Executive Leadership and Committees

Laura Zeidenstein, CNM, DNP, FACNM, Co-Chair of NYCM is a seasoned midwifery educator and clinical midwife. Her entry into midwifery was born out of the civil rights movement, lesbian feminist activism, the women’s health movement, and abortion rights of the 1970s. She lived much of her childhood in South Asia, which had a formative influence on her global perspective. Laura earned her MSN from Yale in 1988 and DNP from Columbia in 2005. She was awarded Fellowship in ACNM (FACNM) in 2015. Laura is currently an Associate Professor at Columbia University School of Nursing, Graduate Midwifery and has been the Program Director since 2002. She has practiced with Midwifery of Manhattan since it opened in 2003 and has worked in full scope midwifery service in New York City throughout her midwifery career. She has worked in out of hospital birth centers, public health service and private practice including at Woodhull, Downstate, Nurse-Midwifery Associates, MCA Childbearing Center, and Elizabeth Seton Childbirth Center. She was one of the founders of the Elizabeth Seton Childbearing Center. She has precepted students at the Allen Pavilion, Harlem Hospital and Morris Heights Childbearing Center. She is a former editor of the Journal of Nurse-Midwifery (currently the Journal of Midwifery and Women’s Health) and has published extensively. Laura’s global health work includes Project Director of a collaborative MCH project between Columbia University School of Nursing and a NGO public health system in Bangladesh. In 2015 she produced an educational video: “Filling the Gap: Safe and Effective Training for Traditional Birth Attendants (TBAs) in Low Resource Countries”. She is an active member of NYCM, ACNM, and NYSALM and has her finger on the pulse of the strengths and challenges of midwifery in our city. Laura has had the privilege to be an active mentor to midwifery students and new graduates​. In addition, she is an accomplished watercolor painter. Laura has a grown son who was born at home in Brooklyn attended by her late wife, Susan, and a cadre of midwives.