About the DSA.

The DSA is a non-profit association promoting Perinatal Doula support for families in British Columbia, Canada.

Our Mission

Our mission is to raise awareness about the role of Perinatal (fertility, birth, postpartum, loss) Doulas within BC, to provide a referral service to BC families, and to deliver continuing education to our members, health care professionals, and the public at large.

Training and Standards

All DSA doulas have completed an approved training course and are required to pursue ongoing education.  The DSA also has a strict confidentiality policy, a standardized Code of Ethics, and Standards of Practice that are followed by all DSA doulas. 

---

The Board of Directors

Kasia Machelak
President

Kasia came into the doula world in 2010 after she had her first of three daughters. She wanted to share the transformative experience she had with others in her community. Kasia has taken many different forms of Doula training and continues to love learning about birth and about the ancient wisdom of supporting families in their time of transition.

In 2018, Kasia joined the board of directors as the president. In this role Kasia hopes to foster a feeling of abundance in our Doula community, that there is a place for all of us to practice our art of investing in and caring about the people we support.

Katrina Fortin
Vice President

After two "very cool but not easy" birth experiences, Katrina was spurred towards becoming a doula. In 2016, Katrina  took her first doula training and has been committed to continuing her education ever since.  Katrina hosts many community events to help parents build a circle of support throughout their parenting journey.  Outside of motherhood and doulahood, you can find Katrina in nature, singing with the trees.
Katrina has been the DSA Vice President since 2018. Her favourite thing about being a part of the board is making connections with other doulas and helping to build a stronger birth community. 

Brianna (Bree) Allen
​Secretary

Bree first moved to British Columbia to pursue her undergraduate's degree in Zoology at the University of British Columbia. Upon completing her degree in 2013, Bree's interests migrated towards the birthing community where she found her true passion. She's a dedicated birth doula with background training in postpartum work, breastfeeding, infant CPR, communications, and more. She joined the DSA as a secretary in 2017 and has loved every moment interacting with members and sharing a love for birth. 

Jaime Walker
Treasurer

Jaime is a Birth and Postpartum Doula and is working towards her Child Birth Educator certification. She is DONA certified and believes strongly in supporting mothers in their preferred maternity care choices. She is a mother of two busy little people; an 8 year old son and a 10 year old step-daughter. After experiencing not the best birth, Jaime found out about Doulas and started to realize what a different birth she could have had if someone was there solely for her, advocating for her. It took her a few years to get up the courage to make the leap, but Jaime is loving the role she can play in a woman’s journey to becoming a mother. She feels passionately about empowering women, supporting and encouraging their partners (making dad look good!), and being a part of creating new families. She feels strongly about volunteering to help women who can’t afford a Doula and is an active Volunteer Doula through the DSA. ​

Rotem Zaslavski
Referral Coordinator

Rotem joined the Board of Directors as the Referral Coordinator in April 2017, only a short while after she immigrated with her family from Israel. After having a fantastic experience birthing her daughter in December 2015, Rotem became more and more interested in supporting expectant families, but since the plan was to move to Canada this idea was placed on hold until 2017 when she finally took her Birth Doula training.
Her role as Referral Coordinator makes her the main point of contact for queries from the public and referrals from health care professionals. She enjoys interacting with people, and loves being able to assist families through the DSA's Volunteer Doula Program by matching them with doulas. 
Rotem holds a BA in Psychology, and since becoming a doula she continues expanding her knowledge in breastfeeding, supporting through loss, home births and more. Rotem recently completed her HypnoBirthing® Practitioner training and will soon start teaching in Vancouver.

Feona Lim
Indigenous Doulas/Families Advocate

Feona, whose father immigrated from Malaysia in the early 70s  and mother a native to Canada, grew up in Alberta and was in foster care at 12 and became a permanent ward of the government by 15 . Feona's time in care is most likely one of her main drives in advocating for better support within the First Nations community, and for all women and children in general.  Feona became a doula after caring for her father who was dying. She had no idea how transformative dying could be and along with her sisters, found the words to best describe this experience as " watching birth in reverse".  After he passed away. Feona thought her calling was death work but couldn't find a local course to take . Instead Feona contacted Gloria Lemay who invited her into her home, and into birth work . As she has come to learn, birth and death are so intertwined and it was no accident that the path lead her where it has - advocating and supporting the amazing families she has met along the way. All the sacred mothers who understand and accept that simply by creating life they have also created death as this is the spiral of life. 

Samantha Garcia Gagnon
Director of Publications + Publicity

Samantha is a doula, birth photographer, doula trainer (bebo mia) and a business consultant. She has always been known as someone who loves to wear multiple hats, and adding the hat of Director of Publications + Publicity for the DSA is another role she is so happy to hold. 
Samantha is a big believer in birth being able to change the world and because of this, she is committed to supporting families towards better births as well as supporting more and more doulas experiencing success in their businesses to build the lives they want, and ultimately, be able to help more families towards the births and postpartum times they desire. When Samantha isn't busy doula-ing a family, she is busy doula-ing doulas!

Janice Miles
Director of Communications

Janice is one of our Board Members who doesn't live in the Lower Mainland or Fraser Valley. She is our Vancouver Island Representative, living and working out of Victoria. Janice is a DONA certified Birth and postpartum doula, breastfeeding counselor and certified Gentlebirth Instructor, as well as the very happy mother of six! She loves her kids and loves being a doula.

Janice is the person behind our very awesome Facebook page and always finds the best resources to share with our online community. 

 Dasha Boichenko
Fundraising

Dasha is a birth doula, a yoga teacher, and a photographer.  She answered the call to being a doula after years of working with pregnant yoga clients, family and friends. She finds this work incredibly fulfilling, and her favourite aspect is learning from the families she gets to serve, and being witness to such an intimate moment in the life of a family.
Apart from her role of fundraising, Dasha is a DSA volunteer doula as well, and hopes to keep taking on one volunteer client a month as making this service available to those in need is very close to her heart. It is a powerful feeling – to love what you do, and to see it make a change.

Bev Watson
Director

Bev attended her first DONA birth doula training in 2008. As the mother of 5 and grandmother of 7 (and counting!), the birth process has become very significant for her.

As a member of the DSA and a director on the BOD , Bev is constantly amazed at the passion, commitment and level of caring that doulas extend to the people they support. Our DSA strives to provide knowledge and opportunities for doulas to expand and improve their role within this process.

Bev's  role as a Director is a support position. She attends meetings, helps make decisions, participates in set-ups and take-downs for work shops, trade shows, etc. Bev is also responsible for the name tags you receive as a member of the DSA.

Emily Janes
Director

Emily is currently living on the Sunshine Coast in Powell River with her husband, son(4), daughter(2) and the family dog. Together they hike, enjoy the coastline, and travel.​

Emily holds a Bachelor of Community Rehabilitation and diplomas in both Disability Studies and Community Leadership. and along with birthwork she has a passion for community outreach and engagement. Emily is now teaching Prenatal Education classes and hopes her work with the DSA is a step towards broadening the doula network, and bringing the normalcy in birth to small towns province wide. 

---

​Interested in joining us?

As a volunteer-run association, we are always interested in hearing from any of our members who are interested in joining the board.  Whether you'd like to help with specific projects or would like to learn more about what it means to be a board member, please  contact us.

DSA members are also welcome to attend any of our monthly
​board meetings.

In our organization, we recognize that change is constant and we welcome the opportunity to have new members contributing to the growth of the DSA. We look forward to hearing from YOU!