BiRTH Legend

Latham Thomas's Mama Glow has birthed thousands of new doula jobs while advancing reproductive justice.

- CHRISTINE LAGORIO-CHAFKIN

Inspiration struck Latham Thomas 22 years ago. That's when she found out she was pregnant with her son, Fulano. "He's the senior in college, right over there," she says, pointing to a young man sitting alone at a table in a Brooklyn event space, her mouth breaking into a smile the moment her eyes land on him.

Thomas was just a year out of Columbia University, where she'd studied visual arts and environmental sciences, when she learned she was expecting. She knew little about the level of care she needed, where to look for it, or how to plan for pregnancy and beyond.

Few new parents do. That got her thinking. What if she could make the pregnancy and birth process easier to understand as well as "more blissful, comfortable, and beautiful"? Starting out as a health coach and doula for individual clients in the early aughts, Thomas grew her Harlem-based service business slowly for more than a decade. Then, once her son was a teenager, she audaciously flipped the whole thing inside out.