Founding Vision & Legacy
Pittsburgh Bereavement Doulas was born from grief, courage, and a refusal to let families navigate loss alone. This page honors the woman who began this work and the story that shaped our mission.
A Turning Point
A native Pittsburgher residing in O’Hara Township on ancestral land of the Seneca people, Heather is a graduate of the University of Pittsburgh and has spent the last 28 years serving women as a labor and postpartum doula. She also founded the Pittsburgh Doula Network, a postpartum doula service. In 2016, a dear friend and repeat postpartum client lost her second child, Madeline, to stillbirth. After witnessing this profound loss, she became aware of the silent tragedies families were experiencing and how ill-equipped most people, including herself, were to support them.
Training & Advocacy
The idea of providing free labor and postpartum doula care was her immediate response to serving these families. After devoting time to research and education, Heather became proficient in perinatal loss support and launched Pittsburgh Bereavement Doulas in August 2018.
She is trained through Resolve Through Sharing as a perinatal bereavement coordinator, a certified Compassionate Bereavement Care provider and a certified Baby Loss Family Advisor /Baby Loss Doula and trainer, having found a wonderful mentor and friend in Sherokee Ilse. She is a Count the Kicks advocate and also is certified as a Pregnancy Loss Group Facilitator through The Institute for the Study of Birth, Breath and Death Recently, she joined Allegheny County FIMR (Fetal and Infant Mortality Review) as part of the Case Review Team. SShe is passionate about sharing her knowledge with care providers and doulas so families experiencing loss receive the best care on the most difficult day of their lives.
Heather Burke Bradley
Founder, Pittsburgh Bereavement Doulas
"Although I had been a birth worker for 20 years, I realized I knew practically nothing about perinatal loss. A lot of the things I thought I knew were wrong. I wanted to know what quality bereavement care meant, what the research said, and to find a way to open up this taboo topic of babies dying because families were suffering greatly and silently. When someone you care about is going through the worst possible tragedy, you want them to be getting the best help and know how you can be a good friend to someone who has been forever changed by the loss of their baby. I wanted to provide quality care and start with making these births special and help parents create their child's legacy"
-Heather Bradley
A New Chapter
After founding Pittsburgh Bereavement Doulas and guiding its growth, Heather passed leadership to a new Executive Director in 2026.
"In modern society, so many are disconnected from experiencing the power of life’s most intense thresholds, the power of birth and death. So many women never witness childbirth until it is directly upon them, until they themselves are in labor. Death, like, birth, is often cordoned off into anonymous hospital rooms. Yet much wisdom exists in directly witnessing the transformative energies present in these thresholds."
– Amy Wright Glenn