My work
Care Innovations
Karen Laing is the Founder of Birthways, one of the first and largest doula services in the country,and the originator of the WisdomWay℠ method of mindful caregiving. She is an MBSR (Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction) teacher, and brings her practice of awareness into her care work innovations as well as her leadership.
Since 1994, Karen Laing has practiced mindfulness and investigated the role of mindfulness in caregiving and ways of removing obstacles in the way of safe, equitable and compassionate care. She has worked as a midwife and lactation consultant, served as a trauma–informed perinatal educator, and has trained and mentored hundreds of providers in the maternal health space. She served on the board of the National Association of Postpartum Care Services, where she helped to establish the first national standards for postpartum doulas and has published and lectured on the subject of postpartum doulas and their role in prevention and treatment of perinatal mood disorders. Birthways, a company she founded in 1997 has served more than 10 thousand families with services that empower, inform and support them throughout pregnancy, birth and early parenting.
In addition to furthering health education and advocacy through her work at Birthways, she teaches Relationship-Centered, Healing Informed, and Equitable Care. Centered Care, 6 Qualities of Embodied Mindfulness, and the Compass of Mindful Caregiving are offered through WisdomWay Institute, an organization she founded in 2018. Through consultation, on-site and online programs, mindfulness retreats, workshops and online learning for a range of audiences, including care professionals and caregivers, she is dedicating to improving safety, equity, and compassion in health systems.
Today, Karen is leveraging her industry knowledge and passion for improving health care, her commitment to furthering the dignity and sustainability of care work, and her belief in the potential to create compassionate cultures, by building a platform designed to bring pregnant and parenting people together with the support systems they need to thrive.
Okkanti is designed to bring unstoppable momentum to improving maternal health equity while creating generational health for all.