Chanel Portia

Chanel Portia-Albert, CD, CLC, CHHC, is the Executive Director and Founder of Ancient Song Doula Services, a reproductive health organization focused on providing resources and full-spectrum doula services to women of color and marginalized communities. A reproductive justice and health advocate as well as speaker on birth justice and health equity, Chanel’s work within infant and maternal health is centered in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn and extends to Uganda, where she has served as a maternal health strategist. Her #BeyondBirthWork initiative developed a grant-sponsored community-based doula model in collaboration with Village Birth International and Every Mother Counts in response to New York State Governor Andrew Cuomo’s 2018 call to end racial disparity in maternal care. Chanel serves as a consultant for the NYC Department of Health in Mental Hygiene and serves on the advisory board at Ariadne Labs at Harvard School of Public Health and Columbia Medical School. When she is not teaching or facilitating workshops you can find her spending time with her six children.