Empty Arms Bereavement

Our Team

OUR STAFF

We have four staff members here at Empty Arms: Carol McMurrich, Lisa Hamilton, Emy Collins, and Veronica Lee. Our team cranks out the work of Empty Arms, with the support and dedication of this entire team you see below! Running this organization is a labor of love and all of us extract a huge amount of personal satisfaction from the amazing relationships we build every day doing this work.

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Carol McMurrich

FOUNDER / CEO

Carol is our founder and director. She heads up the programming and people organizing for Empty Arms. She organizes the logistics for meetings, makes initial reach-out phone calls, emails bereaved parents, and enthusiastically connects people with one another. She also holds full responsibility for heading up the Companion Programs at all four hospitals. Carol is our educator, she conducts all of the professional trainings we provide to healthcare providers, our peer companions, and our support group facilitators.

Although Carol has once facilitated most groups that Empty Arms offers, she currently facilitates our Stillbirth and Infant Loss Support Group and our Parenting After Loss Support Group. After the birth and death of her first daughter, Charlotte, Carol has welcomed four healthy children and relishes being a present and active mother to them. Read more about Carol here.

Carol can be reached at carol@emptyarmsbereavement.org

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Lisa Hamilton

DEVELOPMENT/PROJECT MANAGER

Lisa is our development and project manager- and boy, does she get the job done. Lisa is responsible for keeping track of all the people who use our services, making sure we follow up with them, acknowledge important anniversaries, and provide them with the necessary resources. Lisa helps to keep all of our projects on a timely schedule and assists Carol in all the day-to-day functions of carrying out our program goals. Lisa also keeps track of our income and expenses, facilitates our Miscarriage & Early Pregnancy Loss Support Group & our Twin Loss Support Group (while parenting a surviving twin or multiples), and is a Peer Companion. Lisa is a multi-tasking mother of four living children, a Girls on the Run coach, a lover of nature and singing, and is an active end-of-life care provider for the elderly. Lisa has experienced two pregnancy losses. One, a baby girl, Hannah, a miscarriage in her second trimester, and the other the loss of a Lucy, twin baby girl while pregnant for the fifth time, the surviving twin would go on to become her third living son. Lisa has been instrumental in our expansion of the companion program. Read more about Lisa here.

Lisa can be reached at lisa@emptyarmsbereavement.org

Money related requests can be sent to lisa@emptyarmsbereavement.org

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Veronica Lee

Development Associate

Veronica is our Development Associate who supports fundraising iniatives, volunteer opportunities, donor relations, events, and more. She is a database wizard makes sure our organization stays organized.  Other than companions, she is one of the first people from the community who reaches out to new members to collect general information. Veronica has an in-depth experience in counseling folks who've experienced miscarriage as well as those terminating for medical reasons. Veronica works remotely full-time as the Events Coordinator for The Brigid Alliance. She is also a practicing Birth, Abortion, and Postpartum Doula. Veronica started her journey with Empty Arms as an intern while she was completing her degree in Health Access & Equity, with a concentration in Women’s Health, at UMass Amherst.

Read more about Veronica here.

Look out for an email from Veronica at veronica@emptyarmsbereavement.org if you are new to the organization!

We are an awesome team and love working together.

Continue scrolling to meet the amazing community members that make up the team here at Empty Arms Bereavement Support

Our Peer Companions

Our Bilingual Peer Companions

Our Group Facilitators

Our Board

Empty Arms is governed by a working board of eight to ten members, all of whom are totally committed to the work that we do. Every board member has a deep personal connection to pregnancy or infant loss, either through personal experience or professionally. We're so grateful to have this amazing team to help us make decisions, to fundraise, and plan for the future of this organization.

Our Officers

Our Directors

  • Lindsey Rothschild: Bereaved Parent, City Councilor City of Easthampton, Real Estate Agent
  • Meeyoung Kim, RN: Bereaved Parent: Former staff nurse at Wesson Women’s Clinic, currently works for Northampton Department of Public Health
  • Megan Mayo, BSN, RN, CPLC: Staff nurse, Baystate Pediatric Palliative Care; Former Perinatal Bereavement Coordinator at Holyoke Medical Center Birth Center and labor and delivery nurse

Stay tuned, as our board is in a period of expansion!

Wait... isn't there a lot of overlap here?  YES. We are a small organization, and we have a small group of committed leaders, many of whom wear many hats for our organization. We've got facilitators who are also companions, facilitators who are also directors, and facilitators who are also board members. In all of our work, we make it a priority that each person who is involved in our organization has a deep personal connection to loss. It benefits those we serve to have this hard-working team of multi-tasking people! It means that a sense of familiarity is automatic, when your companion may facilitate your meeting, or you know that your facilitator is also on the board. We’re grateful to all these people for what they do for us!