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. 

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The Board of Directors

Samantha Garcia Gagnon
President

Samantha is a doula, birth photographer, doula trainer and a business consultant. She has always been known as someone who loves to wear multiple hats, and adding the big hat as President for the DSA is another role she is so happy to hold. 
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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 or having fun with her three kids. Samantha originates from the Philippines and made Canada home in 2007 when she moved to marry her highschool sweetheart. They now live in Pitt Meadows BC.

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. 

Michelle Short
​​Secretary

Michelle lives in historic Fort Langley with her husband, two daughters, their sweet senior pup and spunky old cat. Michelle and her crew can be found walking the Fort to Fort trail, hanging out at the local dog parks, or digging in the garden. The call to birth work came to Michelle after her own empowering home births came to fruition in 2014 & 2017.
Michelle completed her DONA birth doula training in 2018, and just recently completed her MotherWit postpartum doula training. She adores this vibrant, loving doula community that has welcomed her with open arms. The DSA mirrors her values and belief in birth as a trans-formative right of passage, and that every family's path to parenthood is unique and beautiful in it's own right. Michelle can't wait to spend her time as a DSA board member spreading the love and support that this inclusive village has to offer.

Naomi Reuveny
​Treasurer

Naomi is a fertility and birth doula serving the greater Vancouver region. She is currently working towards becoming an infant and pregnancy loss and postpartum doula. 
​Naomi passionately believes that everyone should have access to knowledge which will empower them to make their own informed decisions. For this reason, she regularly creates and facilitates reproductive health workshops for her surrounding community.
Naomi also believes in the importance of providing culturally appropriate maternal care and strongly feels that everyone should have someone advocating and supporting them as they journey into parenthood. For this reason, she is part of the Nesting Doula Collective which provides free and subsidized doula support to people who are racially marginalized.

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.

Rachel Simmet
Director of Fundraising

Rachel Simmet has been Postpartum Doula since 2018 serving families in the Vancouver and Burnaby area. She first saw the importance of postpartum care after assisting her sister who had twin girls in 2016. She is now passionate about serving families with multiples and the unique challenges that accompany this transition. Previous to being on the DSA board Rachel was on the events committee of The Shanti Uganda Society where she assisted in putting their large gala fundraiser that raised money for maternal and infant health in Uganda. She is excited to be a part of the DSA board to be able to grow the Doula Fund so that even more families can have access to doula care. ​

Stephanie Rattenbury
Director of Publicity + Promotions

Stephanie is a birth doula who lives in Tsawwassen with her husband and their 6 year old, 4 ½ year old
and 3 year old. Stephanie was bit by the “birth bug” during her pregnancy and birth with her first child.
In between chasing after her kids and attending births, Stephanie
utilizes her Marketing diploma in her work as a marketing manager and social media strategist. She loves being creative and finding new ways to shine light on the important role doulas play within a
family’s journey to parenthood (and beyond!) and is looking forward to doing the same in her role as Director of  Publicity and Promotions.

Janice Miles
Director of Communications

Janice is one of our Board Members who doesn't live in the Lower Mainland or Fraser Valley, 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. 

Current Opening:

The DSA is currently looking for a new Indigenous Doulas/Families Advocate. If you are interested, please contact dsapresidentbc@gmail.com

Regional Representatives.

Jay Duncan
Vancouver Island

Jay has been a Birth Doula and Childbirth Educator for the past 17 years. She credits the birth of her two children in 1996 and 1998 as the fuel that ignited her journey into the Birth World as a career choice. She is constantly humbled and honored to be asked by families to help support them through their private and personal birthing journeys. Through her experience of working with a variety of families, Jay has expanded her breadth and scope of addressing the varied needs of different families before, during and after their births. This has made her a multifaceted Doula with a keen interest in working with birthers of colour, transgender families and immigrant families. Jay lives in beautiful Victoria BC and has been an enthusiastic member of the DSA for many years. Making sure that all families have access to experienced, compassionate and objective care during their labour and birth experiences, no matter the socioeconomic status is very important to Jay.  DSA's volunteer Doula Program was an important factor in her choice to become a member. Jay is excited to expand her range of DSA involvement and become the liason between DSA membership and Birth Workers on the Island.  ​

Robyn Hooper
Interior BC

Robyn Hooper is a certified CD(DONA) birth doula (labour support) professional providing support from prenatal to postpartum period to mothers and their birth partners. Robyn completed DONA (Doulas of North America) certified training with Doula Essentials. She has also completed additional courses and training in breastfeeding, advanced comfort measures,  ‘when survivors give birth’ course, infant and pregnancy loss support, childbirth education, and prenatal classes.  Robyn moved to Revelstoke for the great community, the outdoors, and environmental work. She is passionate about working with mothers and their birth partners to support them through the ‘journey’ of labour and birth – however that looks for each family/individual.

Current Opening:

The DSA is currently looking for a Representative for Northern BC. 
​ If you are interested, please contact dsapresidentbc@gmail.com

Directors at Large.

Kasia Machelak

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 where she spearheaded the team for two years. In 2020, she shifted to a director at large to make more time for her family.

Bev Watson

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.

 Dasha Boichenko

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.

Alyssa Kellert

Alyssa is a birth photographer, filmmaker and doula. She started attending births as a photographer after having her second child, and soon decided she needed to do more to educate and support her birth clients. After starting to attend births as a doula, she noticed a big change in her clients’ lives, not only in birth, but in advocating for themselves, getting second opinions and asking questions about evidence based care in all areas of their lives. Alyssa is also a breastfeeding educator and loves to continually be learning about all things birth.
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Alyssa is married, a mother to three children and one rescue pup. 

Tania Campagnolo

After becoming a young mom at 18, Tania started supporting other young moms in their own journeys, but it wasn’t until many years later, after a friend’s birth, that she realized she was a Doula all along. She now has three children of her own (with 19.5 years between the first and second,) works as a volunteer Child Passenger Safety Technician, and volunteers her time in the community of North Vancouver as much as life allows it. Tania believes that our role as Doulas in pregnancy and beyond has great importance to the future of all growing families. Tania says that her favourite part of the work we do is supporting the instinctual power within every birthing person and seeing them witness themselves in that power as they birth their babies.

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​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!