Board of Directors
To learn more about the IBLCE Board of Directors, visit our Board page!
Executive Committee
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Board Chair
Dr. Elizabeth Stehel, MD, IBCLC
Dr. Stehel is a general pediatrician who works exclusively in the newborn nursery at Parkland Memorial Hospital, one of the largest single site birthing hospitals in the United Sates with about 15,000 deliveries annually. She is an Associate Professor of Pediatrics at UT Southwestern Medical School in Dallas, where she attended medical school. She also completed her Pediatrics Residency in Dallas at Children’s Medical Center.Dr. Stehel’s interest in breastfeeding began when she joined the faculty at UT Southwestern in 2000 and started working with mother infant couplets on a daily basis. In 2008 she received her IBCLC certification. She is a member of the Texas Breastfeeding Coalition and the Dallas Area Breastfeeding Alliance. She serves the Texas Pediatric Society on both the Parenting and Fetus and Newborn Committees, and the American Academy of Pediatrics as a Co-Chapter Breastfeeding Coordinator for Texas. Dr. Stehel has been married for nine years and has two preschool aged children. |
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Chair Elect
Rebecca Mannel, BS, IBCLC
Ms. Mannel is Manager of the Lactation Center at Oklahoma University Medical Center in Oklahoma City. She holds the position of Clinical Instructor in both the Pediatric and OB/Gyn Departments of the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center. She served as president of the International Lactation Consultant Association from 2006-2008. Ms. Mannel is a member of the La Leche League International and serves on the Executive Board of the Pan American Medical Mission Foundation. In addition she has published numerous articles in The Journal of Human Lactation and other peer reviewed publications.
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Immediate Past Chiar
Ellen McIntyre, OAM, PhD, IBCLC
Ellen McIntyre is an associate professor and manager with the Primary Health Care Research & Information Service (PHC RIS) at Flinders University in South Australia where she conducts applied research to enhance the sharing of knowledge and information among researchers, policy makers and practitioners. She is also a researcher in breastfeeding. Ellen has coordinated breastfeeding education programs for health professionals from 1989 until 2006 and has been an Australian Breastfeeding Association Counselor since 1985. In 2005, Ellen received an OAM (Medal of the Order of Australia) for service to the community as a lactation consultant and counselor, and through the development and delivery of information and education courses on breastfeeding.
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Secretary
Jeanne Byler Mitchell, RN, MSN, IBCLC
Jeanne Mitchell represents hospital-based lactation consultants for IBLCE. She began helping breastfeeding mothers and babies in 1981 as an accredited La Leche League Leader. After becoming an IBCLC in 1989, Jeanne spearheaded the WIC Breastfeeding Peer Counselor Program in Austin Texas. She earned her MSN from University of Texas School of Nursing in 1994 before opening Mom’s Place: WIC Breastfeeding Clinic in Austin. Jeanne has designed training programs for nutritionists and nurses, and has changed policy to reflect best breastfeeding practices in the hospital. Jeanne currently provides lactation consultant services in a hospital that delivers 4,000 babies each year.
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Treasurer
Marcia Lutostanski, BSN, IBCLC
Marcia Lutostanski has been a La Leche League Leader for 18 years and is a member of the La Leche League International Board or Directors. Her international perspective comes from having lived in Malaysia, Brazil and Japan. She has worked as a pediatric and public health nurse.
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Governance Committee Chair
Rachelle Lessen, MS, RD, IBCLC
Rachelle is a registered dietitian and IBCLC and has a Masters of Science degree in health education. She works at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia where she sees families with infants in the cardiac intensive care unit and the pediatric units. She also conducts prenatal consults for families in the fetal heart program. Rachelle has an outpatient lactation center for mothers who are experiencing breastfeeding difficulties and specializes in counseling mothers of infants with food allergies. Rachelle serves as the ILCA liaison to the UN Standing Committee on Nutrition and is a board member and past-president of the Breastfeeding Resource Center, a non-profit community center. Rachelle is the co-author of the 2009 ADA Position Statement on Breastfeeding and has written chapters or articles for various publication on issues related to breastfeeding and nutrition.
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Board Members
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Aimee Eden, MA
Aimee R. Eden is a Ph.D. candidate in applied anthropology at the University of South Florida, where she is also working on her M.P.H. in maternal and child health. She holds a master's degree in international development from Ohio University, and is a returned Peace Corps volunteer (Kazakhstan). She has conducted research domestically and internationally on topics including reproductive and maternal-child health, breastfeeding, perceptions of race and ethnicity among health researchers, transnational migration of health workers, legal approaches to cases of abused and neglected children in Florida, and the impact of accelerated high school academic programs on underrepresented groups in Florida.
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Andreja Tekauc Golob, MD, IBCLC Andreja Tekauc Golob is paediatrician, working as a neonatologist in the Perinatal department of University Clinic for Gynecology and Perinatology in Maribor, Slovenia. She is an Associate Professor of Pediatrics at Faculty of Medicine, University of Maribor. She finished her postgraduate doctoral study in 2010 and is in the process of preparing her doctoral dissertation. She is also the Country Coordinator for IBLCE in Slovenia, a Member of the Ministry of Health working group for breastfeeding strategy, a Member of the executive national board for Gynecology and Perinatology and Vice president of the National neonatology section. Her interest for breastfeeding began when she joined the National committee for promoting breastfeeding in Baby Friendly Hospitals in 1996. In 1998 she became the UNICEF International assessor of Baby friendly hospitals. She received her IBCLC certification in 2001, recertification in 2006 and 2011. She counsels and advises mother from all over Slovenia on a daily basis. She also gives lectures on newborns and breastfeeding in a course for new parents. From 2002 onwards she has organized the IBLCE exam for Slovene candidates and candidates from the former Yugoslavia. She has been translating the IBLCE exam into Slovene for the last two years. Andreja is married. She has three adult children and two granddaughters. |
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Angela Love-Zaranka, BA, IBCLC, RLC
Angela has been a La Leche Leader since 1990 and a Board Certified Lactation Consultant since 1997. She has served on several non-profit boards as a member of the finance committee and/or treasurer. She received her undergraduate degree from Trinity College in Washington DC and her graduate work, also at Trinity, is towards a Masters of Science in administration, specializing in non-profit management. She is an IBCLC in private practice and is the lead Lactation Consultant at DeWitt Army Hospital in Alexandria, Virginia.
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Wendelmoet Mulder-Baalbergen, RN, IBCLC
Wendelmoet Mulder is a public health nurse, specialized in infant and young child care. After being a La Leche League leader for years, she was among the very first group of lactation consultants in the Netherlands. For 5 years she has been chair of the foundation responsible for the training of lactation consultants. She developed breastfeeding training materials for health professionals and for more than 8 years she has been teaching them about breastfeeding and related issues as the WHO code. She was involved in programs about infant feeding in emergency situations. In order to keep her practical skills as a nurse and lactation consultant she returned to her primary job as public health nurse a couple of years ago.
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Paula J. Oliveira, RN, BSN, IBCLC
Paula Oliveira is a registered nurse and International Board Certified Lactation Consultant. She has an extensive background in maternal child health nursing including prenatal clinic, labor and delivery, neonatal intensive care and lactation services in hospital and in private practice. She has experience as the WIC State Breastfeeding Coordinator and developed and implemented the peer counselor training program and remains as a consultant for the State of New Hampshire WIC Program. She was the spearhead for the passage of the breastfeeding law in New Hampshire. She is the Treasurer of the New Hampshire Breastfeeding Task Force and currently is working as the Nurse in Charge of Lactation at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts.
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Tomoko Seo, MD, IBCLC, FABM
Tomoko Seo is a pediatrician, who is working in a private maternity hospital and a pediatric clinic in Japan. She certified as IBCLC in 1999 and served as the president of Japanese Association of Lactation Consultants (JALC) from 2001 to 2003. She is a member of the Academy of Breastfeeding Medicine. She has translated various documents and books on breastfeeding into Japanese. She has served as Conference Chair of the annual breastfeeding seminar for physicians sponsored by JALC since 2005. She works as a lecturer at breastfeeding conferences as well as a clinician caring for mothers and babies.
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Janine Stockdale, PhD, PG CHSE, BSc. Hons, RM, RN
Janine first became a midwife in the UK in 1985 and worked mostly in the National Health Service until in 1989 when she spent a few years working in the USA. On returning to Northern Ireland, she was awarded a R&D Research Fellowship (NI) that enabled her to apply the process of Motivational Instructional Design (MID) to routine breastfeeding instruction. As the first person to adapt MID for health, she has played an important role in understanding how to close the theory /practice gap using theory-orientated, practically-based psychology models. In 2007 she was awarded a PhD by the University of Ulster for her work in understanding motivation to sustain breastfeeding. Since completing her PhD, she has since received awards for her application of MID, including the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland Prize for the Greatest Contribution to Practice Award (2008) and the University of Ulster Award for Innovation (2008). As a post-doctoral researcher and educator, Janine joined the academic team at Trinity College Dublin in 2008; there her expertise in motivation applied directly to learning has resulted in her receiving the Provost Teaching of the Year Award (2011). Janine was also appointed (part-time) in 2010 to the Royal College of Midwives as a Research Fellow, where she continues to use her expertise in MID in midwifery.
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