Poonam Dreyfus-Pai is a South Asian researcher, advocate, and full-spectrum doula. She holds Masters Degrees from UC Berkeley in both Social Welfare and Public Health.She got her start in the reproductive health and justice movements in college, where she interned with Planned Parenthood of Central and Greater Northern NJ, the Global Youth Coalition on HIV/AIDS, and Columbia University’s Sexual Violence Prevention and Response Program. Upon graduating from Barnard College, Poonam began a career in health research, first assessing conflict of interest in medicine, and then evaluating the efficacy of six national crisis hotlines in reducing suicidality of their callers. She maintained her connection to direct service work through her volunteer commitments: working as a volunteer doula for The Doula Project, a NYC-based organization that provides free, compassionate care to people across the spectrum of pregnancy outcomes, and as a volunteer crisis hotline counselor for The Samaritans of NYC.

Recognizing that research and direct service should work together to inform the creation of reproductive health programs, Poonam began the dual masters program at UC Berkeley in the Fall of 2011, and graduated from the program in May 2014. Her graduate internships have included abortion stigma research at ANSIRH, as well as program evaluation and capacity-building at Backline and at Women Organized to Respond to Life-threatening Diseases (WORLD). At the end of June 2014, she ended her tenure as co-director of the Bay Area Doula Project, a volunteer run- and led-organization committed to increasing access to compassionate doula care for people having abortions or experiencing pregnancy loss; she held this position for over 2 years.She is a board member of ACCESS Women’s Health Justice, California’s local reproductive healthline and abortion fund. She is also an alumni of CoreAlign’s Generative Fellowship (Summer 2013 Cohort), where she developed and currently coordinates the Full-Spectrum Reproductive Support Network, a national network of groups supporting all pregnancy outcomes and experiences.

Poonam’s work has been featured on the Radical Doula blog, RH Reality Check, and the Jewish Daily Forward. She has written for NPR’s The Race Card Project and CoreAlign’s Movement Catalyst Blog. She has presented at Female Sexuality Workshop in the Community (FemSexComm), the National Abortion Federation’s 38th Annual Meeting, the National Network of Abortion Funds National Summit, Take Root: Red State Perspectives on Reproductive Justice, and was an opening plenary speaker for the Civil Liberties and Public Policy 28th annual conference.

Poonam is passionate about developing applied research that is driven by the needs and visions of marginalized communities; about creating and facilitating engaging, skills-based trainings; and about building collaborative networks dedicated to supporting the sexual and reproductive experiences of all people. Poonam currently lives in Oakland, CA, with her husband Michael and her cat Starbuck. When not working, she likes running, feeding her loved ones elaborate meals, re-watching Grey’s Anatomy and Friday Night Lights, and attempting to photograph every minute of Starbuck’s life.

 Check out Poonam’s LinkedIn profile here.