Whether you’re navigating personal shifts or looking to spark meaningful change in your community, these offerings invite deep reflection and effective action.
Speaking
Kaytura offers keynotes, panels, and briefings on the community-led solutions to the Black maternal health crisis, drawn directly from her peer-reviewed research and reporting. She also speaks on leadership and courageous change for organizations navigating this moment.
Talk 1 — Stop Admiring the Problem: A New Narrative for Black Maternal Health
The national conversation about Black maternal health is stuck. It repeats the same statistics, the same fear, the same sense that nothing works.
Drawing on her peer-reviewed research interviewing more than 55 Black community leaders, Kaytura makes the case that fear-based narratives are themselves part of the harm — and offers a different frame: Black communities are already building solutions, and it's time the field caught up.
WHO IT'S FOR
Health equity conferences, public health and medical audiences, journalism and communications convenings, philanthropy gatherings.
IN THIS TALK
Why statistics-first storytelling can backfire — and what the research shows instead
What an asset-based narrative of Black maternal health looks like in practice
How organizations can shift from documenting harm to funding solutions
Talk 2 — The Family Is the Sun: What Black Community Midwifery Teaches Every Health System
Based on two years embedded with Black community midwives across the country — captured in her Deep Care podcast and her peer-reviewed study in Archives of Public Health — Kaytura unpacks what makes community midwifery work: care that centers the whole family, not just the patient. This talk translates those lessons into a model any health system, hospital, or care team can learn from.
WHO IT'S FOR
Hospital systems, clinical training programs, maternal health organizations, medical and nursing schools.
IN THIS TALK
The essential roles and values that shape a safe, joyful birth experience
What “family-centered” care actually requires, structurally and culturally
Where hospital-based systems can borrow from community models
Talk 3 — Pregnancy Is a Stress Test: What Weathering Reveals About Black Maternal Health
Long before a Black woman becomes pregnant, her body may already be operating at capacity.
Drawing on her Black Birthing Futures research and interviews with community midwives, Kaytura unpacks the science of “weathering” — the accelerated biological aging that comes from a lifetime of navigating underinvested neighborhoods, financial precarity, and chronic stress. Pregnancy doesn't create this strain; it reveals it. This talk reframes gestational diabetes, preeclampsia, and postpartum complications not as isolated medical events but as signals of a body that entered pregnancy already under load — and makes the case for care models built around that reality.
WHO IT'S FOR
Medical and nursing schools, OB/GYN and maternal-fetal medicine audiences, public health and health-equity conferences, science and health journalism convenings.
IN THIS TALK
What “weathering” is, and what the research shows about its biological mechanisms
Why conventional prenatal care, which starts the clock at conception, misses the real starting line
How gestational diabetes and hypertension in pregnancy predict a woman's health at 50 and 60 — and what that means for how we intervene
What it would take to design maternity care around a body that's already been under stress for years, not months
Talk 4 — Mothering the Mother: Why the Fourth Trimester Is Where Care Breaks Down
Most maternal deaths in the U.S. happen after delivery, in the postpartum period — the very window conventional medicine treats as an afterthought.
Kaytura takes audiences inside a home visit she shadowed with a Black community midwife: a 10-day check-in conducted entirely in the mother's bedroom, and an 8-week visit that unfolds across three settings — bedroom, backyard walk, and back inside — because, as the midwife put it, “everything needs to wrap around the mother.” Named for Shafia Monroe's concept that just as a mother tends her newborn, the family and community must tend the mother, this talk argues that postpartum care isn't a follow-up appointment — it's where the crisis is actually decided.
WHO IT'S FOR
Hospital systems and postpartum care redesign teams, doula and midwifery training programs, maternal mental health and perinatal audiences, health system leadership.
IN THIS TALK
Why the postpartum period, not delivery, is where the highest-risk window for maternal death occurs
What “wrapping care around the mother” looks like in practice, versus the standard six-week checkup
The difference between medicalizing postpartum distress and mothering the mother through it
What hospitals and health systems can borrow from this model without needing to become a home-birth practice
Talk 5 — Eyes Open: Clarity, Care, and Commitment for the Road Ahead
A keynote designed to inspire and equip leaders and communities facing the urgent challenges of today — ecological collapse, racial injustice, rising authoritarianism, a silent mental health crisis, and deep spiritual fatigue.
Eyes Open is a practice of tuning into the reality of now while envisioning the beloved future we need to build.
WHO IT'S FOR
Leaders, healers, organizers, educators, spiritual guides, and anyone ready to move from overwhelm into courageous action.
Want to know where I’m speaking next or invite me?
“I’ve had the privilege of knowing Kaytura for almost fifteen years. Kaytura is a coach who generously creates non-judgmental spaces for her clients. She’s honest, thoughtful, inquisitive, and does an excellent job of listening while also guiding you towards truth and empowerment. Her goal in coaching is to direct you to greater knowledge and a deeper understanding of yourself. I would highly recommend Kaytura for one-on-one coaching sessions or as a motivational speaker.”