Develop Leaders
We help patients, families, and community members build confidence, readiness, and leadership skills through certification, mentorship, and lived experience development opportunities.
About MoMMAs Voices
Changing Maternal Health Through Partnership, Leadership, and Lived Experience
MoMMAs Voices is a national maternal health organization dedicated to ensuring that patients, families, healthcare teams, and community partners work together to create safer, more equitable care experiences.
Through lived experience leadership, patient partnership, and implementation support, we help transform stories into meaningful systems change.
Why we exist
Because the People Most Affected by Healthcare Should Help Shape It
For too long, patients and families have been asked to share their experiences after harm has already occurred. Their stories are heard. Their pain is acknowledged. But too often, they are excluded from the decisions, systems, and improvement efforts that shape what happens next.
MoMMAs Voices was created to change that — so that lived experience is recognized as expertise, and patients, families, healthcare professionals, and community leaders work together to improve care.
"Lived experience is expertise — and it belongs in the room where care is shaped."
Our approach
Building Bridges Between Experience and Action
Real change happens when lived experience is connected to leadership, partnership, and implementation. We work across maternal health systems to ensure that patients and families are not only heard — but meaningfully included in shaping better outcomes.
Support Organizations
We help healthcare systems, public health teams, and maternal health organizations create sustainable structures for meaningful patient and family partnership.
Strengthen Collaboration
We bring together advocates, providers, researchers, community organizations, and leaders to advance maternal health improvement through partnership and shared learning.
More Than Advocacy. More Than Training.
Many organizations focus on awareness. Others focus on education. MoMMAs Voices focuses on implementation — transforming lived experience into participation, leadership, and partnership that can influence programs, projects, policies, quality improvement efforts, and healthcare systems.
Patients and families need
Preparation, support, and opportunity — so lived experience can become leadership.
Organizations need
Infrastructure, facilitation, and sustainable engagement models — so partnership lasts.
We help bridge both sides.
Our impact
Creating Change Through Collective Action
Every number represents people working together to improve maternal health experiences, outcomes, and systems.
400+Certified Patient Family Partners
45+Organizational Partners
NationalMaternal health network
ThousandsOf families, advocates, providers, and leaders engaged through education, events, partnerships, and community initiatives
Our impact is built through relationships, collaboration, and the belief that meaningful partnership leads to better care.
How we work
Three Audiences. One Shared Goal.
Moms & Families
Turn experience into leadership
We help individuals turn lived experience into leadership, advocacy, and partnership opportunities.
Healthcare Systems
Integrate patient voice
We help organizations integrate patient and family voices into quality improvement, implementation, and systems change efforts.
Partners & Leaders
Collaborate at scale
We help organizations, coalitions, researchers, and community partners collaborate to advance maternal health improvement at scale.
Different audiences. Different roles. One shared commitment to improving maternal health through meaningful partnership.
Leadership
Meet the Team Behind MoMMAs Voices
Our team brings together lived experience expertise, maternal health advocacy, healthcare partnership experience, implementation support, and community leadership. Together, we work to create opportunities for patients, families, healthcare teams, and community partners to improve maternal health systems and experiences.
Nicole Purnell
Program Director
Nicole Purnell, Program Director at MoMMAs Voices for the Preeclampsia Foundation in North Texas, advocates for maternal health. Her journey began in 2005 with the tragic loss of her son to preeclampsia and HELLP syndrome. Since then, she has been dedicated to the cause, volunteering for the Preeclampsia Foundation for over a decade. In 2015, she welcomed a daughter after a successful pregnancy. Transitioning from a project manager in the printing industry, Nicole now manages the MoMMAs Voices Coalition, empowering those affected by pregnancy complications. She is also involved with national committees focusing on maternal health improvement.
Anna Scott
Executive Assistant
Anna is the Executive Assistant at MoMMAs Voices, where she supports the day-to-day work of the team and helps keep the mission running smoothly behind the scenes. Living in Nigeria, Anna understands how important it is to center global voices in maternal health conversations. Her journey to this work is rooted in personal experience — years of being misdiagnosed with PCOS led to a long, difficult road with infertility. She is proud to bring both her personal story and her professional expertise to a team working to change the way maternal health is experienced and delivered around the world.
Jennifer Mikenas
Program Manager
Jennifer Mikenas serves as the Program Manager for Training. With a background in education and finance spanning two decades, she facilitates connections between healthcare providers and patient family partners to drive maternal health change. Jennifer's personal journey fuels her advocacy for families facing fertility challenges, pregnancy loss, and stillbirth. She actively supports organizations like Count the Kicks and PUSH for Empowered Pregnancy. Based in Indialantic, Florida, Jennifer enjoys reading, puzzles, and traveling in her free time, alongside cheering for her alma mater, Florida State University.
Kristina T. Henry-Woody
Senior Program Coordinator
Kristina T. Henry-Woody is the Senior Program Coordinator for Training with the MoMMAs Voices program, responsible for supporting our patient family partners through community engagement, advocate training, resource development, and amplifying the voices of underserved populations. Kristina brings her lived experience as a three-time preeclampsia survivor in combination with her professional background leading initiatives that addressed trauma-informed care, crisis intervention, and gun violence prevention to her role. Kristina currently lives in Cypress, Texas with her spouse and three children, where in her spare time she enjoys gardening, carpentry, and crafting.
Emily Lucas
Senior Program Coordinator
Emily Lucas serves as the Senior Program Coordinator of Engagements and Data Analytics, for Matchmaking with the MoMMAs Voices program of the Preeclampsia Foundation. Emily is key in implementing programs and initiatives that advance the foundation's mission. She is responsible for evaluating stakeholder requests, facilitating Patient Family Partner engagements, and streamlining logistics, as well as identifying, analyzing, and reporting key program metrics through funder reports, presentations, and peer-reviewed publications to demonstrate impact and drive continuous improvement. Emily currently lives in Leavenworth, Kansas, with her husband, child, cat, and dog. In her free time, she enjoys renovating her 1910 Victorian home, traveling, gardening, and spending time with family.
Get involved
Ready to Build Meaningful Partnership?
Whether you are a healthcare organization looking for implementation support, a community partner interested in collaboration, or someone with lived experience looking to make a difference, we would love to connect.