Crystal got her start by training to be a midwife. Although she never became certified or practiced as a midwife, the experience led her to pursue labor doula and childbirth eduction training and to employment providing childbirth and infant care education.

Crystel earned a doctorate in anthropology from The University of Hawai’i. Her PhD research helped her to understand how nursing your baby is learned and what lactation consultant strategies are most effective.

Crystal is an International Board Certified Lactation Consultant. She started providing consultations in Hawai’i and now provides them in Chicago. She has also been an expert advisor for a tech start up that makes sleep products, and managed a team of lactation consultants for a Chicago based doula agency.

Crystal was an adjunct professor in The University of Hawai‘i system where she taught anthropology and womenʻs studies courses.

Earlier in her career, Crystal was trained to do developmental assessments on infants. She did these assessments for a military hospital and a non-profit in Hawai’i. Testing infant reflexes helped her to see how important the primitive reflexes are to successfully nursing your baby.

Crystal has created courses and infographics for pregnant and new parents, as well as courses and training materials for doulas. She has taught lactation classes and provides private prenatal consultations. She gives talks to professional groups and at conferences, sharing what she has learned from her research. Additionally, Crystal volunteers her time to help pediatric residents at the University of Illinois at Chicago learn about lactation via a shadowing program. She also currently mentors an IBCLC trainee.

When Crystal was writing her PhD dissertation, she ended up delving into infant sleep research because she found infant feeding and sleep are so interconnected that you often have to address one to address the other. Anthropologists in particular have done some informative research in this area. From this she started creating an infant sleep course for doula training, and briefly did sleep consultations. She still provides help in this area, but as a part of lactation consultations.