birth and
postpartum experts

Greet your baby with confidence.

Whether you choose to work with one of our Doulas or take a class with us (or both!), you will have the right tools to birth without fear and be ready to step into your new role as a parent.

Learn More About Us

How we STARTED

Brilliant Births started as a LIFE CHANGE, and became a COMMUNITY.

Brilliant Births was founded in 2016. After years of education, including two masters from U.C. Berkeley, and climbing the corporate ladder, Heidi Kate had a life-changing realization: she became a mom, and immediately realized that support is a fundamental need during pregnancy, labor and birth.

Heidi left her degrees and career to pursue becoming a professional, certified doula. She supported clients, met so many amazing people, and in time created a community where doulas and growing families found guidance, purpose, and connection.

Over the past 10 years, Brilliant Births has grown from one woman’s dream into a community of nurturing, highly skilled people who have found their purpose: supporting a meaningful transition into parenthood.

“As your doula, I’m not here to choose your path. Instead, I am here to be a reassuring presence and to help you navigate your course.” – Heidi Kate

Meet the TEAM

Throughout her entire life, Heidi has been a reassuring voice to others. A leader and supporter, a woman and a friend. After working for several years and earning a high-level management position in the solar power industry, Heidi had a life-changing realization. She became a mom and immediately realized that support is a fundamental need during pregnancy, labor and birth.
Heidi left her degree and career to pursue becoming a professional, certified doula. Heidi knew that with her passion for providing support, her commitment to education, and her ability to encourage and reassure others, becoming a doula was an obvious choice. It was almost as if the position was created specifically for her!
Heidi is certified to teach HypnoBirthing and Lamaze Childbirth classes. She has trained as a birth doula through DONA, CAPPA, Cornerstone, ProDoula, and Dynamo Doula. Her additional focus of study includes Spinning Babies and Evidence Based Birth. Heidi has also earned her Master rebozo credentials and placenta certification.
With a passion for vaginal birth after cesarean section, Heidi has supported and celebrated more than 50 clients as they reached this powerful goal. Her deepest desire is for her clients to know that they are cared for, that they can feel confident in their choices, and that they have the information they need when they need it.

Sundi has been practicing massage for 26 years. A graduate of NHI national holistic institute. She has extensive training in Chinese medicine and philosophy. She integrates her knowledge from her schools with the years of experience in many different environments.
She brings her love of health and wellness and intuitive touch to each session by listening intently and knowing how to address many body misalignments and discomforts. Having received so much wonderful care when pregnant , she knows how important it is to feel cared for. She looks forward to working with you.
CMTC #35520

Keira comes to the birth world after a career in public health and social services research, evaluation, and consulting. That work also focused on supporting people as they navigate life transitions, social challenges, and the systems and institutions that support us as we all move through these moments. She has a passion for deep learning and listening, connecting to people, building communities, and being an advocate and a resource.
Keira is also a parent to two young people who are heading off to college, which inspired a search for change and a return to pursuing a passion for women’s health and empowered birth. She is grateful for the support, opportunities, and connections made during her own pregnancy, birth, and early child-rearing years. She now enjoys helping others find the connections, information and support they need to build their confidence, make decisions, grow, and thrive as they build their family.
Keira has a Masters in Public Health. She trained as a birth, postpartum, and full spectrum doula with Cornerstone. She is also a certified Cornerstone and Hypnobirthing Childbirth Educator. She also just started additional training as a lactation counselor!
When not teaching, learning, supporting births or helping families postpartum, Keira is a mountain bike coach for the Berkeley High School team, grows veggies and keeps chickens in her backyard, sings and dances with MoTor Dance, and gets into the mountainous backcountry (on ski wheels, or on foot) as often as she can with her partner, two kids and friends.

Alexandra is a Certified Massage Therapist & Postpartum Doula. She obtained her massage therapy certification at the National Holistic Institution in 2021. In 2022, Alexandra furthered her education by completing a prenatal/postnatal massage therapy training.
Alexandra performs nurturing and detail-oriented massage therapy with a holistic approach.
With Alexandra’s knowledge as a Postpartum Doula and Prenatal and Postpartum Massage Therapist, you will feel comfortable and at ease in her presence. During your session, you will let go of worries, stress and anxieties, ease tension and discomforts, and allow all of those relaxing endorphins to flow naturally throughout your body.
CMTC# 90440

Gracie Kearney has been a Certified Holistic Health Practitioner since 2006 and a Certified Massage Therapist since 2015, but has been a healer as long as she can remember. She’s always had an innate desire to bring comfort to those in need, and is grateful to be able to share this gift with others, especially mothers and mothers-to-be.
Gracie incorporates shiatsu, acupressure and energy healing in her massage sessions with the aim of providing relaxation and deep healing for all of her clients. She brings a loving touch to all of her sessions, while incorporating trauma-informed care. Through her sessions with clients Gracie hopes to create peace within each individual, so that we may be the healthiest, best version of ourselves. Gracie is honored to be a part of the Brilliant Births team, and hopes to bring love, healing, and inner peace to each birthing body, as well as to the next generation.
CMTC#68271

Marina became a Certified Massage Therapist through McKinnon Massage School and also taking classes at San Francisco Massage School in 2012. She worked at McKinnon for a year after she graduated from school and then worked at an athletic club for several years in Lafayette.
Marina’s intention is to help clients reconnect with their bodies. She strives to create a sacred pause in the massage space where time can slow down a bit and breath can return and clients can meet themselves in that feeling state.
For the most part, she's spent the last decade working from her home, creating a chill and relaxed environment for her clients in her own space. She is eager to work with mothers on their way to giving birth or post delivery, both times which bring a lot of new emotion and sensation in the body and mind!

Mandi is a full spectrum doula who loves supporting parents in having peaceful and positive prenatal, birth and postpartum experiences. She believes birth and parenthood are the most powerful and profound experiences in existence and feels so incredibly grateful to get to witness and hold space for those choosing to embark on such adventures!
When Mandi was 5 years old, she wrote that she wanted to grow up to be a “baby doctor“ in her kindergarten “All About Me” book. She found her way on the doula path after remembering this childhood dream and working as a nanny for 17 years for dozens of kiddos. She has always felt drawn to babies, birth, and motherhood. She graduated with a degree in Psychology from Boston University in 2012.
Mandi is a Doula Thrive and DONA trained doula, and both an Administrative Assistant and HypnoBirthing Instructor with Brilliant Births. A lover of travel, Mandi has lived in many countries, often finding home in spiritual, intentional, conscious communities. She studies Tantra and hopes to support interested couples in exploring sacred sexual energy and polarity in the birth space.
She is a baker and personal chef (specializing in raw vegan treats), a singer, an ISTA graduate, an inspired enneagram student, a recent lover of Ayurveda, and is an avid salsa and bachata dancer.

Maureen is a mom of three who found the birth of her first child unexpectedly profound. The years following this birth and the subsequent births of her other children, Maureen found herself counseling and advising many of her friends and family members regarding their birth options and how to accomplish their own desires for an empowered birth. In 2012, Maureen decided it was time to leave her corporate job and to transition into her life's passion of supporting, encouraging and nurturing birthing people and their families through labor and birth. Maureen is DONA trained, has taken several types of birthing classes (The Bradley Method, Hypnobirthing, Loving Arms, Natural Resources, Bay Area Birth Education) and lactation training classes. In 2015, Maureen added postpartum services to her practice after seeing many of her clients struggling to find their rhythm at home. Maureen will be a forever student of prenatal, birth and postpartum learnings and will continue to bring these learnings to her families that she is supporting. Maureen's peaceful demeanor and genuine care provide families with a strong base and level of support that is heartfelt.

We’d love to help you find the perfect doula for your birth and postpartum. Reach out to us today for more info and to meet our team of doulas ready to help you.

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Our Commitment

Brilliant Births strives to be an anti-racist organization. As birth workers, we understand that the medical industry in the United States has assaulted, traumatized, and exploited people of color, especially Black and Indigenous people, and we have seen that continuing violence first-hand.

We believe our responsibility as a majority white organization of doulas is to know that history, provide trauma-informed care, pursue anti-racism within ourselves and our community, and be supporters, advocates, and protectors of all birthing people. We acknowledge that we live on land stolen from Indigenous people and in communities built through the forced labor of people of color. We know that systems of oppression and violence targeting Black, Indigenous, and all people of color continue to damage families' health and well-being profoundly.

We are committed to reparations and community relationships that reallocate resources, decolonize, and disrupt systemic violence and oppression. We have chosen to partner with Stronghold to provide ongoing organizational training and consultancy. We pay ongoing reparations through Shuumi Land Tax through the Sogorea Te’ Land Trust.