D'aja Grandberry

During my Master's in Public Health at George Washington University, I fell in love with and grew a passion for maternal health work, especially given the circumstances of the Black maternal health crisis in the United States. A lot of the capstone projects I worked on were centered around Black women and maternal health and all of the negative maternal health outcomes that came along with that, such as high rates of preeclampsia, maternal deaths, and different mortality and morbidity outcomes. I just knew I wanted to do something in that line of work to improve maternal health outcomes, because not only will it impact me as a Black woman, but it's impacting a lot of my friends and family members and my Spelman sisters. It could potentially impact me personally, and I've also known other women that the healthcare system or pregnancy has impacted, whether it's been loss or a premature baby that was born or diseases or illnesses like high blood pressure. I currently have one for-profit business, Mommy Blooms, which centers around postpartum recovery and wellness with a specially curated kit made with moms in mind. I partner with lactation specialists, doulas, midwives, physical therapists with specialty in pregnancy and postpartum, and women's organizations like the Center for Black Women Wellness in Atlanta. I'm also newly in the tech space with an app called Rootedly, focused on AI matching of personalized tasks for the support system to be more intentional about the support they give moms during the postpartum journey. I had eight friends give birth in 2024, and being a support system among eight different women with eight different pregnancy journeys was a lot to take in. My whole background is about supporting the support system for moms in their pregnancy journey, and I don't even have children myself.