Hello!  I am Whitney Pinger and I am the founder of WISDOM Midwifery.  I attended my first birth when I was a junior in high school and have been training and serving as a midwife for the past 43 years. I am a California native, graduated from UC Berkeley in 1983, and completed my midwifery training at Yale University in 1986.  

Between 1977 and 1986, I served as an apprentice for several home birth practices and worked at The Berkeley Women’s Health Collective.  Since graduating from Yale, I have worked tirelessly to provide the option of evidence-based, midwifery-led care in a collaborative, hospital setting and protecting and honoring women’s sovereignty in birth.  

I consider myself an expert in evidence-based maternity care, natural childbirth, optimal nutrition and exercise during pregnancy, primary cesarean prevention, vaginal birth after cesarean (VBAC), health disparities, and collaborative practice.  I am committed to, and passionate about, the education of the next generation of physicians, midwives, and nurses so they can help women optimize their chances of normal birth. I am a fierce advocate for normal birth and collaborative practice and this passion infuses my teaching and midwifery practice. 

When I moved to DC in 1990, I was a part of a team of midwives that worked to pass The HORA Amendment of 1994, which is our professional practice law in the District of Columbia.  This law provides midwives in the District of Columbia with practice autonomy,  full prescriptive authority, no requirements for written practice guidelines, and the capacity to admit, discharge, and manage our clients independently.   I also led an effort to eliminate a malpractice surcharge on OBGYN physicians who collaborate with midwives.  

During my 30 years in DC, I have established several private and academic practices, ran the Prenatal and Pediatrics Programs at The Washington Free Clinic, and have served on the faculty at Yale University, Georgetown University, The Washington Hospital Center, and, most recently and presently, The George Washington University. 

I am recognized for developing, in collaboration with her DC Chapter of midwives, The Midwifery Pearls: Evidence for Clinical Practice, a unique presentation of the evidence-based strategies utilized by midwives to promote normal birth and achieve not only the very best obstetrical outcomes, but also the highest patient satisfaction. This presentation received the ACNM National Media Award for 2010. ACNM assumed ownership of The Midwifery Pearls presentation in 2009 and has made it available online to a national audience. I have most recently worked with national ACNM leadership to update the Pearls for Physiologic Birth in 2019. You can download it here .             .  

In 2007, I established The WISDOM Pilot Project for Normal Birth and Cesarean Prevention. The first WISDOM cohort marked a 2.6% cesarean delivery rate and such high client satisfaction, that I was able to move it to GW in 2010.  Since 2010, GW Midwifery has continued to “Practice by The Pearls”, use innovative labor management strategies, including “The Pinger Patterns of Labor” and strong collaboration with our physician partners to mark a cesarean delivery rate of 6%, a natural childbirth rate of 94%, and a VBAC success rate of 90%.  GW Midwifery consistently scores highly in nationally benchmarked outcome data including low cesarean delivery and high VBAC rates for a practice its size.   In 2019, I transitioned out of the leadership at GW Midwifery and we marked our 5,000th GW Midwifery delivery, whom I was honored to catch.  

I received the American College of Nurse-Midwives Regional Award of Excellence in 2009 and was honored as a 2010 Women's Health Hero by The Our Bodies, Ourselves Foundation. I received the 2010 Outstanding Resident Teacher Award at the Washington Hospital Center and the 2016 Excellence in Teaching Award from The George Washington University Department of Ob/Gyn.  In 2014 I was inducted as a Fellow of the American College of Nurse-Midwives (ACNM). In this role, I serve the ACNM in a consultative and advisory capacity. I have recently contributed to the Alliance for Innovation on Maternal Health ACOG/ACNM Joint Committee on the Safe Reduction of Primary Cesarean Births: Supporting Intended Vaginal Births Safety Bundle.

Founding the WISDOM Pilot for Normal Birth and Cesarean Prevention and GW Midwifery have been my highest honors in life and I am so proud to have been part of establishing the amazing collaborative legacy that the GW Department of OBGYN embodies.  I am not retiring.  Rather, I am taking a Sabbatical Year for Personal, Professional, and Service Growth and I plan to continue to serve the broader DC and national midwifery communities.  My life’s work has been to advocate for, and expand access to, evidence-based, innovative, midwifery-led care through a lens of health justice and equity, and on that I will always persist.  There is more work to be done.  Over time, I hope to develop the next WISDOM Pilot, WISDOM Pilot II, committed to the ongoing efforts to meet the needs of DC’s underserved and vulnerable populations through innovative partnerships, evidence-based strategies, and inter-professional education.

I am married to a native Washingtonian, Roger Lincoln Pollak, whose father ran the Civil Rights Division under Kennedy and whose mother made the authoritative documentary about the woman’s suffrage movement, One Woman, One Vote.  Roger is a labor lawyer who works tirelessly advocating for the rights of workers nationally. We have four beautiful children, all delivered at home by midwives. I stay healthy by eating well, running endlessly, being mindful and grateful, and loving my family, friends, and work.  I am looking forward to my sabbatical year ahead for personal, professional, and service growth.

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