Dr. Jean Chamberlain Froese, an obstetrician and director of the international women’s health program at McMaster University, has dedicated her life to making pregnancy and childbirth safer in the developing world.

Prior to establishing Save the Mothers, Dr. Chamberlain Froese worked as an obstetrician in Yemen, Zimbabwe, Zambia and Pakistan. It was there she was confronted with the tragic scourge of mothers dying from preventable causes. While working in Uganda she decided to do something about it.

After all that she had seen and learned she knew building another hospital wasn’t the answer. The complexities and silence surrounding maternal mortality demanded social and cultural change. Together with her Ugandan colleagues she founded Save the Mothers, an international non-profit organization that educates local leaders on safe motherhood.

Dr. Chamberlain Froese is married to journalist Thomas Froese, author of Ninety-Nine Windows: Reflections of a Reporter from Arabia to Africa to other Roads Less Travelled. They have three children: Elizabeth, 6, Jonathan, 4 and Hannah, 3, a Ugandan girl they adopted in 2009. The family lives in Uganda for eight months a year and lives in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, annually from May to August.