We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Aleta Heard. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Aleta below.

Aleta, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today What’s the backstory behind how you came up with the idea for your business?

I was sitting on my couch, pregnant with my first child, trying to schedule all of my prenatal appointments and I was overwhelmed. Despite living in a world full of technological advancements, I realized how fragmented and frustrating maternal care still was. Appointments were scattered, communication felt disconnected, and navigating it all while expecting a baby felt unnecessarily hard.

I turned to my husband and said, “Isn’t it crazy how far the world has come, and yet this system still doesn’t work?” And then I blurted out, half-joking, “I have a master’s degree in systems, and yet I can’t even manage my own maternity care.”
That’s when it hit me, “Masters of Maternity.” I said it out loud, and I knew in my spirit it meant something. I trademarked the name that same week.

That spark became a fire. I told my husband I wanted to build a one-stop shop – a centralized place where education, care coordination, and community could actually make sense for moms. Because care shouldn’t be complicated.

Education had always opened doors for me, but as I moved through the maternal health system as a client, I realized that even knowledge wasn’t enough to fix the system. What I needed was power, tools, and support. I wanted to master my maternity and help others do the same.

My first prenatal appointment was with a white male gynecologist. He barely acknowledged my husband, ignored my pain during a vaginal exam, and when I asked questions I had carefully researched, he told me to Google it. That moment shook me. I went home, started researching the experiences of Black women in maternal care and what I found broke my heart. I learned about the disparities, the racism, and even how some medical textbooks still teach that Black women feel less pain.

That awakening changed everything. I hired a doula. Then I trained to become one. And after years of practicing and researching, I wrote a doula training curriculum and launched the first community college-based doula training program in the country. Because doulas shouldn’t be a luxury and Black women shouldn’t have to fight to survive birth.

The system was (and still is) fragmented. So I kept building. And I keep building.

While pregnant with my second child, I helped lead the founding conversations that led to the launch of the PA Doula Commission, with an initial goal of advocating for Medicaid reimbursement so doulas could be valued and accessible. I ended up giving birth but I stayed committed and agreed to hold the Vice President position for the commission. When I saw the Commission was limited in what it could do as a 501(c)(3), I knew it was time to lead policy through Masters of Maternity where I could be bold and strategic in advocating for political initiatives.

Now, we’ve developed a maternal health CRM (called MOM Cloud), we’ve trained over 90 doulas through our community college curriculum, and we’re launching legislation that protects doulas from harmful regulation while demanding hospital accountability.

What made me believe this would work? Because I am the mom, the researcher, the builder, the doula and the system designer. I lived the gaps and decided to close them.

What made me excited? Knowing I could build something that would not just help moms master their maternity, but honor them and equip the providers with a system that the tools they need to provide quality care.

Aleta, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I’m a mother. A systems thinker, maternal health advocate, and founder of Masters of Maternity, a maternal health innovation company that’s revolutionizing the way care is delivered, coordinated, and experienced. I hold a bachelors degree in Healthcare Management and a Master’s degree in systems management, and I use both lens to redesign how support reaches moms, how doulas are trained and valued, and how technology can bridge the maternal health gaps that have historically harmed our communities.

My journey into this work wasn’t linear it was deeply personal. I entered the maternal health space as a first-time mom, frustrated by the fragmented system I had to navigate just to receive basic prenatal care. After an incredibly dismissive and painful experience with my first provider, a white male gynecologist who ignored my pain and told me to “Google it” when I had questions – I started researching the maternal mortality rates for Black women. What I found enraged me and activated me. I hired a doula, became a doula, and then realized even that wasn’t enough.

So I built what I wish I had:
A one-stop maternal ecosystem for both the people receiving care and the professionals delivering it.

Masters of Maternity (MOM) is built on three pillars:

MOM Academy – where we train and uplift maternal specialists through culturally grounded, community-informed doula education. I authored the curriculum that launched the first community college-based doula training program in the U.S.

MOM Cloud – our digital CRM and directory platform that helps doulas track, manage, and coordinate care while collecting the data needed for Medicaid reimbursement and systemic accountability.

MOM Health – a growing arm of care coordination focused on making maternal support more proactive, personal, and accessible in every corner of the community.

We solve a number of problems, but at the core, we address:

Fragmented care systems that make it hard for moms to access consistent, good quality personalized support.

Inaccessible or undervalued doula care, especially for Black, brown, and low-income families.

Outdated training and reimbursement models that prevent doulas from being recognized as essential members of the care team.

Lack of tech infrastructure that supports maternal health providers in real time.

What sets us apart is that we’re not just offering services we’re building them with the community. For example, we employ existing community birth workers to teach the doula training classes. We prioritize the needs of the mothers and providers when enhancing the CRM. We center community, we honor culture, and we integrate innovation. I’m not waiting for permission from institutions to do what I know is necessary, I’m building what our people need now.

I’m most proud of launching this work while navigating all of the entrepreneurial challenges, motherhood myself, and pushback from other community black doulas. I wrote the curriculum, trained doulas, gave birth (twice), and continued to build, advocate and empower other women, all at the same time.

I want people to know that Masters of Maternity is not just a brand it’s an ecosystem and a blueprint for maternal equity. With community collaboration, we’re changing the way care is trained, tracked, and trusted one mom, one provider, one system at a time.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

Resilience isn’t just a trait for me, it’s a lifestyle. It’s what I’ve leaned on in the quiet moments when no one was watching, and in the loud ones when everything felt like it might fall apart.

One of the most defining moments in my journey came during a leadership transition at Masters of Maternity, the maternal health innovation company I founded. My business partner and I had built something powerful together a community-based doula training program, a growing CRM platform, and a maternal care movement. But when our paths no longer aligned, we dissolved the partnership.

What followed was chaos—emotionally and logistically. Suddenly, I was leading everything alone. I was still expected to deliver the same high-quality experience and support to the doulas in our program, all while rebuilding our systems from the inside out.

At the same time, I was balancing multiple, very real roles:

I work full time leading an engineering team in the fintech industry, managing complex product development in a space that demands precision.

I serve as the Vice President of the PA Doula Commission, helping shape policy and strategy statewide.

I support my own doula clients, showing up in hospitals and homes to advocate for families.

I’m a mother, raising children who need me to be present and loving.

I’m a wife, navigating partnership while trying to keep my own dreams alive.

And in the middle of all this, I faced a major public challenge: after completing a full cohort of doula training, I was unable to immediately release certificates due to reconciliation issues caused by the leadership change and technical access restrictions. These were students who trusted me. Who had invested their time and energy into a training program that I poured my soul into. I was devastated to have to tell them they would need to wait.

Some were hurt. Some were angry. And I understood every emotion they hadbecause I would’ve felt the same. I could have walked away. Honestly, I thought about it.

But instead, I did what resilience requires:
I kept going.

I personally contacted every affected student. I offered extensions. I committed to hosting an in-person luncheon to not only distribute certificates, but to celebrate their hard work and healing journey. I worked with the community college to restore system access. I tightened internal processes and built new protections into future cohorts to prevent this from happening again.

At the same time, I rebranded and restructured Masters of Maternity
: launching a full maternal ecosystem that now includes 3 pillars:

MOM Academy

MOM Cloud

MOM Health

And while I often carry the weight of this work, I’m not doing it alone. One of the greatest joys in this journey is working alongside other powerful women who support this mission and get to lead within it, like Gloria, our Director of Policy and Community Engagement, Bryanna McDaniel, our Director of Doula Programming, as well as our interns, alumni students, designers, and researchers. Masters of Maternity isn’t just about my leadership, it’s about creating opportunities for others to rise too.

I’ve given birth while building. I’ve taught and trained through personal grief, pregnancy, and postpartum. I’ve faced pushback from within the community and kept showing up anyway. That, to me, is the essence of resilience, not perfection, but commitment.

What I’ve learned is that resilience isn’t about bouncing back it’s about rising differently. It’s not about doing everything perfectly, but showing up anyway. Even when you’re tired. Even when you’re criticized. Even when you’re juggling 10 roles and 2 babies and a policy proposal.

What I’m building is bigger than me. And that’s what keeps me going.

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

One of the most important lessons I had to unlearn was the idea that collaboration naturally builds community especially within Black birth work given the historical trauma.

I had always believed that if I invited people to the table, created space to co-build, and shared the mic, then community would form around that collaboration, especially because I am a black leader. But during our recent Doula Collab event, I received feedback from someone I deeply respect Kieashia Deshawn, Owner of Elephant Song Doulas that shifted everything for me.

She said plainly: “For Black community doulas, we need community first then collaboration.”

That feedback landed hard, but it landed true.

I realized that in my effort to unify the field and mobilize solutions, I had leaned heavily into organizing and action but didn’t fully pause to cultivate trust, relationship, and belonging first. Collaboration without community can feel extractive. Especially in Black spaces, where lived experience, cultural memory, and historic harm make relationship-building non-negotiable.

Since that moment, I’ve shifted my approach. Now, I prioritize intentional connection first centering healing, listening, and shared presence before mobilizing ideas or actions. Because for our community, it’s not just about what we’re doing it’s about how we show up for each other while we do it.

Unlearning that assumption will make me a better leader. And more importantly, it reminded me that visionary work doesn’t move at the speed of planning it moves at the speed of trust.

Contact Info:

• Website: Www.mastersofmaternity.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/masters_of_maternity?igsh=MTFyNGZxeHZlc2pjbw==
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/share/1Lim66Ju1A/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/masters-of-maternity-mom/

Image Credits
Emmai Alaquiva – Director & Producer of The Ebony Canal
2nd image credit to Community College of Allegheny County