Jyesha Wren completed her midwifery education at University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), class of 2015. She now works as a full-scope midwife for Alameda Health System (AHS), Alameda County’s safety-net healthcare provider. She provides labor and delivery care at AHS’s Highland Hospital in Oakland CA, and prenatal and postpartum care at AHS clinics in East Oakland and Newark CA. Jyesha is passionate about providing midwifery care that ‘loves people up’, honors their dignity and autonomy, and respects their body’s natural processes. 

 

Jyesha is the new Chair of CNMA’s Reproductive Justice & Anti-Racism Committee. She is Co-Founder and Program Coordinator of BElovedBIRTH Black Centering: Group Perinatal Care by, for, and with Black People. This program is a collaboration between AHS and the Alameda County Public Health Department, and will provide holistic, culturally attuned and racially concordant perinatal care rooted in the frameworks of health equity, black feminism, reproductive justice, and research justice. Additionally she is a co-developer of Alameda County Health Department’s EmBraceHer Childbirth Education by, for, and with Black People. 

 

After becoming a midwife Jyesha has provided workshops to clinicians on the use of Structural Competency to address racism, and co-authored a paper and textbook chapters on racism related to midwifery & gyn care in The Journal of Midwifery & Women’s Health, Varney’s Midwifery 6th Edition, and Gynecologic health Care 4th Edition (formerly Women’s Gynecologic Health). She is committed to helping to restore the racial diversity of midwifery, creating a profession that reflects the racial demographics of the communities being served. She stays engaged in UCSF’s Midwifery program as “Volunteer Clinical Faculty”, focusing on efforts to increase the racial diversity of midwifery cohorts. 

 

Jyesha is a mom of one son, Nadav. In addition to him, her loves include Afro-Latin dance, capoeira, movies, arts & crafts, and big trees.