A few words
About Us
History
Accessible women's care for all.
Our organization’s goal is to lift financial, language and racial barriers to health care, essential services and education for all women in our community by providing access to free and discounted health and mental health services and promoting women’s health and wellness through education.
We are a woman-run organization. Our board of directors includes women from many sections of the women’s health universe — doctors, nurses, midwives, medical students, herbalists, mental health advocates, and educators.
Come work with us
We are currently looking for volunteers to help us expand our services and achieve our goals.
Staff
Executive Director – Oona Mekas
Oona is a midwife in training, doula, childbirth educator and women’s health advocate. She has been working with pregnant women since 2010. After spending most of her adult life in New York and Los Angeles as a working actress, film curator and director, she now lives in the Hill Country of Central Texas with her husband and young daughter. In addition to her work with women, she continues to work in the film industry in Texas. Oona has nearly 3 decades of nonprofit experience, having served in various positions on the board of Anthology Film Archives, a film archive and theater in New York City from 1995-2022.
PROVIDERS
Amy Beckmann, CNM
June Lamphier, LM/CPM
June is a homebirth midwife with offices in Blanco and Austin. She believes a woman is best served through information, partnership, and trust between client and midwife. It is her goal to develop a respectful, trusting partnership with my clients that brings both comfort and trust during challenging times. She had the privilege of working with Ann Dignan, CNM/FNP for over a decade providing homebirth services as well as community healthcare for the uninsured.
June worked as an LVN in Family Practice, Pediatrics, and Internal Medicine from 1985-1997. In 2000 she became a Certified Professional Midwife with N.A.R.M. and a Licensed Midwife regulated by TDLR. In 2000, she opened her own homebirth practice in Austin and the Texas Hill Country. She was also the co-owner of a birthing center in South Austin from 2009-2012.
Mary Littlefield, LM/CPM
Mary Littlefield is a Licensed Midwife/ Certified Professional Midwife with licences in Texas and California. She has been in practice for over 20 years, serving in home, hospital and birth center birth as well as other facets of women’s health. Mary’s focus is on the overall wellbeing of the woman and family. Her perspective is that the power to give birth resides within each woman; that it is the role of the midwife and the community to support the woman and her partner in finding that power throughout the childbearing process. Her approach to wellness is centered in the emotional experiences of each woman which serve as guideposts to meeting her needs.
Mary’s central focus is on helping women incorporate and release the unhealed experiences of the past as they impact the pregnancy and surface through the mind/body connection. She incorporates somatic work, spiritual support, emotional processing, listening, and a holistic approach to health and healing as each woman and family find their way through the lifegiving journey of pregnancy and birth.
Mary is an experienced Our Whole Lives Sexuality educator for grades 7-9 and 10-12. She also offers Healing with Horses and Somatic Singing through HCWHC.
OUR PARTNERS & Sponsors:
BOARD OF DIRECTOrs
Oona Mekas, President
Oona is a midwife in training, doula, childbirth educator and women’s health advocate. She has been working with pregnant women since 2010. After spending most of her adult life in New York and Los Angeles as a working actress, film curator and director, she now lives in the Hill Country of Central Texas with her husband and young daughter. In addition to her work with women, she continues to work in the film industry in Texas. Oona has nearly 3 decades of nonprofit experience, having served in various positions on the board of Anthology Film Archives, a film archive and theater in New York City from 1995-2022.
Sara Burk, Secretary
Sara joins us from Driftwood, TX, and has a background in public health. She currently serves as a Training Coordinator for a nonprofit dedicated to improving health outcomes in children in under-resourced schools across the country. Outside of this role, Sara stays busy on her family farm, where she and her spouse raise pastured poultry for local farmers markets and restaurants.
Sara is passionate about maternal/child health and ensuring everyone has access to equitable care. Close to her heart are the parents walking through infertility and recurring pregnancy loss, as these hardships have been part of her personal journey to motherhood. Sara is grateful for the opportunity to serve on the board of HCWHC and is thrilled to partner with this valuable community resource.
Rita Flores
Rita Flores is a trainer, facilitator, and consultant with Collective Capacity Consulting, LLC. Rita provides technical assistance and capacity building to nonprofit organizations. Her passion is supporting organizations to create healing-centered approaches to address the underlying causes of inequities in our communities and cultivate organizational practices that allow people to thrive.
Rita has extensive experience in violence prevention, mental health, and survivor-centered, trauma-informed care. Rita has led and operated emergency shelter and transitional housing programs for survivors of gender-based violence at community-based organizations in the Southwest and Pacific regions of the United States, as well as served as a technical assistance provider to community-based and state and national coalitions. Informed by over two decades in the movement to end gender-based violence, Rita’s consulting approach is grounded in a deep commitment to advancing transformative social change. Rita has a knack for creating processes to bring big ideas into focus, applying healing-centered approaches to our biggest challenges, and nurturing strong partnerships to activate our collective power to mobilize change.
Randi Jinkins, Treasurer
Randi joined Protection Engineering Consultants in 2019 as Accounting Manager. At PEC, she has a wide range of responsibilities including, but not limited to, client and vendor maintenance, financial reporting, payroll, human resource functions, support of marketing activities, insurance oversight, and support for Government audits and reviews. Randi graduated with a Bachelor of Business Administration in Accounting from Texas State University in San Marcos. She has done accounting for organizations in multiple industries including hospitality, manufacturing, medical, recruiting, and engineering. She was also a recruiter for several years to help candidates find jobs and companies find candidates.
Ash Novickas
Claudia Perez
Leia Wootan Koehler
Leia is a trained/certified as an Integrative Yoga Therapy yoga teacher (specialized in yoga for anxiety), yin yoga teacher, Trauma Informed Yoga teacher, and full spectrum doula. Her main focus is comprehensive postpartum support for childbearing parents and their primary support people. She cares about cultivating robust networks of peer support for families, and sharing modalities of free or inexpensive evidence-based community & self-care/interventions that can provide relief from the normal range of anxiety and depression experienced by many new (and seasoned) parents.
BOARD OF ADVISORS
Toni Jinkins
Toni has a background in special education and working with non-profits in the Hill Country. She most recently held the position of director at WAG, a pet adoption group in Wimberley, TX.
June Lamphier, LM/CPM
June is a homebirth midwife with offices in Blanco and Austin. She believes a woman is best served through information, partnership, and trust between client and midwife. It is her goal to develop a respectful, trusting partnership with my clients that brings both comfort and trust during challenging times. She had the privilege of working with Ann Dignan, CNM/FNP for over a decade providing homebirth services as well as community healthcare for the uninsured.
June worked as an LVN in Family Practice, Pediatrics, and Internal Medicine from 1985-1997. In 2000 she became a Certified Professional Midwife with N.A.R.M. and a Licensed Midwife regulated by TDLR. In 2000, she opened her own homebirth practice in Austin and the Texas Hill Country. She was also the co-owner of a birthing center in South Austin from 2009-2012.
Celeste Leon, MD
Celeste has many years of experience in the medical field, with a background in family practice. She currently works in a busy hospital emergency room environment in the Hill Country of Central Texas. She is dedicated to making healthcare more accessible for all women in our community.
Allison Royal, CNP
Allison is a board-certified Family Nurse Practitioner with over ten years of experience in healthcare. She began her career as a Licensed Paramedic working for a rural central Texas EMS service while studying to obtain her Bachelors in Early Childhood Development from The University of Texas at Austin. Allison enjoyed a robust and never, ever dull nursing career in the world of emergency services and Level 1 pediatric trauma. Allison completed her Masters in Nursing from Simmons University in Boston and now enjoys the world of Family Medicine. Allison enjoys life in the beautiful hill country of central Texas alongside her husband, two children, and all of their assorted critters. Allison can be found in the garden, on the trail or with her nose stuck in a book.