Elaine Keller-Duemig, CNM (she/her) is a certified nurse midwife in New York City. She is a Wisconsin native, now a New Yorker since 2008. She earned her bachelor’s degree in Gender Women’s Studies and a certificate in LGBTQ+ studies from the UW-Madison in 2005. She earned a Bachelor of Science in Nursing from Quinnipiac University and Master of Science in Nursing (Midwifery) at Columbia University.
Elaine has dedicated over 15 years to midwifery and reproductive healthcare. She is the founder of EKD Midwifery in Brooklyn, utilizing the feminist frameworks established during her time at UW to provide holistic, patient-centered care with a focus on gynecology and perimenopause care, as well as family planning and preconception care. Elaine is also the former owner of the esteemed Central Park Midwifery in New York City, which thrived from 2014 to 2025.
Beyond private practice, Elaine remains active in the clinical community, working at Birthing Center NYC, a freestanding birthing center in Brooklyn. She is a school board member at her daughter’s school.
When not attending births or working in her solo micropractice, Elaine can be found thrifting for unique finds, tackling a puzzle, or getting lost in a Stephen King novel. She lives in Brooklyn, NY with her husband, daughter, and three cats.
Elaine can be reached at elaine@ekdmidwifery.com.
How does Gender and Women’s Studies/LGBTQ+ studies matter in the day-to-day of your professional life?
During my very first semester at UW Madison, I took GWS 103 and it was the first GWS course that I took. It literally changed my whole life. I had previously been interested in becoming an OB/GYN and was on the pre-med path. During GWS 103, I learned what a midwife was and my entire path changed and this is literally why I chose to become a midwife. GWS and LGBTQ+ studies helped me to look at everything with a feminist lens. It also taught me to recognize disparities and become an advocate. As a midwife, this is so important.
Do you have advice for students who may share your interests and may want to pursue a similar graduate degree and/or career?
My advice is to consider taking GWS and LGBTQ+ studies courses, especially the ones related to healthcare. They are so relevant for many career paths. If you’re interested in healthcare, like I was, getting a GWS degree and LGBTQ+ certificate while also taking the required science courses for nursing was such a great path. I graduated with a Bachelor of Arts, then pursued an accelerated nursing program to continue my nursing path. I believe this was the best path for me personally, as I wasn’t ready for the rigor or competition of nursing school when I was at UW.
There are a lot of accelerated nursing programs for those who hold another degree and want to get a Bachelor of Science in Nursing (BSN). These programs have a lot of science prerequisites (anatomy, physiology, biology, etc) and doing them during my undergraduate degree was useful so I didn’t have to take them later. I earned my nursing degree this way from Quinnipiac University.
If you’re interested in becoming a midwife or other nurse practitioner, there are also many programs for entry to practice, which are for folks who hold a degree in something else and have taken prerequisites, but in this case, you do your nursing degree and your advanced nursing degree (Master’s or Doctorate) immediately after completion of nursing. Many of my fellow students did this path at Columbia University.
What do you remember fondly from the Department of Gender & Women’s Studies? Favorite class? Instructor?
Obviously GWS 103 had a major impact on my life! I still remember sitting in the lecture hall and reading the books – one of which was Our Bodies, Ourselves. I still have both of the required books from the class, more than 20 years later!
My most favorite class was probably WS 431 – Childbirth in the US. It was taught by Judith Waltzer Leavitt. Knowing that I wanted to become a midwife, I was obviously very interested in this class. We read her book “Brought to Bed: Childbearing in America 1750-1950”, which has some really interesting history and I loved it. I remember interviewing my grandmother about her childbirth experience in 1957 for a paper. We also read a book about Granny Midwives called “Listen to Me Good: The Story of an Alabama Midwife”. This was about Black community midwives in the rural south and was such an engaging read about the history of community midwifery for Black women and the importance of the care they provided to a community who did not have equal access to healthcare. These midwives had great birth outcomes, despite the challenges they faced to provide care. I still own both of these books as well.
What, if anything, do you wish you could tell your undergraduate self?
I would tell myself that there is more than one path to midwifery and that the path I was choosing was the right one, even though it may not have felt this way at the moment. I had a really stressful time trying to get into nursing school as an undergrad, the science classes were really challenging for me as well. There were times I thought that I would never meet my goals, but I did meet them, with great success. If things had happened differently, I would have never studied abroad in Galway, Ireland during my fall semester senior year, which changed my life forever. I do believe that things work out the way that they are meant to, and I’m proud of my path. I would tell myself to keep enjoying my undergraduate experience at UW, because that also shaped me so much as a person and I have so many lasting friendships from this time. I would, however, also tell myself that I study best in a library setting and that studying at home really doesn’t work for me, nor does not studying. And to print the slides – it’s okay to use printed paper if it helps you with your learning! I learned both of these things in nursing school, and it was a game changer.