Founders
Millie Tresierra and Suparna Choudhury
Cofounders Millie Tresierra and Suparna Choudhury came together in the year prior to the pandemic with a vision to create more social support, access to care and resources for vulnerable communities in Montreal. With Millie as a doula and medical advocate, and Suparna as a researcher in transcultural psychiatry, they were drawn to the intersection between these two worlds and the rich potential in exploring a multi-directional approach grounded in both research and lived experience.
About Millie:
Executive Director
Deeply implicated for almost 2 decades in advocacy for perinatal mental health resources, Millie is a community advocate focused on working with marginalized communities in Montreal. She is originally from Peru and inspired by her father’s human rights work with Indigenous cultures, women and conservation, she has collaborated with organizations in Costa Rica, Jamaica and Canada using her background in the performing arts to build programs around storytelling, in order to give voice to personal, cultural and environmental challenges experienced by vulnerable communities in those countries. Prompted by her own experiences with birth and the medical system, she advocated for families as a doula for 15 years, and now continues to work diligently for equitable, unbiased, respectful, well-informed experiences for people in the perinatal period and beyond. Mental health and accessible health care have been on the foreground of her work, collaborating closely with the CLSCs and other community organizations to create a sustainable network of support for mothers and families. More recently her work has evolved to include building community for elders/seniors and supporting caregivers, with a more specific tool: peer group support and mentorship.
About Suparna:
Director of Research
Trained in cognitive neuroscience, transcultural psychiatry and creative writing, Suparna’s research career has taken an interdisciplinary trajectory with a primary focus on the implications of the new brain sciences for health and society. Her projects investigate how to live with uncertainty, feminist conceptions and measurement of dignity; psychosis and the city; the adolescent brain; critical neuroscience; the emotional, moral and political dimensions of biomedical discourse in the context of pregnancy, motherhood, neurodiversity, and adolescence. At the core of her research work is a commitment to examining the politics of psychiatry and the central role of social and cultural context in mental health. She is also experienced in research and advocacy in non-profits and grassroots organizations, including the Medical Foundation for Victims of Torture in London, UNICEF, and Educational Ecologies Collective, which aims to reimagine education systems to address the ecological crisis of our times. She is also a writer and co-founder of Poetry Clinic.