Heather Skanes, MD, (she/her) is a compassionate, patient-centered obstetrician and gynecologist who is proud to serve her community of Birmingham, AL, at Oasis Women’s Health. Born and raised in Birmingham, Dr. Skanes is dedicated to uplifting her community and is a supporter of Black Lives, birth rights, and a believer of womxn everywhere. As a health care provider at a Black-owned and operated practice, Dr. Skanes is an avid participant in the movement to protect and celebrate Black lives and strongly believes that when Black women are protected, all women will be protected.

Dr. Skanes attended Washington University in St. Louis, MO, where she received her Bachelor’s degree in African and African American Studies. She then studied maternal and child health at the UA School of Public Health for one year before pursuing medicine, earning her medical degree at Wright State Boonshoft School of Medicine in Dayton, OH, and completing her residency in obstetrics and gynecology at Morehouse School of Medicine in Atlanta, GA. Dr. Skanes was given the honor of being named Chief Resident in her final year of residency.

Tish Gotell Faulks is a 1999 graduate of the “People’s Electric Law School,” Rutgers University School of Law in Newark, NJ. As an associate with Lowenstein Sandler in Roseland, NJ, Faulks quickly discovered her love for the law as a tool to fight for and protect people. At Lowenstein, Faulks joined a team of attorneys who sought to vindicate the civil rights of abused and neglected children in Charlie and Nadine H. v. Whitman, a case that exposed the rampant failures of New Jersey’s child protective services agency. From there, Faulks served as an elbow law clerk to the Hon. Joseph A. Greenaway, Jr., then USDJ, before his elevation to the US Circuit Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. Faulks states that her tutelage under Judge Greenaway remains the most educational period of her career.

Faulks FIGHTS for the people at every turn. She has fought for protections for people pursuant to the Rehabilitation and Americans with Disabilities Acts, equal rights and access to public accommodations for people from the LGBTQIA community, due process for people navigating the criminal just system—including human rights for those sentenced to death, medical privacy for all people—irrespective of sex or gender, and human rights—irrespective of race, age, sex, gender presentation, religion, medical condition, alienage, national origin, or immigration status. When she is not fighting for the people, Faulks seeks to educate those who will join this fight as attorneys, policy makers, and community leaders. To that end, she has served as a law professor in TX, NC, and GA, teaching constitutional law, criminal appellate procedure, and special problems in constitutional law such as innocence litigation and death penalty jurisprudence.

Trendle Samuel is a registered nurse and certified lactation counselor (CLC). She attended the University of Alabama where she received her Bachelor’s degree in Nursing and she is currently pursuing a Master of Public Health there as well. After graduating, she worked as a maternal-child nurse for 16 years with 6 of those years in management of a Labor and Delivery unit. She then went to work at a Federally Qualified Health Center, serving uninsured, underinsured, and/or underserved patients. She now works for the Alabama Department of Public Health’s State Perinatal Program where she is one of five Perinatal Coordinators in the state who examines infant and fetal mortality, as well as maternal mortality. She serves 12 counties in Perinatal Region II in West Alabama and collaborates with agencies and organizations to improve maternal and infant health outcomes in the region and statewide.

When she has spare time, she loves spending it with her husband and daughters, traveling to new places, going to the movies, and listening to Prince music.

A native of Franklin, Tennessee, Honour received her undergraduate degree in public health at the University of Kentucky. While there, she researched infant mortality among children enrolled in the state’s home-visiting program along with reproductive coercion among college students. After undergraduate studies, Honour served in the AmeriCorps setting up and providing free vision screenings in preschools around Alabama. Once she completed time in the AmeriCorps, Honour received her MPH from the University of Alabama Birmingham in Maternal and Child Health Policy and Leadership and received a certificate in social marketing. She’s worked on many different initiatives in Alabama, Tennessee and Wisconsin including Title V needs assessment and with the Alabama Perinatal Quality Collaborative. Honour serves as the chair of the Maternal Child Health/Substance Use Subcommittee of the Alabama Opioid Overdose and Addiction Council. In her free time, Honour volunteers as a foster for the local humane society and spends time wrangling her Anatolian Shepherd, Augustin.

Dr. King’s long-standing commitment to disadvantaged, vulnerable and marginalized populations is evidenced through her professional and research experiences working with children and families in juvenile justice, child welfare, education, nonprofit and homeless/transitional housing settings. Her research focuses on health behaviors and health disparities that impact the adolescent and young adult life experience including dating violence, delinquency, substance use, mental health, and sexual risk behaviors while giving attention to social determinants of health and the promotion of health behaviors.

Dr. King lives by the motto, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.” This quote taken directly from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s 1963 Letter from a Birmingham jail has resonated with her as a social worker and reflects the impact she seeks to make in the lives of individuals, families, communities and systems.