MMA Leadership
President:
Katy Miller, CPM
Katy Miller is a midwife living and working in the Columbia, MO area. After an unsatisfying hospital birth experience in 2003, she discovered her passion for learning about and supporting normal childbirth. Starting in 2004, she began work as a hospital-based doula. After a joyful experience birthing her second child at home in 2007, she began a slow, winding path toward home-based midwifery. She enrolled in the Midwives' College of Utah in 2014 and received a degree in Midwifery Science in 2018. She completed apprenticeship with midwives in Missouri, Utah, and Wisconsin, in both the home and birth center settings. Since becoming a Certified Professional Midwife in 2018, she has been working in private practice. She is passionate about empowering those who are giving birth and advocating for freedom in reproductive health choices. She lives with her husband, three children, and a menagerie of animals on 3 acres in beautiful Boone County, MO. She also works as a bookkeeper for Missouri River Relief, a river stewardship organization.
Vice President:
Clarisa Evans
Clarisa serves as a midwife for Out of Eden midwifery and the Ida Mae Patterson center. She attends births in the Kansas City metro area. She lives with her husband and their three children 13 year old twin girls and 8 year old son. She believes that midwifery is her birthright and woven into her very DNA. Her great great grandmother was a community midwife she Hopes to carry on her legacy of life and serving others. She worked as a patient care specialist, full spectrum Doula, student midwife, and now midwife. She attended midwife to be and has taken courses through Mercy in action, but ultimately felt like the Narm Pep process was the right route for her. Clarisa is passionate about bringing awareness to black, maternal mortality in the U.S. and the different disparities birthing women of color experience within the healthcare system. She’s Active in the inner city, bringing awareness and providing free prenatal and postpartum care to families in need at the Ida Mae Patterson center. She easily fills her time enjoying family and friends, serving at her local church and shopping of course!
Treasurer:
Sheryl Whipple, BSN, CPM
Sheryl is a mother of 12 children. She and her husband have been married 47 years. She obtained a Bachelor of Science in Nursing at the University of Tulsa. She worked part-time as a labor and delivery nurse for 35 years while raising our children. She knew she would be a midwife one day but it was easier to be a nurse with scheduled hours while birthing and raising her children. She tried to provide the most natural and physiological births to women in the hospital as she could. She attended the Texas Midwifery Association Midwifery Training Program, and had 7 midwives precept her education; 4 CPM's and 3 CNM's. Sheryl obtained her Midwifery Certification from NARM in 2012. She remained an RN for a time, for various reasons. Finally. in 2019 she began my own private practice. Sheryl has been blessed to help many families welcome their beautiful babies to their homes.
Sheryl is the MMA Treasurer at this time and hopes to assist the organization in achieving the goal of encouraging midwifery practice in the state of Missouri.
Secretary
Janet Akremi MD, BSM, CPM
Janet Akremi has been a midwife for many years. She is currently a student in the master’s program at Midwives College of Utah.
Like all midwives, Janet maintains basic life support and neonatal resuscitation certification. She is a member of the Missouri Midwives Association, (MMA), National Association of Certified Professional Midwives (NACPM), and Midwives Alliance of North America (MANA).
She is committed to helping improve midwifery education, serving the underserved, and making midwifery care available to all people who desire it.