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Chair

Contact: chair@lcgb.org or lbrownlie@lcgb.org for non Chair matters

Linda Brownlie FCCA, IBCLC is a mum of three daughters and grandmother of two grandsons. She qualified as an IBCLC in 2016 and has a private clinic in Hull. She has volunteered for an award-winning breastfeeding peer support and volunteer doula project for the last 10 years and has volunteered extensively in the local maternity hospital and community also working with many families with challenging backgrounds throughout the perinatal period of their live. Linda had a pivotal role in saving the project from decommissioning when it was threatened in 2017. She has supervised a group of local peer supporters in Hull and runs a successful online breastfeeding group that has been supporting mums virtually for 7 years. Linda also set up an online global study support group for aspiring IBCLCs in 2013 and a group for new IBCLCs to support each other and regularly supports candidates one to one in the lead up to the exam. Linda is also a qualified accountant of 25 years and has extensive experience with financial management of both corporates and charities.

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Treasurer

Contact: treasurer@lcgb.org

Heidi Nowalany IBCLC qualified as an IBCLC in 2015 and attended her first LCGB Committee meeting in September 2016 when she was immediately interested in getting more involved. Heidi planned the Mothers and Depression Study Day in November 2016. She has taken a leading role on the Advancing the IBCLC subcommittee and has now taken on the role of Treasurer. Coming from a corporate background, her interest in helping breastfeeding mothers came about after she had her first son in 2008. She began volunteering at a breastfeeding drop-in in Chicago, USA and started her own drop-in when she moved to Fulham. In addition to the weekly drop-in, she has a small private practice.

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Secretary

Contact: secretary@lcgb.org
Shazlynn Omar is the mother of breastfed baby twins, and the first aspiring IBCLC to join the Board of Trustees. She brings an important perspective to the Board as a service user. Shazlynn will be applying her background in corporate journalism to her new role as LCGB’s Secretary.
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Membership Secretary

Contact: membership@lcgb.org

Vikki Kidd IBCLC has a passion to normalising breastfeeding and support breastfeeding women.  Coming from a nursing/midwifery background she has worked as a senior midwife in both in England and overseas.  After becoming a mother she trained as an NCT Breastfeeding Counsellor, qualifying in 2008.

When living in Canada, she qualified as an IBCLC in 2011 and worked as a hospital lactation consultant and became involved in Baby Friendly (BFI) organisations to promote and support breastfeeding. Having returned to England in 2015, she now lives and practices as an independent IBCLC and NCT BFC in South Warwickshire.  Becoming involved in LCGB as the Minutes Secretary, she is now the Membership Secretary and also a member of the Events Team.

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Neonatal Lead

Contact:  asmith@ lcgb.org
Amanda Smith IBCLC has been a children's nurse for over 14 years. The majority of her nursing career has concentrated on neonatal care, with specific focus in neonatal community outreach and infant feeding/family integrated care (FICare). Amanda brings a valuable NHS health professional voice to the table as a Trustee, and is keen to uphold the value of the IBCLC as part of the multi-disciplinary team and ensure clarity of scope of practice.
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Equality, Diversity & Inclusion

Contact: edi@lcgb.org

Zurina Ali IBCLC has a background in teaching and academia. She gained her IBCLC certification after nearly a decade facilitating breastfeeding groups supporting women from diverse backgrounds as a trained La Leche League Peer Counsellor within the Public Health Initiative in Manchester in 2011. Zurina joined LCGB as a committee member in 2012 and coordinated the 2013 Conference in Manchester. In 2015, she was elected as the first LCGB Equality and Diversity Lead. She has represented LCGB internationally as part of the Lactation Equity Action Committee (LEAC), and currently sits on the International Lactation Consultants Association (ILCA)’s Equity Committee, which links in with her role as LCGB Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Lead. Her work in advocating, promoting, supporting and sustaining breastfeeding internationally, nationally and locally are mostly within the voluntary sector, although she has the experience working within the local government and public health initiatives. She has remained committed to areas of equity, equality, diversity, and inclusion in relation to maternal and infant health and wellbeing.  She has a special interest in issues of milk-kinship and donor human milk banking from the Islamic perspective and family-centred care in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU).

Zurina has been facilitating and collaborating on issues of milk-kinship and donor human milk banking between the United Kingdom and Malaysia since 2016.

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Paediatrics and Research Lead

Contact: lhookway@lcgb.org

Dr Lyndsey Hookway IBCLC is a children's nurse and health visitor with 20 years experience supporting sick children in hospital and the community, and qualified as an IBCLC in 2011. She is also a researcher and author and brings a passion for increasing research rigour within the IBCLC community to her role of Trustee, together with a desire to see paediatrics better represented in lactation care. Her focus and published work is in supporting clinical paediatric staff, midwifery and neonatal colleagues and nonclinical lactation professionals to have a greater understanding of the unique challenges of breastfeeding sick infants and children with acute, chronic, life-threatening and palliative illness. She continues to work voluntarily, supporting families of sick breastfed children through Breastfeeding the Brave, the organisation she established in 2019.

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Events

Contact: info@lcgb.org

Marion Jones IBCLC has been an LLL Leader, active at national level for over 20 years. Originally trained as a nurse and midwife, she qualified as an IBCLC in 1993 and was one of the founders of LCGB in 1994.

For several years she helped to run the IBLCE exam in the UK together with study days leading to it. Marion has organised or helped with many LCGB conferences. She has been very much involved with breastfeeding peer support for about 20 years and is a director of Breastfeeding LENS Ltd. She is currently LCGB’s stall coordinator, and offers valuable help with various other LCGB tasks, including membership of the Communications Team.

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Deputy Chair

Contact: henglish@lcgb.org

Hilary English IBCLC qualified as a breastfeeding counsellor with the NCT in 1983, and was a tutor, training both breastfeeding counsellors and health professionals for 20 years, during which time she qualified as an IBCLC lactation consultant (with encouragement from LCGB members). She now practises privately in addition to her voluntary work.

She was part of the group which revised the latest edition of the Royal College of Midwives handbook, ‘Successful Breastfeeding’, and her graphics have been used to illustrate a wide variety of books, articles and educational materials on breastfeeding.

Hilary has been an active member of LCGB, helping with the Annual Conference over many years, and also as a member of the Communications Team, as Deputy Chair, a member of the Executive Team for several years and latterly a Trustee.