Dr. Mayra is a midwifery, nursing and global health researcher from India with a PhD in Global Health from the University of Southampton, UK, where she explored the experiences and determinants of obstetric violence in India through an arts-based method called ‘birth mapping’. She won the Research Trainee funding from the Michael Smith Foundation for Health Research (MSFHR) to work as a postdoctoral fellowship at the Birth Place Lab, University of British Columbia, where she is leading the Continuum for Respectful Care (CORE) initiative alongside supporting the team at the lab on other respectful care related initiatives. She has extensive research experience on nursing and midwifery workforce policies, regulation and practice; sexual, reproductive and maternal health care and the underlying gender-based challenges. Dr. Mayra is a global speaker and has delivered guest lectures in universities and at conferences around the world on obstetric violence; orgasm equality, nursing and midwifery governance, the inequities, sexism and discriminations in health policy-making. Dr. Mayra was recently recognized as one of the 100 outstanding global midwife and nurse leaders by Women in Global Health, WHO, ICN, ICM, Nursing Now and UNFPA to mark the Year of the Nurse and the Midwife 2020.
Dr. Mayra serves on the board on Human Rights in Childbirth (HRIC), White Ribbon Alliance UK and Academy for Nursing Studies and Women’s Empowerment Research Studies. She also runs the Obstetric Violence Journal Club and the Birth and Body Book Club. Dr. Mayra also consults as a Subject Matter Expert with the WHO HQ to create a toolkit for WHO Academy on Essential Respectful Care Course (ERCC). When she is not doing any of the above, she is dancing.