Aza Nedhari set out to solve an enormous problem facing women giving birth. The US has the highest rate of maternal death of any high-income country, and within the US, that rate is by far the highest for Black women.

Researchers estimate that most of these deaths are preventable. To fix this, Aza helped invent a new type of community health worker, a perinatal community health worker, coordinating across medical professionals and generations of family members to reshape the environment around expecting mothers.

Over more than a decade, her organization, Mamatoto Village, has a perfect track record: four thousand families and zero maternal deaths. But what kind of toll does perfection take when navigating complex health systems, economic inequality, and bias? And how important is it to celebrate now when you know that eventually, stat ...