparities through cultural anthropological, public health, and social justice frameworks. She aims to build on existing discourses and advance perspectives of people and communities in reciprocal relationship with the Earth, our natural resources, and one another.

Nia is also a doctoral student in Cultural Anthropology at Duke University, pursuing certificates in African and African American Studies and Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies. She earned her Bachelor of Arts degree in Global Public Health and Anthropology with summa cum laude honors at New York University. An interdisciplinary Black Feminist and Womanist scholar, Nia creates at the nexus of race, gender, health, ecology, and reproductive justice in the U.S. South, Pacific Northwest, and beyond.

Nia is a southern queer Black femme of African/American and Native American descent with deep roots in Eastern North Carolina (Catawba, Tuscarora, Saponi, and Lumbee lands).

Alexandria (Ali) Buchanan is a certified full-spectrum doula, childbirth educator, and mental health advocate with nearly a decade of experience supporting families through birth, postpartum, and everything the system didn’t prepare them for.

Her commitment to underserved communities is both professional and personal. After experiencing PPD with her first born and then losing everything to Hurricane Irma in 2017 during her second, Ali navigated pregnancy on Medicaid while rebuilding her family’s life from the ground up. These experiences brought her into birth work and reshaped how she teaches birth preparation and postpartum recovery for families whose circumstances don’t fit the standard model.

Ali holds a Master of Science in Higher Education & Leadership from Eastern Illinois University, where her thesis examined Ethnic Lesbian Identity Development within African American and Latinx communities, and a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology from Miami University. She’s always been a staunch advocate for underrepresented groups whether mentoring pre-health students as a UF faculty member or teaching families who want culturally-congruent, trauma-informed care.

Her community work includes serving as a volunteer, doula trainer, and now social media marketing manager & podcast co-host for the Community Doula Alliance. Previously, Ali worked as the Operations Coordinator for Evidence Based Birth for 3.5 years, participated on the Lactation Equity Committee at Nurturely and Oregon’s Black Futures Maternal Health Work Group, and also leading the Latch On Breastfeeding Awareness & Support Event in Tigard, Oregon among other community-based events. She has taken her lived-experiences and entrepreneurial knowledge to build upon her passion within birth work.

Ali has spent almost two decades at the intersection of clinical knowledge and community reality — advising college students to become health professionals, training families and doulas alike to advocate, adapt, and show up fully prepared, no matter what the system hands them.

When she’s not working, you can find her enjoying a cup of coffee while on an adventure with her two rambunctious kiddos and partner.