Paige Bellenbaum, LCSW is the Founding Director and Chief External Relations Officer at The Motherhood Center of New York. Paige attended UCLA as an undergraduate and received her MSW from the Columbia School of Social Work. For 20 years, Paige worked in the non-profit sector, holding senior leadership positions at Hamilton Family Center in San Francisco and The Partnership for the Homeless, Habitat for Humanity, and Settlement Housing Fund in New York. She has worked in the field of public policy, advocacy, and community organizing working with various disadvantaged populations including homeless families and incarcerated young adults, and has held several appointed and elected political positions including the District Leader of Brooklyn’s 52nd Assembly District.

After her first child was born, Paige suffered from severe postpartum depression and anxiety that nearly ended her life. However, once she began to heal, she became committed to fighting for education, screening, and treatment for postpartum depression so that no more women would have to suffer silently. As a result, she drafted legislation in New York State championed by Senator Liz Krueger, mandating hospitals to provide education on PMADs and strongly encouraging screening of all new and expecting mothers, signed into law in 2014. Since then, Paige has been an outspoken maternal mental health advocate and clinician and uses her story as a tool for change.

She currently works closely with the NYPD on maternal mental health initiatives, DOHMH’s Maternal Hospital Quality Improvement Network, and the Nurse Family Partnership and sits on the NYC Maternal Mortality and Morbidity Review Committee and the NYS Maternal Mental Health Working Group. She has appeared on the Today Show, Good Morning America, NPR, PBS Newshour, Fortune, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal.