Bethany Sasaki

Bethany Sasaki, WHNP-BC, CNM, PhD(c) has worked in the nursing field since 1999 with experience in emergency, trauma, pediatrics, newborn, family planning, women’s health, labor & delivery, and freestanding birth centers. She holds a masters and post-masters degree in Nursing, national board certification and licensure as both a Nurse Midwife and Women’s Health Nurse Practitioner where she has practiced in both hospital and community settings. In 2024 she began a PhD at the University of California, Davis with a research focus in breastfeeding medicine, class of 2028.

She brings health policy, advocacy and leadership experience to her role at Pacific. This includes service on the Legislative Advocacy (formerly Health Policy) and Professional Practice committees of the California Nurse Midwives Association; in these roles she was part of the team which eliminated physician supervision requirements in 2021, and helped lead the team that reformed Birth Center licensure regulations in 2025. She founded the MiLC Clinic in 2014, a Breastfeeding Medicine outpatient clinic, helped create an OB/CNM collaborative practice in 2016, established CNM privileges and founded Midtown Nurse Midwives in 2019, a community midwifery practice and freestanding birth center, and founded the California Chapter of the American Association of Birth Centers in 2024. In these roles she oversaw board governance, operations, regulatory compliance, laboratory services, tissue bank management, continuous quality improvement programs, maintained national accreditation and received national awards for meeting best practices. Most recently, she created the Master of Science in Midwifery program at University of the Pacific in the Department of Nursing and serves as the founding Program Director and core faculty. Professor Sasaki is thankful to Pacific for their vision and mission which aligns with the midwifery model, she looks forward to educating a new generation of nurse-midwives to address the maternal health crisis.