LEADERSHIP
Staff
JENNIFER BRAUN
Executive Director
Jennifer Braun has served disadvantaged women and children in Afghanistan, Haiti and Uganda since 2004.
As Executive Director of IMA, she travels several times a year to oversee the organization's international programs as well as to work in the field as a midwife. She has been attending homebirths since 1982.
Jennifer holds a Bachelor’s degree in Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology from the University of Colorado at Boulder. She holds a Certificate in Nonprofit Management from Duke University. She was President of the Colorado Midwives Association from 1985 to 1992 during which she was a citizen lobbyist, working to pass legislation that is now the Colorado Midwives Practice Act. She also co-authored the first CMA Certification Program.
Jennifer has been an educator since the late 1980s, training midwives from apprenticeship through licensure as well as teaching at CU-Boulder and the Southwest Acupuncture College-Boulder Campus. She has been honored with recognition from Volvo for Life (2006), the Echievement Award (2007), and Boulder Weekly named her Person of the Year in 2008.
Board of Directors
Dr. Claudia Wyrick is a medical doctor, a practicing family physician and hospitalist in Denver. She traveled to Soroti, Uganda in 2008 and again in 2010 to collaborate with staff at the Teso Safe Motherhood Project (TSMP) to improve clinical care. Having already volunteered at community free clinics, House of Hope women’s shelter and a health clinic in Nepal’s Dhading Valley, Claudia is community service minded. “I have always had a desire and felt a responsibility to work with those people who are underserved and who have not had the opportunities I have had in my life.”
In addition to practicing as a physician, she also holds advanced degrees in special education and fine arts and is a published writer and poet. She resides in Lakewood, Colorado with her husband, Danny. She has three grown children, and five grandchildren.
DR. CLAUDIA WYRICK
President
Jennifer Barr is a Certified Professional Midwife and Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapist.
In addition to serving as board secretary/treasurer for IMA, she sits on the board of the Pajwell Foundation. Jennifer joined IMA while the organization was still in its inception, seeing an opportunity to work for maternal and child health in the developing world: “I believe strongly that health care is a right not a privilege. I uphold the midwifery model of care as the ideal for pregnancy worldwide.”
She lives in Boulder, Colorado with her husband, three daughters, two cats and a dog.
JENNIFER BARR
Secretary / Treasurer
Rev. Marty McCarthy is an ordained Episcopal Minister who graduated from Virginia Theological Seminary in 1978. Marty was rector of St. John's Episcopal Church in Charlotte, NC from 1995 to 2008. He is the founder of six schools, has been a Rotarian for over 30 years, and serves and has served on many boards.
REV. MARTY McCARTHY
Board Member