About Us
Komadrona Media Lab
Documenting the living knowledge of birth, care, and community.
Komadrona Media Lab is a nonprofit media organization rooted in documentary film, photography, biocultural anthropology, and reproductive justice.
We document and share stories of traditional midwifery, ancestral care, reproductive health, and the knowledge carried across generations.
Our work creates space for different ways of knowing—through film, photography, education, and community dialogue.
Our Approach
Stories are relationships.
We believe documentation carries responsibility. Our work is grounded in consent, cultural respect, reciprocity, and relational accountability.
We seek to document with communities, not simply about them—honoring the people, knowledge, and histories at the heart of every story.
Zulgeil (Zul) Ruiz Gines
Founder & Director
Zulgeil “Zul” Ruiz Gines is a licensed midwife, educator, anthropologist, and midwifery leader with clinical experience in community birth settings across California and Florida.
She has served as an instructor, consultant, and Executive Director of a nationally recognized midwifery school, where she advanced culturally responsive, practice-based education.
Her work focuses on midwifery education, workforce development, and the long-term sustainability of midwifery programs. She is also a researcher pursuing graduate studies in applied medical anthropology, with interests in the growth and viability of accredited midwifery education in the United States.
Komadrona Media Lab brings these areas of practice, research, and storytelling together—creating media that documents knowledge, opens conversation, and makes space for perspectives that are too often overlooked.
Looking Ahead
Komadrona is growing as a space where documentary, photography, research, education, and community knowledge meet.
We begin with listening.