Board of Directors

Lysa Parker (Lisa) received both her bachelor’s in education and her master’s degree in Human Environmental Sciences specializing in human development and family studies. She earned her designation of Certified Family Life Educator (CFLE) from the National Council on Family Relations in 2004 and was the 2014 president for the Southeast Council on Family Relations. Lysa is also a Certified Educator of Infant Massage (CEIM).

As cofounder of Attachment Parenting International (API) in 1994, a nonprofit parent education and support organization, Lysa served as the executive director. Prior to her involvement with API, she was a special education teacher for twenty years, helping children with multiple handicaps and learning difficulties. During that time, she also volunteered for several years as a La Leche League Leader, a breastfeeding and support organization. She is the coauthor of the award winning book Attached at the Heart,with Barbara Nicholson. In 2012 Lysa and Barbara developed a curriculum based on the book and they currently teach parenting educator trainings internationally. 

Lysa is the recipient of the La Leche League International Alumni Award with Barbara as well as the Jack Davis Professional Achievement Award from the College of Human Environmental Sciences at the University of Alabama. Currently Lysa is a writer, speaker and parenting education trainer.  She is the mother of two adult sons, an adult stepdaughter and grandmother of five grandchildren. She lives with her husband in the Huntsville, Alabama area.     

Martha, wife of renowned pediatrician William Sears, MD, is the mother of eight children, a registered nurse, a former childbirth educator, a La Leche League Leader, and a lactation consultant. Martha is the co-author of many parenting books and is a popular lecturer and media guest, drawing on her 18 years of breastfeeding experience with their 8 children (including Stephen with Down syndrome and Lauren, their adopted daughter).

Martha speaks frequently at national and international parenting conferences and is noted for her advice on how to handle the most common problems facing today's mothers with their changing lifestyles. She is able to connect with both full-time mothers and mothers who work full-time because she herself has experienced both. Martha takes great pride in referring to herself as a "professional mother," and one of her favorite quips when someone voices a concern about her having eight children in an already populated world is: "The world needs my children."

Martha and Dr. Bill have in the past been guests on many television shows including 20/20, Good Morning America, CBS This Morning, CNN, The Today Show, Dateline, The Dr. Phil Show, and The Doctors. Martha and Dr. Bill are best known for their Sears Parenting Library published by Little, Brown and Company: The Healthy Pregnancy Book, The Birth Book, The Baby Book, The Attachment Parenting Book, The Discipline Book, The Breastfeeding Book, The Fussy Baby Book, The Family Nutrition Book, The Premature Baby Book, The Baby Sleep Book, The A.D.D. Book, and The Healthiest Kid In The Neighborhood. She has also authored, for Harvard Common Press, 25 Things Every New Mother Should Know.

An attached parent of teens and young adults, Camille North served as the editor for API Links for six years. She's most interested in showing families with young children that Attachment Parenting continues to be just as important as children move into adulthood as it was when they were babies and toddlers. She's actively involved in the homeschooling community and owns Brain Bump Consulting, a website devoted to helping homeschooling families navigate the college application process without losing their sanity. She lives in Austin, Texas, with her extremely tolerant husband of more than two decades, her two unconventional high schoolers, and her two dopey Great Danes. Camille has a master's degree in biopsychology and spent her pre-mom life in scholarly publishing. 

Darcia Narvaez is Professor of Psychology at the University of Notre Dame. She is an active blogger at Psychology Today (“Moral Landscapes”) and frequently blogs about parenting.  She often writes about the importance of evolved parenting practices that match up with attachment parenting: Primal Parenting/Stone-Aged Parenting/Evolutionary Parenting/ Paleo Parenting. These terms refer to the evolved nest for young children that matches up with their maturational schedules: soothing perinatal experiences, extensive infant-initiated breastfeeding, constant touch, caregiver responsiveness, free play, multiple adult caregivers and extensive positive social support. She brings together scholars from across disciplines for symposia and joint writing projects. She studies and writes about the effects of early life experience on moral development. Her 2014 book is Neurobiology and the Development of Human Morality: Evolution, Culture and Wisdom.

She is a leader in the field of moral development scholarship with ten academic books, several curriculum books and over 100 articles and chapters. See her webpage.

She is a Latina who grew up living in different Spanish-speaking countries but with Minnesota as a home base. In prior careers she was a church musician (organist, choir director), classroom and private music teacher (Brent International School in Baguio City, Philippines; King of Kings School in Roseville, Minnesota), middle school Spanish teacher (at The Blake School in Hopkins, Minnesota), and business owner. She also earned a master of divinity degree from Luther Seminary in St. Paul, Minnesota, and is a published poet.