Ayesha Chatterjee

Ayesha Chatterjee joined the staff of Our Bodies Ourselves in 2006, after moving to Boston from India. She brought years of experience in sexuality and reproductive and sexual health, stemming from her counseling work with the pathbreaking Delhi-based group, TARSHI, and the Modicare Foundation, where she authored a multi-module facilitation guide for trainers working on adolescent health and sexuality.

At OBOS, Ayesha co-led the OBOS Global Initiative and helped facilitate cultural adaptations of Our Bodies, Ourselves in more than a dozen languages. She also helped develop and design Surrogacy360, a site designed to address gaps in public knowledge on the issue of global commercial surrogacy and its impact on all of those involved: the gestational parents, the intended parents that hire them, the babies they birth, and the egg providers (“donors”).

Ayesha is a certified postpartum doula and lactation counselor who serves families with newborns in the Washington DC metro region. Her journey in postpartum care started unexpectedly, in 2009, while supporting her sister through birth and after. Emerging from this intense time (when poop literally and figuratively hit the fan), she made the decision on the Amtrak ride home to become professionally certified. As an immigrant and a survivor of life-threatening perinatal complications, she is especially invested in BIPOC parents and parents coping with birth trauma, whose stories are often unheard or untold.

Ayesha is the managing editor for the International Doula, DONA’s quarterly print publication, and consults with Mamatoto Village, a Washington DC-based organization committed to expanding the BIPOC perinatal workforce and the BIPOC communities they serve. She currently lives in Bethesda, Maryland, with her partner, Erik, their rising fifth grader, Tara, and their large, lazy and loveable feline (Peter Cat) and canine (Susie).