LILAC Mentors
Reasons to Be a Mentor
- Experience
If you are in the field of breastfeeding and lactation medicine (BFLM), you probably already spend a lot of your time teaching others. You may currently have a learner, or many of many different levels. In the past, BFLM providers would have to create many of their own materials. We’d sometimes struggle with lack of time, consensus and resources to properly train our colleagues and successors. The LILAC provides an opportunity for high-level BFLM providers to share their knowledge with dedicated, high-level learners, with the support of a curriculum, evaluation tools, and a scholarship team. You will be training the next generation of leaders!
- Resources
LILAC mentors have the same curriculum access as fellows, with up to date readings and videos by leaders in the field. If mentors complete assignments, they may also receive CME (continuing medical education) credit and L-CERPS. Library access is also available.
- Academic Appointment
LILAC mentors are offered Adjust Professorship positions in the Division of Breastfeeding and Lactation Medicine at the University of Rochester.
- Stipend
LILAC mentors will be offered a stipend of 1/5th of the fellow's tuition, per year, for their time. The total amount will depend on the Country Category in which the fellow practices.
Required of Mentors
- We ask that LILAC mentors regularly meet with their fellows, and spend at least 2 hours monthly reviewing cases and advancing their fellow’s scholarly work.
- They are also requested to attend the fellow’s 30 minute Scholarship Oversight Committee (SOC) meetings every 6 months. This adds up to 26 hours per year.
- Mentors are invited to all class activities, attendance is optional.
Mentors
Karen Bodnar, M.D., I.B.C.L.C.
Dr. Bodnar is an Associate Clinical Professor of Pediatrics at the University of Virginia School of Medicine. She is the Medical Director of the Inova Breastfeeding and Lactation Medicine Clinic which she founded in 2018. Dr. Bodnar is a founder of the North American Board of Breastfeeding and Lactation Medicine and is on the board of directors of the Academy of Breastfeeding Medicine. She co-hosts the Breastfeeding Medicine Podcast and the Clinical Case Discussion Webinar Series from iABLE (Institute for the Advancement of Breastfeeding and Lactation Education). She is a board-certified pediatrician and IBCLC who graduated from medical school and her pediatric residency at the University of Florida. She is also an Air Force Veteran, wife and mother of two teens.
Michele Burtner, M.S.
Associate Medical Director of Breastfeeding and Lactation Services
Michele Burtner, CNM, MS, began her career as first as a labor and delivery nurse while on the pathway to becoming a midwife. Her undergraduate Bachelor of Nursing degree was completed at the University at Buffalo. After finishing the midwifery program at OHSU, she worked for a large inner city community practice in Indianapolis, proving both inpatient and outpatient midwifery care to both low and high risk women. After moving back to the Pacific Northwest, she continued working as a full scope midwife, including waterbirth, and teaching midwifery students. She moved back to Western New York in 2007 where she joined the URMC Midwifery Group at the University of Rochester. She served as Midwifery Division Director from 2013-2018. In 2021, Michele completed a Fellowship in Breastfeeding and Lactation Medicine as well as a Master’s in Public Health from the University of Rochester.
Mariana Colmenares Castano, M.D., I.B.C.L.C.
Mariana Colmenares Castaño, M.D., I.B.C.L.C., studied medicine at the National University of Mexico (UNAM), and trained as a pediatrician at the National Pediatric Institute, in Mexico. After the birth of her first child she witnessed the lack of knowledge around breastfeeding within the medical profession so she decided to specialize in breastfeeding medicine. She certified as a Lactation Consultant (IBCLC) in 2011 and in 2013 did a clinical rotation at the International Breastfeeding Clinic in Toronto. Mariana has collaborated with national projects with the National Institute of Public Health in Mexico and UNICEF. She is a founding member of the National Lactation Consultant Association of Mexico (ACCLAM), where she served on the Board of Directors as Education Coordinator (2014-2019). Her passion around teaching and training the medical profession pushed her to start a 280 hour online course, to become Breastfeeding Counselor. Mariana became part of the Academy of Breastfeeding Medicine in 2012, and part of board directors since 2019, where she is now secretary for the period 2022-2025. She is currently a member of the International Lactation Consultant Association ILCA and Lactation Consultants of Great Britain. Mariana collaborated with Liquid Gold project and collaborated with the project Becoming Breastfeeding Friendly, form Yale University. Mariana has been part of expert committees with the World Health Organization in the re-edition of the Infant and Young Child Feeding model chapter, co-published numerous articles, co-authored a chapter for the National Academy of Medicine in Mexico and she has been speaker in national and international conferences. Mariana moved to London with her family in 2022, when she did a Clinical Fellow in Community Paediatrics and is now working as a Specialty Doctor in Community at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital. She works in private practice as Lactation Consultant and Tongue-tie Practitioner.
Susan Crowe, M.D.
Dr. Susan Crowe is a Clinical Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology at the Stanford University School of Medicine. She has been on faculty there since 1998. She has expertise in Breastfeeding and Lactation Medicine, and she serves as a member of ACOG's National Breastfeeding Expert Workgroup. She is also a Fellow of the Academy of Breastfeeding Medicine. She works on quality and safety initiatives at Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital Stanford. She speaks frequently on topics related to maternity care practices that support lactation and implementation of skin-to-skin after vaginal and Cesarean birth.
Aloka L. Patel, M.D.
Dr. Aloka Patel received her BS in Biomedical Engineering and MD from Northwestern University. She completed her Pediatrics residency and Neonatal-Perinatal fellowship at Washington University. She is currently Professor of Pediatrics at Rush University where she is the Division Chief and the Research Director for Neonatology. Dr. Patel’s research has focused on identifying health and cost outcomes of human milk feedings for very preterm infants, understanding barriers to continued provision of human milk, and clinical nutritional studies in preterm infants. Dr. Patel is multi-principal investigator with Dr. Tricia Johnson for two ongoing NIH-funded studies. The first is an innovative randomized controlled trial of an economic intervention to offset costs associated with milk provision borne by mothers of very preterm infants (ReDiMOM trial), and the second is a two-year follow-up study assessing neurodevelopment, growth, adiposity, milk provision duration and economic outcomes for ReDiMOM subjects.
Sarah Sobik, M.D., M.P.H.
Dr. Sarah Sobik graduated medical school from the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences in 2016. She completed a residency in pediatrics at UAMS and Arkansas Children’s, after which she joined as faculty in the Section of Community Pediatrics at UAMS and as a research collaborator at the Arkansas Children’s Nutrition Center. Dr. Sobik set out to re-establish the Breastfeeding Medicine and Lactation Clinic at Arkansas Children’s and received International Board Certified Lactation Consultant certification in spring of 2021 and her board certification in Breastfeeding and Lactation Medicine in 2023. She has striven to expand her clinical skills and offer lactation services in the Arkansas Children’s primary care clinics to newborns and lactating mothers in Central Arkansas and other parts of the state that have limited lactation services through telemedicine. She has focused her research on improving breastfeeding rates in the clinic setting, specifically to at-risk populations, human milk composition, and early nutritional programming on breastmilk composition. Dr. Sobik’s clinical work and research focus is to improve health outcomes and nutrition for infants and their mothers from the start and to improve breastfeeding support for all infant-mother pairs in the state of Arkansas.
Julie Ware, M.D., M.P.H., I.B.C.L.C., FAAP, FABM
Dr. Julie Ware is an Associate Professor of Pediatrics in the Division of General and Community Pediatrics, Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, and the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine. She is an experienced board-certified pediatrician who specializes in Breastfeeding Medicine within the Center for Breastfeeding Medicine. Dr. Ware received her undergraduate degree from the University of Texas and completed her M.D. degree and Pediatric Residency training at Baylor College of Medicine. After years of general practice with a focus on Breastfeeding Medicine, she completed an MPH degree at the University of Memphis. Julie is also an Internationally Board-Certified Lactation Consultant and certified by the North American Board of Breastfeeding and Lactation Medicine.
Dr. Ware has served on the Executive Committee of the AAP Section on Breastfeeding and on the Board of the Academy of Breastfeeding Medicine (ABM), and now serves as the President- Elect of ABM. Dr. Ware is currently on the leadership team of the Southwest Ohio Breastfeeding Coalition and one of the Ohio AAP Chapter Breastfeeding Coordinators. She founded the All Moms Empowered to Nurse (AMEN) Peer-to-Peer Breastfeeding Support group serving African American moms in Cincinnati. Dr. Ware’s particular interest is improving maternal and child health through the promotion and support of breastfeeding, especially in those populations least likely to breastfeed. Her research and community efforts are focused on the elimination of disparities in breastfeeding and infant mortality.
Sarah Weinstein, MN, CNM, IBCLC, PMH-C
Sarah earned her bachelor's in integrative biology from Berkeley where she first learned about midwifery care in her reproductive biology course. She earned her BSN and graduated with her master's in nurse-midwifery from Oregon Health and Sciences University in 2014. She completed her training and started her career in the Four Corners region, and since then, she has caught babies in and out of the hospital and in rural and urban settings. Moved by the concept described by Indigenous midwife and activist Katsi Cook of mother as our "first environment," and the clear connection between the social and experiential environment and the health of families she worked with, Sarah expanded her full-scope midwifery to include breastfeeding and lactation medicine. She started a breastfeeding medicine clinic at her institution, co-founded and co-runs the breastfeeding task force, provides breastfeeding and lactation education to colleagues, residents, and students, and works with her interdisciplinary team to advocate for and provide evidence-based breastfeeding and lactation education and care. She is active in midwifery as advocacy in AZ, and is currently a member of the OBGYN faculty practice at Banner University Medicine in Tucson. She is pursuing her PhD under the guidance of Drs. Elise N. Erickson and Aleeca F. Bell.