Kathleen Huggins is a registered nurse and board-certified lactation consultant who is widely recognized as one of the pioneers in establishing the lactation consultant discipline as a core component of maternal-child health care in US hospitals. She established this reputation by creating and running a model breastfeeding clinic at San Luis Obispo General Hospital in California; by lecturing widely to professional peers and hospital administrators; and through her book The Nursing Mother’s Companion. She has also co-authored The Nursing Mother’s Guide to Weaning and Nursing Mother, Working Mother. She lives in San Luis Obispo, where she currently runs a new mothers’ store, Simply Ma Ma. She continues to lecture widely in the healthcare and lactation-consultant arenas.