Our Team

Dr. Lisa Kane Low is a Co-Lead for the Region 9 PQC and Lead on the Mom+ Centric Models of Care & Support workgroup. Lisa is a Certified Nurse Midwife at the University of Michigan and is faculty in the School of Nursing, Women’s and Gender Studies Department, and the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology. Lisa has spent her career seeking ways to promote optimal experiences and health outcomes for birthing families. She believes that the RPQC model is one way to assure that all stakeholders are part of the vision and that all families are the center of our mission to improve maternity care experiences and outcomes. Lisa believes that birth equity and social justice are vital to making maternity care services better. For fun, Lisa enjoys listening and dancing to live jam band music, especially her son’s band Pajamas.

Sharon Quinn is the Project Manager of Region 9 Perinatal Quality Collaborative, originally from Lancaster, Pennsylvania. She graduated as double major in Psychology and Socio-cultural Anthropology at BYU in 2007, and graduated again with an MPH from Johns Hopkins University, concentrating in Women’s and Reproductive health in 2025. Sharon is the youngest of 6 kids and, because she was an aunt by the age of 10, started forming opinions on how safe and empowering birth should be from an early age. She became certified as a birth instructor and doula in 2013 through the Bradley Method. In 2019 she became certified again as a doula through DONA and a registered Evidence Based BirthⓇ Instructor. She has worked as owner and director of two businesses: Empowering Birth LLC since 2013, where she offers her own services, and Ann Arbor Birth and Family since 2021, a perinatal collective of various providers. (She’s working on passing the torch for both.) Prior to becoming Region 9 PQC’s Project Manager, she had the honor of collaborating with various Michigan grown organizations including Survivor Moms’ Companion, Luke Clinic in Detroit, her amazing doula and birth instructor colleagues, and University of Michigan’s Centering Groups, Women’s and Gender Studies department, and the Center for Interprofessional Education. When she’s not working to improve maternal care, Sharon enjoys spending time with her husband and four kids, culinary and art projects, and promises she’ll pick up her cello again someday.

Avonlea Rickerson is the Community Engagement Specialist for the Region 9 PQC. Currently a PhD student at the University of Michigan Medical School studying Health Infrastructures and Learning Systems with a focus on maternal health. She received her Master of Public Health from the University of Michigan in 2020 and her bachelor’s degree from Howard University in 2017. She has worked in various maternal and child health roles throughout Southeast Michigan, including Henry Ford Health and the Black Mothers’ Breastfeeding Association. Her work is grounded in a commitment to advancing equitable maternal health outcomes through community-centered engagement, collaboration, and systems-level change. She pursued public health to encourage and empower women and birthing people to be informed and proactive in their health decisions, and she strives to be a proactive resource for birthing people, families, and communities. Her academic and professional interests center on maternal health equity, quality improvement, and collaborative approaches to improving perinatal care. For fun, Avonlea enjoys traveling across the world with her loved ones, going to concerts, trying new foods, and going to the gym.