Our Leadership
Katrina Maczen-Cantrell (she/her)
Executive Director
Katrina Maczen-Cantrell began her work at Women’s Health Specialists in 1985 as a volunteer. Her innovative vision and extraordinary leadership has helped WHS emerge as a model for health care delivery and community engagement.
Inspired by her grounding in Native American culture, Katrina has applied indigenous attitudes and techniques to her mission of keeping women’s health in women’s hands with the support of her colleagues, community and organization. She continues to work toward this goal by focusing on the pursuit of cultural and economic self-determination for marginalized people while providing reproductive health services and education to all communities.
Katrina is a co-founder and current chair of the Northstate Women’s Health Network. She also serves as Board President of the Native American Women’s Health Education Resource Center in South Dakota, as a Board Member of SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Justice Collective and on the Title X Education Committee of the California Family Health Council. She is former Board Member of the National Network of Abortion Funds and the National Women’s Health Network of Washington, D.C. Katrina was awarded the Anna Mae Picton Aquash Award for Activism by the Indigenous Women’s Network in New York City; the C. Lalor Burdick Award as an “Unsung Hero” by the National Abortion Federation; and she was a keynote speaker, along with other national leaders at the National March for Women’s Lives in Washington D.C.
Cindy Xiong
(she/her)
Director of Health Services
Danielle Brewster
(she/they)
Director of External Affairs
Gloria Barreto
(she/her)
Redding Clinic Manager
Maria Barreto
(she/her)
Chico Clinic Manager
Linda McCrea
(she/her)
Community Partnership Coordinator
Our Board Of Directors
Cindy Pearson, Washington, DC
Megan Seeley, MA, Sacramento, CA
Cathleen Williams, PhD, Esq., Sacramento, CA
Danielle Brewster, Redding, CA
Linda McCrea, Redding CA
Ginny Cassidy-Brinn, ARNP, Seattle, WA
Rowan O'Connell-Baerger Price, New Haven, CT
Morning Star Gali, Sacramento, CA
Joan Holmes, PHN, Redding, CA
A Memorial of Carol Downer
Onward
A Memorial of Carol Downer
Katrina Cantrell, Chico Feminist Women’s Health Center
Carol was a storyteller, lawyer, author, a feminist activist, with an authenticity that was baked in because her teachings came from her lived experience. During the early eighties I, and a group of women in northern California were inspired to learn menstrual extraction from Carol. We understood it to be a revolutionary act.
It was a memorable experience sitting in a circle, letting go of class, shame, and the texture of hierarchy. Listening to Carol discussing the women’s liberation movement and pushing us to examine our goals to change the system. We were the ironsmiths of the industrial age not the techno bros sloshing around creating a new type of capitalism to hurt workers.
It was the act of doing a menstrual extraction that was the prize – Carol was right. We were not helpless. We were not dependent on the ruling class. We were not in isolation. What we were –was a group of women with control of our own reproductive goals. Carol’s teaching -- respectful, encouraging -- supported our desire to forge a resistance in the event our right to abortion was ever taken away. For years Carol warned me of neoliberalism and its pitfalls. She called it the existential cover-up, the veneer to make the seizing of our rights palatable.
Carol shared gutsy tools of action that we could throw into the machine --self-cervical exam/self-help, menstrual extraction, iceberg organizing. All are foundational to liberation. We were intergenerational, pansexual, and multiracial -- clinic workers seeking to grow in personal agency and full bodily sovereignty -- I was a sponge.
In December of 2000 we held a community gathering in Shasta County where sixty members of the community came out to share the evening with Carol Downer. We had just published a two-page article in the local free press “Northstate Women Celebrate the New Abortion Pill.” and in the article we published the entire FDA Medication Guide which Carol viewed as a complete success, not only because the number of attendees, but because we were in community and taking action.
My time spent with Carol took place at the Chico Feminist Women’s Health Center board meetings, political educations, and community meetings. Carol brought her analysis to the table, which was forceful and always keeping women’s rights at the center. She would remind me that although we live in an oppressive culture, we didn’t have to accept it as our standard.
Carol’s mantra was that each of us possessed the agency and power to create our own culture. She was cautious about compartmentalized organizing-- it was my experience that she pushed to bring in everyone. She was not looking to transform society, she seemed to focus on how to transform oneself …everything else would align. Her ability to sidestep trends or fads was memorable. She opened doors and pulled down walls, and gave little interest to building power in the faux women’s movements. There were times that I would cringe when we attended conferences where she stood on principle, and couldn’t give a damn about the flavor of the day type of organizing.
In my experience, Carol was the feminist illuminati, minus the secrets. In other words she was enlightenment, but enlightenment with electric action. Whether it was marching in the streets, teaching self-cervical exam, or menstrual extraction, I learned from Carol that you must act, nothing happens on its own and nothing is gained by bemoaning patriarchy, capitalism and imperialism alone– you had to act to dismantle it. The number one rule was feminist enlightenment did not take place in isolation…we need each other.