I began my nursing journey as a Peace Corps health services volunteer in Guinea, West Africa. My experiences in Africa initiated a deep appreciation for innovation practice and provided an opportunity to learn how to maximize, reuse and reinvent resources at hand. Over the past twenty-five years, I have worked in neurosurgical, emergency, and nursing professional practice departments and participated in the inaugural cohort of the Johnson and Johnson nurse innovation fellowship program. As a nurse scientist I continue to celebrate and role model nurses who question the status quo, adopt divergent thinking strategies, leverage evidence-based research, and explore innovative solutions to address existing disparities. For all nurses to thrive in the healthcare ecosystem I fully embrace liberatory design strategies that create conditions for self-awareness, equity, creative courage, and collective liberation.
I am thrilled to join the ANA innovation team as the Innovation Design Strategist. This innovative role will help drive the development, implementation, and evaluation of innovation initiatives through collaborative partnerships with the ANA enterprise, nurses, industry experts, and national organizations. My goal in this role is to widely disseminate the contributions of nurse innovators, encourage nurses to recognize and embrace their innovative capabilities and provide metrics to highlight the value of nurse-led innovative endeavors.