Linda J. Smith, MPH, IBCLC, FACCE, FILCA, is a lactation consultant, childbirth educator, author, and international consultant on breastfeeding and birthing issues. She was a founder of IBLCE, founder and past board member of ILCA, and serves on the United States Breastfeeding Committee. Her diverse background spans five decades of direct education and support for pregnant women and breastfeeding mothers in nine cities in the United States and Canada. She has worked in hospital systems and local and state public health agencies, and supported colleagues with service on related associations' boards. Linda is an Adjunct Instructor in the Boonshoft School of Medicine at Wright State University in Dayton, OH, and has represented ILCA or LLLI to the World Health Organization's biannual meetings of BFHI Country Coordinators from Industrialized Countries since 2006. Linda is also a consultant to Baby-Friendly USA and INFACT Canada/IBFAN North America. She is currently the owner and director of Bright Future Lactation Resource Centre (BFLRC), whose mission is "Supporting the People Who Support Breastfeeding" with lactation education programs, consulting services, and educational resources. BFLRC is on the Internet at www.BFLRC.org. She is the author of four professional textbooks on birth and breastfeeding, author or co-author of 9 articles published in peer-reviewed journals, and co-writer of Sweet Sleep by La Leche League International. She has lectured in 19 countries; her presentations have been translated into 12 languages including Chinese, Russian, and Inuktitut. She co-authored the 2018 WHO-UNICEF Baby-Friendly Hospital Initiative's Competency Verification Toolkit. Her Lactation Management/Exam Preparation Course is the longest-running course of its kind, the first to be based on the IBLCE Detailed Content Outline, , and has been presented to thousands of students in the past 30 years.Mary Kroeger has been a nurse-midwife for twenty-three years. In the United States, she has practiced full-scope midwifery in all settings: home, birth center and hospital. Her additional expertise in lactation management has been acquired through her midwifery practice, as a member of the clinical faculty at Wellstart International in San Diego and as senior technical staff with LINKAGES, a global breastfeeding promotion project based in Washington DC. Mary's activities and advocacy for a holistic model of maternity care spans many worlds. She maintains active membership in both the American College of Nurse-Midwives (ACNM) as well as the Midwives Association of North America (MANA) the latter whose constituency are largely homebirth-oriented care providers. She is the current Co-coordinator of the World Alliance of Breastfeeding Action (WABA) Health Care Practices Task Force and chairs the International Committee of the Coalition to Improve Maternity Services (CIMS). Since 1983, Mary has lived and worked eight years overseas in Belize, Somalia, Swaziland, Kazakhstan, and Indonesia serving as a specialist in safe motherhood, child survival and breastfeeding. She has also consulted widely for global health organizations including UNICEF, WHO, World Bank, United States Agency for International Development and Save the Children/US. This work has taken her to over twenty countries on four continents and has found her frequently a counterpart with program planners, educators and policy makers in ministries of health, with international non-governmental organizations, and with traditional village midwife groups where she has tried to bridge the gap between developing country realities and western norms and standards that are inevitably introduced with development work. In the last five years, Kroeger's work has increasingly included technical assistance to countries in the throes of the HIV/AIDS pandemic, providing guidance in reduction in transmission of HIV from mother-to-child during pregnancy, childbirth and infant feeding. Mary is a mother of three grown children, one stepson, and a granddaughter. She and her husband, Robert, live in Takoma Park, Maryland.
