Meet Every Mother Counts’ Running Ambassadors

Today is National Running Day and we just hit the pavement in New York City this morning to highlight the many ways our runners are going the distance to make pregnancy and childbirth safe for every mother.

Running has always been an important aspect of our work at Every Mother Counts, as we work to address distance as one of the biggest barriers that women face when attempting to get obstetric care. 

We have built a wonderful community of runners, some of whom have expressed interest in getting more involved. So for the last year, we’ve been working on an exciting program to organically grow our community with support from those runners — and today, we finally launched an official EMC running ambassador program to do just that.

The program, which started with just 10 ambassadors, has now grown to 27 ambassadors from all over the United States, and 2 ambassadors from Europe. 

The role of the running ambassadors is to identify races of all distances within their communities and then function as the team captain for each of these races, leading group training runs and other team events. And for them, the responsibly goes beyond just running commitments. 

These ambassadors are playing a critical role in the growth of the EMC community, and help us to provide more opportunities for our supporters to take meaningful action. They also take part in our maternal health education program so they can discuss the many contributors to poor maternal health outcomes with their communities and truly become an extension of the Every Mother Counts team. Thanks to EMC’s Running Ambassadors, we now have even more people, in more cities, logging miles for maternal health.

Alicia Walker — California

Alison Cebulla — New York

Amy Alderfer — California

Arlene Espinoza — New Mexico

Ashley Allred — Utah

Ayesha Akhtar — Illinois

Caitlin Wait — Minnesota

Catherine Calligas — Alabama

Christine Koenitzer — Connecticut

Elizabeth Lane — Massachusetts

Emily Carder — Texas

Hilary Chu — Massachusetts

Jessica Malone — Colorado

Josie Guigliano — New Jersey

Katie Malbon — UK

Kayla Keigley — Minnesota

Kiley Larson — Florida

Kristy Crisp — North Carolina

Laura Cope — Texas

Lei Dunn — Virginia

Lindsay Monaghan — New Jersey

Malena Capion — Sweden

Maria Bocanegra — Virginia

Megan Buschkopf — Wisconsin

Melody Parry — DC

Roma van der Walt — New York (Program Advisor)

Roni Belcheva — New York

Samantha Galvin — Washington

Shannon Hren — Arizona

Susan Kleisner — Washington

Check out our 2015 race calendar to find races near you. We still have a few spots open in these upcoming races and we’d love for you to run with us:

• 9/6/15 — The Magnificent Mile Half Marathon — Chicago, IL
• 9/26/15 — The Hamptons Half Marathon — Hamptons, NY
• 11/1/15 — The TCS New York Marathon — New York, NY

Together, with your help and our miles we can make pregnancy and childbirth safe for every mother.