Leseliey Welch, MPH, MBA

Co-Founder & Co-Director

(she, her)

Leseliey (she/her) is a public health leader with a business mind and a visionary heart, holding love as a guiding value, a way of being, an action and a politic. Leseliey is Co-founder of Birth Detroit and Birth Center Equity, a mom and a tireless advocate for work that makes communities stronger, healthier and more free.

Leseliey leads a team of birth workers, birth advocates and community leaders planning Detroit’s first freestanding community birth center Birth Detroit, and is proud of the launch of Birth Center Equity to grow and sustain birth centers led by Black, Indigenous and people of color across the country. 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 has taught at the university level for over fifteen years, contributing to the development of Wayne State University’s Bachelor’s in Public Health Program and creating courses on numerous health equity topics for undergraduate and master’s level public health students, medical students and medical residents. Leseliey currently lectures in the Women’s and Gender Studies Department at the University of Michigan. 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.

A Michigander by birth and a world citizen in spirit, Leseliey resides in Ypsilanti, Michigan, with her wife and two children and loves global travel.

Marinah Valenzuela Farrell

Director of Organizational Wellness

(she, her, ella)

Marinah identifies as a first generation indigiqueer Chicana daughter of a medicine woman from Chihuahua, Mexico, a Chicano musician father from the borderlands, and mother to mixed-race children and grandchildren.

Marinah is the owner of Phoenix Midwife and the founder of Parteras de Maiz, an umbrella organization for diverse advocacy and health justice projects which affirms the importance of traditional and indigenous midwives and assembles initiatives and coalitions nationally and internationally. She is also a sometime podcaster, public speaker and writer. 

Marinah has served as consultant, facilitator, board member, midwife and executive for health justice projects in the U.S, North America, Central America, and Uganda, facilitating policy initiatives on public health responses, indigenous/immigrant reproductive and primary healthcare access, education programs, birth center development, and workforce development.

Marinah is a founder of Phoenix Allies for Community Health, a free clinic primarily serving immigrant families, a direct result of her active street medic work. Marinah is the past president of the Midwives Alliance of North America, and worked in a dedicated coalition with national midwifery groups for United States Midwifery, Education, Regulation, and Association (USMERA). 

Marinah is a Culture of Health Leader, advisory board member for Birth Detroit, working on expanding the Medicaid workforce with the Institute of Medicaid Innovation, working alongside native communities on reclamation of birth sovereignty, and planning essential convenings for midwives and healers. 

Marinah is a certified practitioner in Somatic Experiencing, with advance certification in the prenatal and perinatal period, as part of her dedication to traditional medicine and healing.