Jenessa Payano Stark

Jenessa Payano Stark, RN, CPM is a Certified Nurse Midwife and Women’s Health Nurse Practitioner student at Yale School of Nursing. Throughout her life she has demonstrated a passion for the culture, language, and study of Latin America and the Iberian Peninsula. After graduating Summa Cum Laude with dual bachelor of arts degrees in Spanish and International Relations, Jenessa traveled to Guatemala where she lived with an indigenous midwife attending births and living in the rural community. While there, she also helped establish a governmental program to assist women and neonates in accessing care during the postpartum period. Her Certified Professional Midwife training was completed in the border town of El Paso, Texas, where all of her clinical experience was providing care to Mexican women, most of whom crossed the border while in labor to have their babies in the United States of America. Since attending Yale she has volunteered at Haven Clinic providing free healthcare in the Spanish language. She currently works as a per diem RN at Yale New Haven Health in the department of Maternal Fetal Medicine and was certified through the hospital system to provide healthcare in the Spanish language. Most recently, she was invited by the International Confederation of Midwives to provide volunteer personal translation services to senior officials at the Americas Regional Conference in Paraguay in November. While there, she will focus her education, study, and training on midwifery advocacy and capacity building in Latin America and make connections with those doing research on important topics of maternal-child health in the region.