Meet Your Team
Jillian Hollis
Enrollment Coordinator, InstructorJillian has a real soft spot for the nighttime hours. The 3 am feedings, the tender emotions, the moments when new parents need someone steady beside them most. As a postpartum doula, she's built her whole practice around overnight support, because she believes a good night (or as good a night as a new parent can get) changes everything for a family finding its footing. Rest isn't a luxury. It's part of how you actually recover, physically and mentally, from having a baby.
Jillian owns Sunny Side Postpartum Care, her private doula practice built around overnight support. Whether it’s newborn care, feeding struggles, or just letting exhausted parents sleep for a few hours, her team shows up with calm, capable energy exactly when it's needed.
Before starting her own practice, Jillian was the Associate Director at a large Boston doula agency, where she supported a team of over 30 doulas and helped families across the Boston area get the support they needed. Leading and mentoring that many doulas taught her a lot about what actually makes a doula practice work long-term.
That job also gave her a genuine love for the business side of doula work: what it takes to run a practice, own a business, and build relationships with agencies that work well for everyone involved. Jillian could talk for hours with other doulas about pricing, client relationships, and how independent doulas and agencies can support each other instead of competing. She loved it so much she started a virtual assistant business for birth workers called The Doula Admin.
Jillian is treasurer on the board of Community Doulas, where she works to get more families in Maine access to quality doula care. She's one of the loudest champions for growing the doula community here in Maine, and her take is simple: yes, there's competition, but there's room for all of us, and doulas do their best work for families when they collaborate instead of compete.
Between private practice, agency leadership, and board work, Jillian's seen doula care from every angle. Her heart is still in the overnight hours, and she's genuinely excited to help the next generation of doulas find their own version of this work.
Jessica Ruscetta
Founder, Program Director, InstructorSince 2013, Jessica Ruscetta has been showing up for birthing people at some of the most vulnerable and powerful moments of their lives. More than a decade in, her belief hasn't wavered: every person deserves steady, informed, and truly compassionate support as they bring their babies into the world.
Jessica is the owner of Rooted In Birth, her private doula practice supporting families through pregnancy, birth, and the tender transition into parenthood. True to the name, her approach is grounded — she believes birth support should be personal, evidence-based, and built on real trust between doula and client.
Jessica also serves as Program Director of Community Doulas, pouring her experience into making sure quality birth support reaches families throughout the community, not just those who can easily find or afford it. It's work close to her heart, and it shows in everything she builds.
On top of all that, Jessica is a childbirth educator at Birth Roots, where she helps expectant parents walk into labor and delivery feeling informed, calm, and ready — blending solid knowledge with the kind of warmth that makes a classroom feel like a safe place to ask anything.
With over a decade in birth work, plus experience in program leadership and childbirth education, Jessica brings a rich, well-rounded perspective to Heart of Maine Doula Training. She's excited to help guide the next generation of doulas as they find their own footing in this work.
Laurie Wood
Director, InstructorLaurie comes to birth work with years of experience, showing up for people during life's big moments. Before she was a doula, Laurie spent 30 years as a public school educator and 15 as a middle school principal, working alongside kids and families through some of the roughest, most formative years of growing up. That time taught her what it means to meet someone exactly where they are with patience, warmth, and steady encouragement, even (especially) when things feel uncertain.
Today, Laurie is a birth doula with Life's Work Doula, her private practice, serving families throughout the Heart of Maine area. She believes every birth is exactly that — someone's life's work in motion — and feels grateful to be trusted with such a tender time. She also serves as president of Community Doulas, working to help doula support reach more families, not just a lucky few.
When she's not at a birth, you might find Laurie with a leash in hand. She also runs Pups and People, a dog training business focused on helping families and their dogs navigate the transition of welcoming a new baby or living alongside a toddler. It's a slightly different world from birth work, but it draws on some of the same instincts: building trust, reading subtle cues, and helping someone — two-legged or four — feel safe enough to grow.
Laurie also brings the perspective of her own family to this work. She is the mother and stepmother of a blended family of eight adult children and ten grandchildren, and that experience has taught her a great deal about the parenting journey — its challenges, its surprises, and how much support really matters along the way.
Laurie is glad to bring all of this- the classroom, the birth room, the leash walks, and her own family life- to Heart of Maine Doula Training, where she looks forward to walking alongside the next generation of doulas.