Sheryl Baron Nestel’s activism in the childbirth reform movement led to her investigation of how race and racism affect healthcare. Nestel graduated from UCLA, where she founded the UCLA Women’s Liberation Front and edited Ha’Am, the first Jewish student newspaper funded by a public university. In 1973, she organized the first Second Wave Jewish feminist conference through the Jewish Student Network. After moving to Israel, she became active in the Israeli peace movement and the childbirth reform movement, which would become the focus of her career. Nestel went on to earn a PhD in sociology from the University of Toronto, where she still teaches in the department of sociology and equity studies. Her research investigates issues of race, reproduction and healthcare, and her book Obstructed Labour: Race and Gender in the Re-emergence of Midwifery received the Canadian Women's Studies Association Annual Book Prize in 2008.