Team

Meet our dedicated team members.

Leseliey Welch, MPH, MBA

Co-Founder & CEO

Leseliey Welch is a public health strategist, social entrepreneur, and professional dreamer who holds Love as a guiding value, a way of being, an action and a politic. As a founder of Birth Detroit and Birth Center Equity, her work is grounded in making communities stronger, healthier and more free – starting with ensuring all people have access to all safe birth options. Birth Detroit opened its first freestanding community birth center in 2024, and Birth Center Equity is a national effort to invest in Black, Indigenous, people of color-led birth centers at scale to make birth centers a real option in all communities. Leseliey takes pride in creating the seemingly impossible, and speaking and writing the unspoken to inspire us all to embody the freedom and courage necessary to create the futures of our dreams.

She has nearly two decades of leadership experience in city, state and national health organizations. She served as interim executive director of Birthing Project USA, Deputy Director of Public Health for the City of Detroit, and consulted in the development of Michigan’s first comprehensive LGBTQ health center.
Leseliey taught at the university level for over fifteen years, and contributed to the development of Wayne State University’s Bachelor’s in Public Health Program where she created undergraduate and master’s level public health courses on numerous health equity topics. She also lectured in the Women’s and Gender Studies Department at the University of Michigan, where she developed practicum courses on women’s leadership, nonprofit, management, community engagement and feminist practice.

She earned her undergraduate degree in Women’s Studies, Masters in Public Health with a certificate in Women’s and Reproductive Health, and Masters in Business Administration from the University of Michigan. Leseliey is also an Aspen Institute Ascend Fellow. At Birth Center Equity, Leseliey is assisted by our Executive Liaison coordinator, Yodit.