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Administration
President
Joe Cheng
Vice President
Melissa Kelly
Chief Compliance Officer
Alesha Fox, MS
Registrar
Malia Stromquist, MBA
Admissions Specialist
Brook Holmberg
Academic Director
Kim Perry, CNM
Clinical Placement Director
Jen Holloman, M.Ed.
Clinical Teaching Director
Halimah Martin, M.Ed., CNM
Lactation Program Director
Carrie Finger, IBCLC, LCC
Chief Compliance Officer
 Alesha
Fox, MS received her bachelor’s in Education from Western
Oregon University and still maintains her teaching certification in
middle/high school social studies. She received her master’s degree in
Information Management from the University of Oregon. Alesha brings
administrative experience through her work obtaining accreditation for
a small non-profit in Eugene, Oregon, as well as her work as a lead on
an educational project with national policy implications. She is new to
midwifery and is eager to learn about the positive effects that the
practice has on all that it touches
In addition to her position as Chief Compliance Officer, she serves as a Trustee on the Executive Board of Aviva Institute.
Alesha grew up in a small town in Oregon and really
enjoyed having her grandparents close by. She has four nieces and six
nephews that keep her busy and thoroughly entertained. She loves
holidays, spending time with her family, and playing volleyball.
Lactation Program Director
Carrie Finger, IBCLC, LCCE has been a lactation consultant since 1998. She is the co-founder of the North Carolina Breastfeeding Coalition. She has a BFA from the San Francisco Art Institute
and is a Certified Lamaze Childbirth Educator. She is currently
teaching numerous and varied prenatal classes in a large
hospital chain. Previously, she worked for over 12 years as a
lactation consultant in a busy hospital and is pleased to now be
working in a learning environment where birth is honored and recognized
as a normal and sacred process.
She is a wife and
mother of two pre-teenagers. She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area,
but originally from the mountains of NC. She loves to mountain bike,
paint large abstract paintings, and see live music.
Vice President
 Melissa Kelly has been a
bookkeeper for twelve years and was the Business Director for a
small non-profit elementary school for five, before deciding
to work from home with her children.
As a birth doula, postpartum doula, childbirth educator
and breastfeeding educator, she is happy to apply her business
knowledge to the fields of
birth and health.
As a key financial backer of Aviva Institute, Melissa served as its
original Business Director before becoming its Vice President and CFO,
and serves as both Vice President and Treasurer of its Executive Board.
She’s mother to four beautiful girls ages 13, 7, 5 and 3, all of whom
were born with the assistance of midwives, the youngest three at home.
She lives in Netarts, Oregon.
Registrar
 Malia
Stromquist, MBA was born and raised in Duluth, Mn, which is located on
the shores of beautiful Lake Superior. After
attending two of the local colleges in Duluth, she decided to move to
California to pursue a more affordable education. While
living and working in the Bay Area, Malia attained her Bachelor’s of
Science in Business Administration and her Master’s of Business
Administration as a graduate of California State University East
Bay. She has taken many distance learning courses,
furthering her education even after graduation. She considers
herself to be a life-long learner, and so being a Registrar for an
online midwifery school is a great fit for her. After
spending the last 10 years in the San Francisco Bay Area, she
recently returned to Duluth to be closer to family. She has a
beautiful baby girl, a wonderful husband, and enjoys spending time with
her friends and family.
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Academic Director
 Kim Perry, CNM has
been involved in home birth since 1983 and was drawn to midwifery
because of her own birth experiences. She became an apprentice trained
midwife in 1991, a CPM in 1996, and a CNM in 2003.
She has taught in two Associate Degree Nursing programs since 2005 and
has precepted apprentices through the CPM certification process.
She has been an advocate of midwifery licensure in the State of
Illinois for over 20 years, co-founded Illinois Families For Midwifery, and is a Board member of the Coalition For Illinois Midwifery.
President
 Joe Cheng has over fourteen years
experience supporting instructional and administrative technology in
the non-profit, adult education, secondary and higher ed arenas. He
also has seven years experience teaching in those same areas, and has
spent a couple years managing facilities and operations at two
emergency shelters.
He was the original IT Director of Aviva Institute, then Interim Executive Director, and currently serves as President and CEO, as well as President of the Executive Board.
He has a B.A. in Math and Philosophy from Yale University and
spent three years in graduate school at CSU Long Beach
researching feminist globalization theory, feminist jurisprudence and
formal semantics. He has completed coursework in preparation for the
Project Management Professional (PMP) and Certified Information Systems
Security Professional (CISSP) certification exams, and is a Moodle
Certified Course Creator (MCCC).
Clinical Placement Director
 Jenifer Holloman B.S., M.Ed received a Bachelor of Science degree from Lesley
College and went on to earn a Master's Degree in Educational Leadership
from Bridgewater State College, later taking courses in the realm of the
M.Div degree at Andover-Newton Theological School, and Harvard Divinity
School, as a way to combine her passion for people, their emotional and
spiritual needs and her intense love of intellectualism. Her current
focus is on improving the care of mothers and babies through grass roots
organizing and political action in her home state. She trained as a
doula, and may continue to pursue midwifery in the future.
She lives with her husband and two daughters in Cape Cod, Massachusetts
where she raises goats and other livestock. She is passionate about
birth politics and the care of mothers during the childbearing year and
has a garden that is the delight and envy of all who see it.
Clinical Teaching Director
Halimah Martin, M.Ed., CNM Worked
for many years in a partnership with another faculty member, Sylvia
Patience, as a home birth midwife. She currently works in homecare for
high-risk pregnant women. She has worked in a hospital as an L&D
nurse, teaching and doing counseling for a high school teen-age-mother
program, and teaching reading to adults with learning disabilities. I
have a BA degree in English from Connecticut College, a Masters in Education from Stanford, an AA degree in nursing from Cabrillo Community College, and a midwifery certificate from the Community-Based Nurse-Midwifery Education Program (CNEP) at the Frontier School of Midwifery and Family Nursing in Kentucky.
She looking forward to sharing the knowledge she has acquired working
with mothers and babies over the last 25 years in this latest and
greatest venue, cyberspace and forming cyber-relationships with
students and faculty members.
She is the mother of five children, and lives in Santa Cruz, California.
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