Cat Dymond, CNM
Midwife
Cat Dymond is a certified nurse-midwife, a Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner, and a nurse entrepreneur, proudly practicing in the Deep South, queering health via Black feminist praxis in Atlanta, GA. They are passionate about inclusive sexual and reproductive health as it relates to patient education, health equity, and reproductive justice, centering Black and LGBTQIA+ communities. As a pro bono doula for 30 years, serving immigrant communities and low income birthing people, they saw the transformative power of holistic healthcare. They believe midwifery is so much more than birth; it is a framework for innovation and emancipatory nursing praxis.
A single parent to two, they put themself through Harvard as a First Gen student, earning their degree in Anthropology with their elder son on their hip; they earned their BSN and MSN at Emory with both sons by their side. Midwifery is their second career. Before this, they worked for over two decades in government social services, from Housing & Homeless Services to Public Health to Community Education & Outreach. Their lived experience, backed by their training in evidence-based practice and trauma-informed care, allows them to create and implement policies and programs that successfully promote health equity and reproductive justice.
Cat has been a recipient of the American College of Nurse-Midwives Foundation’s Thacher-Midwifery Business Network Midwifery Leadership Fellowship and the Varney Leadership Award. At Emory, they were awarded multiple academic and public service scholarships, including the Emory Alumni Board Leadership Scholarship and the Robert W. Woodruff Fellowship--the highest accolade an Emory student can receive. Inspired by the entrepreneurial spirit of Atlanta, and a grant from Emory’s innovation lab, The Hatchery, they created Earthseed Midwifery, a proof-of-concept for a mobile/virtual health service to provide inclusive sexual and reproductive health, using the midwifery model of care. Today, Earthseed Midwifery serves vulnerable populations and marginalized communities through programmatic opportunities and online patient education.
Cat completed their antepartum and women's health/gendered health rotations at Atlanta's Grady Health System (GHS), one of the largest safety net health systems in the nation. There they provided midwifery care from the first routine gyn/gendered exam, through pregnancy and parenthood, and into the menopausal years, both in-hospital and in the community at Kirkwood and North Fulton Health Centers. Their practice home has been the Atlanta Birth Center, where they’ve provided holistic, comprehensive, and family-centered midwifery care.
During this time, they also became a Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner through Georgia College & State University, an Evidence Based Birth® Instructor, and received advanced training in Perinatal Mental Health (PMH) from Postpartum Support International (PSI), in both the Psychotherapy and Advanced Pharmacology tracks. They will be sitting for both their PMH and North American Menopause Society-certified practitioner exams later this year.
They have the honor of sitting on the Board of Directors of GLMA: Health Professionals Advancing LGBTQ Equality (GLMA), and of being the Co-Leader of the National Advanced Practice Clinician (APC) Cluster for the Reproductive Health Access Project (RHAP), a collaborative effort of the Reproductive Health Access Project, Nurses for Sexual and Reproductive Health, and the National Abortion Federation to provide an accessible space for APCs and students to support each other in sexual and reproductive health care provision and advocacy across the country.
