Catrin Archer is a professional birth Doula, Doula trainer and small business mentor from Cardiff, South Wales. Catrin has been working as a Doula since 2005 after training with the famous Obstetrician Michel Odent in London and was one of the very first Doulas in Wales. Over the past 12 years Catrin has established Wales’ first home grown Doula organisation, South Wales Doulas to provide support, accountability and professional standards to the families and birth professionals in the area. In 2015 Catrin began training Doulas in Wales, providing opportunities to those wanting to start a professional Doula career in the region.

For her service to her clients and to trainees and new Doulas Catrin Won the national BizMums Award for Exceptional Service in 2015, and became Wales’ first Award Winning Doula.

The road has been a very tough one for Catrin, establishing a completely unknown service in an entire region has meant long hours of education and awareness work as well as dealing with the scrutiny and suspicion of the maternity care system as well as fierce competition from other Doulas and Doula organisations. Catrin has remained a staunch supporter of better support for families and an advocate for informed consent in maternity.
Birth Pro is the training arm of Catrin’s work and aims to take professional Doula training and standards across Wales and into developing economies such as India and Asia. Catrin hopes to licence the training courses abroad, and grow the Birth Pro name into a worldwide Doula training brand, trusted by families and professionals alike.
A large part of Catrin’s unique take on Doula training is her strong business focus, Catrin found other Doula trainings lacking in basic business principles and has embedded starting a sustainable Doula business into her courses. She also offers business mentorship to newly certified Doulas during their first years of practice.
In 2016 Catrin became one of the founding group of a Cardiff based charity The Birth Partner Project. (birthpartnerproject.org) Created to offer much needed support to the most vulnerable pregnant and birthing women and after winning initial funding the charity now ensures that no woman in Cardiff needs to give birth or face new motherhood alone. The charity has ambitions to grow to cover the rest of South Wales soon before growing into the rest of the UK. Catrin provides the training for The Birth Partner Project on a voluntary basis.
From her work with new birth businesses Catrin has acquired experience in launching over dozens of new business, having had input into all aspects of branding, marketing, process and system creation not just in the UK but with businesses launching in the US and South Africa too. This, along with an increasing interest in Digital Marketing has led to the launch of Catrin’s newest service offering; L A C U N A.