When Angel Rockefeller was two months pregnant with her first child, she hesitated to seek help.

It was late 2022, and her health insurance provider suggested that she contact a local organization in Washington, DC for childbirth classes and lactation consulting. She made the initial call, but then she didn’t show up.

But Lovenda Burnett, program manager for the Mothers Rising Home Visiting Program at Mamatoto Village, was persistent.

“Ms. Lovenda would reach out to me just to check up on me,” Angel recalls. “‘Hey, we're offering these services this weekend, you’re welcome to come in and see if you want.’”

Eventually, Angel relented. She went to Sheriff Road in Deanwood for a wellness and parenting class. And she kept coming back.

As a first-generation Nigerian-American, Angel says she and her siblings had to independently navigate cultural differences and social systems. At Mamatoto, Angel was no longer alone. She had a whole team of women, like Lovenda, that she could lean on throughout her pregnancy journey.

Angel attended classes that helped her understand the process of childbirth and what she could expect at each stage. She worked with lactation consultants to prepare for breastfeeding. As her pregnancy progressed, she built a relationship with her doula and designed a birth plan; meetings became more frequent and often took place in her home.

Then, on July 3rd, 2023, Angel gave birth to a healthy baby boy.

She credits Mamatoto with helping her enter motherhood healthy and confident.

“They gave me a lot of knowledge of options I could look for,” Angel says. “I feel like I wasn't restricted to one set of ideas, and I think that really played a big part of how successful my birth was. Like, oh my gosh, I would do it again.”

Lovenda was there every step of the way—coordinating care, asking questions, and encouraging Angel to set ambitious goals.

Angel was pursuing her GED but wasn’t committed to a particular career plan. Lovenda kept Angel “on her toes” and focused on her educational goals.

“I feel like she was very stern, but in a good way,” Angel says. “She made sure I came and got everything I needed to be prepared. And not only being a mother, but being successful in my own life, too.”

Angel’s mom is a nurse practitioner, which inspired an interest in medicine and healthcare. But she didn’t plan on getting pregnant so soon. As excited as she was to have a child, it felt like a barrier to her career goals.

“It was another step back. I kind of got discouraged,” Angel remembers. “I felt like a lot of time had passed by. [But] I realized that my path is not going to be the same as everybody else's, and it was just to be a better example for my son too.”

Now Angel is enrolled at Montgomery College in Silver Spring, Maryland, pursuing a nursing degree. Proud of how far she’s come, Angel embraces her new identity as a mother and is excited for what’s next.

​​Mamatoto Village was founded 12 years ago by Aza Nedhari, a midwife, therapist, and maternal health advocate, and Cassietta Pringle, a board-certified lactation consultant.

On the day BitterSweet visited, the smell of home-cooked lasagna drifted through Mamatoto’s office, a 5,400-square-foot building decorated with bright purple walls and local art. This is the organization's heart, where Aza, Cassietta, and their colleagues support Black women in DC through the experience of pregnancy, birth, and postpartum parenting.

The name "Mamatoto" comes from a Swahili word meaning "motherbaby," highlighting the intimacy of the connection between a woman and her child. At Mamatoto Village, strengthening that connection is a central, sacred commitment.

Women who work with Mamatoto come because they are pregnant; they stay because they feel seen. It’s a place where their complexity is honored and celebrated. It’s a place where they find community and build their confidence.

“I felt like at the point I was in life, I wasn't ready to have a baby,” Angel says. “But it's like now anything is possible. I did it all. You know what I'm saying? I'm still going.”

On a recent Wednesday morning, Tyeisha Kennedy drove to an apartment building on the western bank of the Anacostia River.

Tyeisha is a perinatal community health worker with Mamatoto Village. She was visiting Shena Holiday, a new mother six weeks into recovery from a cesarean section, who had just moved into a new home.

She knocked on Shena’s door and immediately jumped into action.

Shena wanted a chance to freshen up, so Tyeisha took care of the baby and gave her a chance to shower. She settled in and prepped a bottle of milk. When Shena was ready, Tyeisha launched into a series of personal questions.

“How are you doing? Do you need more rest? Do you need to eat more? Do we need to go to the grocery store together?”

It’s not a typical healthcare home visit built on efficiency and clinical distance. While professional, it feels more like a friend checking in—a friend who happens to be a perinatal care expert. That’s by design.

Perinatal Community Health Workers (PCHWs) are the cornerstone of Mamatoto’s model. They are frontline caretakers coordinating services tailored to each mother’s experience, including education, advocacy, nutrition, housing, and social needs.

During this visit, the conversation quickly shifted to skincare because Shena’s child suffered from persistent acne.

“Mom was still switching the products, figuring out what works best for baby and what doesn't,” Tyeisha explains. “So I was like, ‘Well, let's just go ahead and give him a bath while we're here and then stick to one brand, and then as the week goes, we'll see how that works and continue to follow up with the provider.”

Decisions like this one—figuring out what kinds of soap and lotion work best—easily fall through the cracks if someone isn’t specifically checking in. Overworked healthcare providers and overcrowded healthcare systems simply don’t have the bandwidth to provide that support.

“It brings a lot of anxiety when you just don't have those answers,” Tyeisha says. “And doctors, nurses, physicians… they have time, but not as much time as we have to [build] this rapport and have these conversations.”

During a previous visit, Tyeisha worked with Shena to fine-tune the nipple size of her milk bottles. In an upcoming visit, she’ll coordinate deliveries from other community organizations to help Shena furnish her new home.

Officially, Mamatoto Village provides home visiting services every two weeks from pregnancy through 12 weeks postpartum. Unofficially, the organization will do whatever it takes to ensure every mother and child has what they need to thrive.

“There are some jobs where they're like, ‘Okay, this is the standard, this is the policy, and you can't really pass that threshold,’” Tyeisha notes. “But here, the threshold is kind of broader. And so we can kind of step into some things, and the care looks a little bit different.”

Lovenda Burnett, who manages the Mothers Rising Home Visiting Program, says meeting women in their homes is the key to Mamatoto’s success. Office settings can feel sterile, and making an appointment can be challenging. In their own space, mothers open up and feel more comfortable discussing sensitive topics.

At Mamatoto, the “village care” model means there are no gaps in care, and everyone has a role to play. Lovenda explains that this mirrors ancestral family structures in the Black community.

“You have the elders and you have the community,” she says. “Especially when it came to birth, women were not by themselves. It was a communal event.”

That sense of shared responsibility extends beyond home visits. At the Mamatoto office, it’s easy to forget you’re in a healthcare facility.

The day after Tyeisha visited Shena, Mamatoto opened its doors for a “Milk Bar” event, a regular gathering for moms to learn about breastfeeding and formula feeding. Around noon, strollers lined the halls, babies cooed and smiled at familiar faces, and the building buzzed with friendly conversation and laughter.

Rondenise Peake, a lactation specialist, welcomed everyone into the space while other women joined on Zoom. The focus for the session was breastfeeding techniques for twins and triplets. She opened with a question to understand attendees’ experiences: “What is the best way you can imagine your partner can help you?”

The conversation bounced between anecdotes, tactical advice, and hands-on practice using dolls and breastfeeding cushions.

Halfway through the event, one child got particularly fussy; they needed a diaper change. Without hesitation, a Mamatoto team member walked over and scooped them up so their mom could stay in class.

Dr. Jamila Taylor is the board chair of Mamatoto Village and president and CEO of the Institute for Women’s Policy Research, a think tank focused on the intersection of healthcare, maternal health, and economic justice.

As the mother of a college-aged child, Dr. Taylor is intimately familiar with the challenges facing other Black women throughout pregnancy and birth.

“I didn't have a good experience in my first appointment with the physician that I was assigned to,” she recalls. “It was really off-putting. I literally went to one appointment. I was like, ‘Yeah, I'm not going back there.’”

So, Dr. Taylor looked for alternative healthcare providers, and eventually found an OBGYN she loved, a Black woman with a private practice and a supportive staff of nurse practitioners and midwives. The physician recently passed away, but Dr. Taylor remembers her fondly.

“Even in the years after [pregnancy] that I continued to see her, she was so big about making sure I was getting exercise and managing stress,” she says. “It’s this holistic approach to health, which wasn't even really in her purview. I was seeing her as a gynecologist at that point. But she took the time to show care and concern about the other aspects of my life contributing to my whole self, which was really meaningful.”

In a time when maternal health rates continue to stagnate and decline for Black women, Dr. Taylor notes that it’s more important than ever for mothers to have access to healthcare providers who share and understand their experiences.

According to research from the District of Columbia’s Maternal Mortality Review Committee (formerly co-chaired by Aza Nedhari), Black birthing people account for about half of all births in DC, but represent 90% of all pregnancy-related deaths.

Nationally, the maternal mortality rate for Black women in the U.S. is 50.3 deaths per 100,000 live births—three times higher than the rate for women in other racial groups.​

The practice of gynecology itself was built on the exploitation of enslaved Black women in Montgomery, Alabama. Over generations, the structural racism inherent in the medical field has, understandably, driven mistrust within the Black community.

The Mamatoto team is committed to addressing this reality. They are also careful to reject negative framing for what the experience of motherhood can be.

Mamatoto bridges this gap by celebrating the experience of motherhood, investing in the strength of mothers, and hiring Black women to support Black clients.

Cassietta Pringle, Mamatoto’s co-founder and lactation program manager, calls this “culturally congruent care.”

“Culturally congruent care means that someone knows exactly what to look for,” she explains. “I'm familiar with the types of foods that you're eating. I know the neighborhoods that you go into. And if I don't, because maybe that's not my particular culture, I sit there and I ask.”

As a breastfeeding expert, Cassietta also spends much of her time debunking pervasive myths.

“Some people have this idea that some women just don't make milk,” Cassietta notes. “That's so rare. It's so rare that it's almost not true. If we are eating well, and we are hydrating well, and nourishing our whole being so that our hormones can work effectively… we are going to make milk, and we're going to make really good nutritious milk.”

Beyond the lactation team, Mamatoto experts cover every aspect of health and wellness for mothers.

PCHWs provide day-to-day care. Counselors and wellness coaches ensure that every mom has adequate nutrition, exercise, and mental health support. Doulas step in as advocates before and during labor.

The theory of change is at once transformative and straightforward: Mothers who come to Mamatoto learn how to care for themselves and advocate for their needs. When they know how to care and advocate for themselves, they have healthier pregnancies.

“It is already innate within us to experience joy in any situation,” Cassietta says. “And if we have that type of mindset and that joy, regardless of the situation, we can breed resilience and we can breed more strength.”

At 34 years old, Ikea Bannister always wanted to be a mom, but her journey was full of challenges.

She has Graves' disease, an immune system disorder that causes hyperthyroidism; in her case, it also led to three miscarriages. Two years ago, after Ikea began treatment for the condition, she was finally pregnant with twins, but suffered from depression and preeclampsia. She heard about Mamatoto from her employer and contacted them for support.

“I’m really glad I did it,” Ikea says. “They helped me with any and everything… It was no waiting list, no anything. They were there full force, all hands on deck.”

Aspen McCoy stepped in as her perinatal care coordinator. Jamey Harrison supported her through breastfeeding. TeJanae McDade, the health and wellness specialist, ensured she had proper nutrition.

Then, at one of Ikea’s routine check-ups, the medical team discovered that her blood pressure was rising and her son’s heart rate was dropping. They booked her for an emergency cesarean section. It happened so quickly that Ikea found herself alone in the hospital, panicking during the procedure. The medical team, misunderstanding her panic as pain, put her under general anesthesia.

When Ikea woke up, she was the mother of two newborns, Nori and Nazir.

Ikea was frustrated and overwhelmed by the whole experience, but she knew she could rely on the Mamatoto team to get her through it.

They supported her during provider visits during a two-month NICU stay. They gave her the tools she needed to breastfeed successfully. Later, when her children came home, they continued to check in on her.

Two years in, Ikea and her children are healthy and thriving. She says the best part of her day is when the twins come running into her room, smiling, to wake her up.

“I love hearing the word mom,” she says. “I love it. My daughter says it a lot, but I love that name for myself.”

Models like Mamatoto’s are receiving more public attention.

Research reveals the long-term benefits of home visiting programs, and under the Biden-Harris administration federal funding dramatically increased in DC and nationwide.

Mamatoto’s Director of Data and Social Impact Erin Snowden is glad to see the momentum shift. Still, she warns against focusing too heavily on quantitative data at the expense of individual experiences.

“We truly believe pregnancy does not happen in a silo,” she asserts. “This is a pregnant person who has a whole life that's happening. And I think in the romanticized world of pregnancy and childbirth… it's like we want to ignore those things.”

Traditional best practices, like prenatal vitamins, are delivered as absolute truths, devoid of context. But an expectant mother who is dealing with housing insecurity, for example, isn’t focused on taking vitamins. She’s focused on finding a place to live.

That’s where Mamatoto’s approach differs from the norm. Mamatoto's team cares that a mother is taking her vitamins, and whether or not she has safe and stable housing. The clients in the Mothers Rising program are all Medicaid eligible and often face significant structural barriers to their well-being.

“Through solving these other issues,” Erin explains, “then we can get to the healthy pregnancy part.”

Lovenda Burnett recalls working with a client who was homeless and had intellectual disabilities. Her medical team told her she was not fit to be a mom and encouraged her to terminate the pregnancy. After the mom decided to have the baby, the hospital team continued discussing plans to remove the child from her care. Lovenda knew that didn’t have to be the reality.

“We were able to advocate and fight,” she remembers. “She had already been with us, and so we were having conversations and doing care coordination and talking to the psychiatrist, talking to all of the other stakeholders to say, ‘Hey, let's give this mama a chance. She wants her baby.’”

The approach worked. The young mother was able to maintain custody, and Mamatoto got her connected with disability services and stable housing so she could thrive as a mother.

Mamatoto’s team has been keeping records of its success since its founding. Recently, they’ve started formalizing that research in hopes of leading the conversation around perinatal care.

In 2024, Mamatoto conducted a study with Georgetown University to evaluate the efficacy of the Mothers Rising Home Visiting Program. The study concluded that Black pregnant women who participated in Mamatoto’s program had their babies closer to the recommended due date than those who did not. Because premature and preterm delivery are associated with poor health outcomes, this finding indicates that Mamatoto’s culturally tailored intervention is having a meaningful and measurable impact on maternal health.

Erin further notes that Mamatoto’s maternal health outcomes are on par with national averages across all ethnic and socioeconomic categories. That’s a more remarkable achievement than it sounds.

“Our clients check every box for every risk factor that there possibly could be,” she explains, “from social determinants, mental health status, preexisting morbidities… all of the things that would put them at risk for having the worst possible outcomes. And they are presenting exactly the same as women across our nation.”

Erin hopes the growing body of research surrounding culturally congruent maternal care will inspire more Black women to enter the profession.

In the meantime, Mamatoto Village is also inspiring policy change in DC.

The organization decided to focus on housing justice as a factor that directly impacts the experience of pregnant women and ultimate outcomes for them and their children. In 2024, with support from Merck for Mothers, it published a report that included a housing justice framework to address the consequences of systemic and structural racism.

This work culminated in a proposal to abolish a DC law that creates barriers for women to access housing if they are less than 28 weeks pregnant. The proposal received broad support but failed to move through the legislative process.

Mamatoto Village is the kind of organization that sees clients return repeatedly. Sometimes they return for a second or third pregnancy. Other times, they return to start a career.

Many of Mamatoto’s existing perinatal community health workers are mothers, and all are Black women, enabling them to use their cultural awareness and lived experience to advocate for clients.

The organization is committed to training highly skilled maternal health professionals within the Black community to give more women access to high-quality care.

Mamatoto’s PCHW Training includes 200+ classroom hours covering public health, reproductive justice, and perinatal health topics to prepare students for careers in maternal and child health, human services, and public health. Similarly, the Lactation Specialist Training builds skills to support breastfeeding mothers, and the Community Birth Worker Training Program equips individuals to facilitate the childbirth process within their communities.

This focus has always shaped Mamatoto’s approach. After all, Aza, Cassietta, Erin, and other team members got into the work because of their experiences as mothers. They saw a gap, felt the call, and stepped in. Now they’re helping others do the same.

Cassietta explains that women who experience care and support as clients are well-prepared for careers in perinatal care. After training, many begin work with Mamatoto; others head elsewhere. Both outcomes are considered a success.

“It really is a jumping off point,” she observes, “because some women want to become community health workers, others go into policy. We've had a couple go to medical school, we've had a few go to nursing school, and we've had one or two go to law school.”

Mamatoto’s workforce development strategy will continue to grow exponentially.

In early 2025, the organization completed a $2 million capital campaign to fund the purchase and renovation of its building. This paves the way for their second capital campaign which will include building a regionally accredited midwifery school and the first birth center in DC’s Ward 7.

Lovenda acknowledges that maternal health work isn’t a 9-to-5 job. Mamatoto staff members work long hours supporting local mothers. However, they are careful to rest whenever they can so that they have the bandwidth to provide holistic care.

“We see the issues and say, ‘If not us, then who?’ That's what sets us apart a little bit and really shows our intentionality.”

When I asked her about Mamatoto Village’s next chapter, Aza said it was like turning 40. Their identity is clear. They know what they do well: training healthcare professionals, caring for mothers, and telling stories that dignify individuals.

“We spent the first decade figuring it out, being really scrappy, emerging, giving birth to ourselves,” she explains.

Now, for the first time, they can take a moment to think about sustainability and scalability. In addition to the midwifery school and birthing center, Aza says they are working on a custom case management technology for perinatal care.

In the current political environment, when issues like racial justice and women’s health are under threat, Dr. Taylor notes that Mamatoto’s commitment to empowering Black mothers is radical.

“It is radical in this moment to own that autonomy and be intentional about it. And it is radical to continue on a path where you are centering these communities,” she says. “We're in a moment where there is this attack on marginalized communities, people of color, and others in our communities. You're going to see increased rates of stress and anxiety, and that has implications for your health, particularly if you're pregnant or trying to get pregnant. And so I think that's something to also keep a close eye on moving forward, and will make Mamatoto’s work even more important.”

Mamatoto Village is nowhere close to backing down. Instead, you get the sense that they’re just getting started. Every decision builds a stronger foundation for the organization and gives its clients more autonomy.

“We care for ourselves so that we can care for others,” Aza says. “Mamatoto is like a mirror, to see the best in ourselves.”