There is a powerful movement for birth justice happening in the United States. That momentum is driven by people taking matters into their own hands to advocate, fund, storytell, and build solutions that will make a difference in the lives of Black families.

While it is the unfortunate truth that in America, Black women are three to four times more likely to die from pregnancy-related complications than white women – despite various socioeconomic factors and advances in healthcare – we also know that change is underway. It will take collective action and a coalition of the willing to end the existing harsh disparities in our healthcare system nationwide.

Join Chicago Beyond on March 14 for a conversation on birth justice with four powerful voices: Producer & Director Tonya Lewis Lee, Sona Smith of Ms. Foundation for Women, our Founder & CEO Liz Dozier, & Jeanine Valrie Logan, our Leader in Residence, midwife, & Founder of The Chicago South Side Birth Center. RSVP here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/the-state-of-birth-justice-in-america-tickets-828890502807?aff=CBli

Shruti Jayaraman

Chief Investments Officer, Chicago Beyond

Shruti Jayaraman is Chief Investments Officer at Chicago Beyond, a funder that invests in organizations, people and ideas towards all youth being free to live their fullest human potential. Beyond funding, our team works hand-in-hand with investments to deploy an array of resources. We have noticed that through this approach, rooted in humanness and mutual learning, what is possible grows.

Chicago Beyond has invested in holistic healing since our founding, ranging from collaboration with the city’s school system serving 350,000 young Chicagoans and the adults around them, to creating meaningful spaces to bring together children and their incarcerated parents, to telling one’s story through art to heal, to holistic health clinic, to 100 investments in healing during this pandemic. Chicago Beyond’s guidebook Why Am I Always Being Researched? has been used in all 50 states and more than 90 countries to shift practices around evidence in the social sector.

Shruti’s professional experience includes infrastructure construction and finance as a lawyer; launching one of the largest public hospital systems in the country’s Medicaid health plan; and forming strategy and new initiatives in diverse settings—Fortune 100 company, rural maternal-child clinic, municipal government, youth nonprofit, venture-backed startup.

Shruti holds a J.D. from the Yale Law School and an A.B. in History and Science from Harvard College. She is grateful for ancient wisdom and wellbeing practices, which have changed the course of her life.

Click here to find out more about Chicago Beyond.

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