Emilie Rodriguez is a Black traditional birth and postpartum doula and medical anthropologist. Ten years ago, she founded Ashe Birthing Services - a team of BIPOC doulas that serve over 400 families a year in NYC, and then co-founded in 2018 The Bridge Directory - a platform of perinatal providers and professionals of color who are creating a new standard of maternal health.

The Bridge has recently partnered with Columbia University to create a Maternal Health Research Center of Excellence as part of a seven year grant with the National Institute of Health (NIH), creating scalable multi-level strategies grounded in anti-racism and empowerment. As a principal investigator, Emilie oversees all projects and components of the grant, including training providers on The Bridge’s Model of Care. She is also on the Community Organization Leadership Advisory Board working to address maternal sepsis via patient education materials and sepsis protocol/ guidelines on labor floors.

A proud Bronxite, Emilie is married and has a 9 year old son. Guramrit LeBron is a co-founder and Chief Operating Officer of the Bridge Directory. She specializes in operations of the site, overseeing communications strategy, and website design and management. She is also co-owner, birth and postpartum doula, and Certified Lactation Counselor at Ashe Birthing Services.

Her professional vocation has spanned across different industries but has always resided with the same common denominator of amplifying the voices of those in underserved communities, especially in the Greater New York City and New York State areas. After studying Magazine Journalism at Syracuse University, she spent the first few years post college working at various publications including Parenting Magazine before working in marketing. She also completed training as a holistic health counselor while publishing her first cookbook, Yogi Eats. It was through the interactions with her clients and audience, many of whom were pregnant or birthing people, that she became involved in birth work; she jumped right in and immediately felt in alignment.

Nurturing, educating and uplifting families during such a transformational event is essential to her work as a doula and her work as a lactation counselor. She is currently pursuing a masters in Infant & Maternal Nutrition with a focus on a holistic approach to pregnancy, postpartum and infant/toddler feeding.