On-Demand Webinars

Speakers & Facilitator

Brigit Carter, PhD, RN, CCRN, FAAN
Chief Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion Officer
American Association of Colleges

Dr. Brigit Carter, Chief Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Officer joined American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN) in February 2023. She is Professor Emerita at the Duke University School of Nursing, where she served as the Associate Dean for Diversity and Inclusion from 2018-2023. From 2015-2018 she served as the Director of the DUSON Accelerated Bachelor of Science in Nursing (ABSN) program. Dr. Carter earned her BSN at North Carolina Central University (NCCU) in 1998, a Master of Science in Nursing Education from University of North Carolina at Greensboro in 2002, and a PhD in Nursing from University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2009. Her current educational research is focused on understanding students' experiences with microaggressions and the development of strategies to mitigate the impact of microaggressions. Dr. Carter also has a focus on strategies intended to increase historically marginalized students in nursing and understand individual-level social determinants that serve as barriers to achieving nursing education. Dr. Carter is a Fellow in the American Academy of Nursing, an Atlantic Fellow for Health Equity, and a Duke Teaching for Equity fellow. 

Allison Lewinski, PhD, MPH, RN
Assistant Professor
Duke University School of Nursing

Dr. Lewinski is a health services researcher with a focus on eHealth interventions and chronic illness self-management. Her work sits at the intersection of precision medicine and population health. Dr. Lewinski’s interest in health services and nursing research, specifically in developi ng and implementing sustainable interventions to improve health outcomes, is an extension of her experiences in public health and nursing. Dr. Lewinski aims to develop meaningful interventions that are relevant, appropriate, and can be implemented in real-world clinical settings with interdisciplinary collaborators. Her use of mixed methods enables her to understand how individuals engage with healthcare teams, how best to support behavior change in diverse populations and with varying disease states, and how to foster stronger engagement with the healthcare system. Additionally, Dr. Lewinski is interested in examining intervention implementation and adaptation as a means to understand how, why, when, and for what populations and settings interventions work. Dr. Lewinski’s career development award examines the association of diabetes distress and related factors using quantitative and qualitative methods in order to develop a novel, nurse-led intervention to improve self-management in Veterans with type 2 diabetes. Dr. Lewinski completed her postdoctoral fellowship in health services research at the Durham Center of Innovation to Accelerate Discovery and Practice Transformation at the Durham VA. She completed her PhD in Nursing at Duke University School of Nursing, a Master of Public Health in Health Behavior and Health Education at University of Michigan, a Bachelor of Science in Zoology at Michigan State University, and a Bachelor of Science in Nursing at Maryville University in St. Louis.

Winifred Quinn, PhD
Director, Nursing Workforce & Policy
AARP Center for Health Equity through Nursing

Dr. Quinn is the director, nursing workforce & policy, at the AARP Center for Health Equity through Nursing within the AARP Public Policy Institute (PPI). She co-leads a national campaign dedicated to improving health care through nursing, the Future of Nursing: Campaign for Action. She oversees a team that supports action coalitions in each state and the District of Columbia that work to implement the Institute of Medicine’s recommendations from its landmark 2011 report, The Future of Nursing: Leading Change, Advancing Health. Dr. Quinn also assists with the Campaign for Action’s diversity work to help ensure a more diverse nursing workforce, faculty, and leadership. Dr. Quinn also works across AARP to help address public policies that intersect with consumer and nursing issues. She focuses on policy issues related to improving funding for nursing education and legal barriers that prevent all levels of registered nurses from practicing to the full extent of their education and expertise. Her federal policy work includes working on nursing education provisions within the 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. She helped to initiate a national-level coalition that successfully moved Medicare to begin supporting graduate-level nursing education. Her state-level policy work entails organizing technical assistance to action coalitions and AARP state offices that are improving funding for nursing education or modernizing the scope of practice laws. Within this role, she places a strong emphasis on building coalitions and engaging stakeholders. She holds a master's in counseling, higher education, and human development from Montclair State University and a PhD in communicati on processes with a focus on health and public policy from Rutgers University School of Communication and Information.

Speakers & Facilitator

Brigit Carter, PhD, RN, CCRN, FAAN
Chief Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion Officer
American Association of Colleges

Dr. Brigit Carter, Chief Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Officer joined American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN) in February 2023. She is Professor Emerita at the Duke University School of Nursing, where she served as the Associate Dean for Diversity and Inclusion from 2018-2023. From 2015-2018 she served as the Director of the DUSON Accelerated Bachelor of Science in Nursing (ABSN) program. Dr. Carter earned her BSN at North Carolina Central University (NCCU) in 1998, a Master of Science in Nursing Education from University of North Carolina at Greensboro in 2002, and a PhD in Nursing from University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2009. Her current educational research is focused on understanding students' experiences with microaggressions and the development of strategies to mitigate the impact of microaggressions. Dr. Carter also has a focus on strategies intended to increase historically marginalized students in nursing and understand individual-level social determinants that serve as barriers to achieving nursing education. Dr. Carter is a Fellow in the American Academy of Nursing, an Atlantic Fellow for Health Equity, and a Duke Teaching for Equity fellow. 

Allison Lewinski, PhD, MPH, RN
Assistant Professor
Duke University School of Nursing

Dr. Lewinski is a health services researcher with a focus on eHealth interventions and chronic illness self-management. Her work sits at the intersection of precision medicine and population health. Dr. Lewinski’s interest in health services and nursing research, specifically in developi ng and implementing sustainable interventions to improve health outcomes, is an extension of her experiences in public health and nursing. Dr. Lewinski aims to develop meaningful interventions that are relevant, appropriate, and can be implemented in real-world clinical settings with interdisciplinary collaborators. Her use of mixed methods enables her to understand how individuals engage with healthcare teams, how best to support behavior change in diverse populations and with varying disease states, and how to foster stronger engagement with the healthcare system. Additionally, Dr. Lewinski is interested in examining intervention implementation and adaptation as a means to understand how, why, when, and for what populations and settings interventions work. Dr. Lewinski’s career development award examines the association of diabetes distress and related factors using quantitative and qualitative methods in order to develop a novel, nurse-led intervention to improve self-management in Veterans with type 2 diabetes. Dr. Lewinski completed her postdoctoral fellowship in health services research at the Durham Center of Innovation to Accelerate Discovery and Practice Transformation at the Durham VA. She completed her PhD in Nursing at Duke University School of Nursing, a Master of Public Health in Health Behavior and Health Education at University of Michigan, a Bachelor of Science in Zoology at Michigan State University, and a Bachelor of Science in Nursing at Maryville University in St. Louis.

Winifred Quinn, PhD
Director, Nursing Workforce & Policy
AARP Center for Health Equity through Nursing

Dr. Quinn is the director, nursing workforce & policy, at the AARP Center for Health Equity through Nursing within the AARP Public Policy Institute (PPI). She co-leads a national campaign dedicated to improving health care through nursing, the Future of Nursing: Campaign for Action. She oversees a team that supports action coalitions in each state and the District of Columbia that work to implement the Institute of Medicine’s recommendations from its landmark 2011 report, The Future of Nursing: Leading Change, Advancing Health. Dr. Quinn also assists with the Campaign for Action’s diversity work to help ensure a more diverse nursing workforce, faculty, and leadership. Dr. Quinn also works across AARP to help address public policies that intersect with consumer and nursing issues. She focuses on policy issues related to improving funding for nursing education and legal barriers that prevent all levels of registered nurses from practicing to the full extent of their education and expertise. Her federal policy work includes working on nursing education provisions within the 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. She helped to initiate a national-level coalition that successfully moved Medicare to begin supporting graduate-level nursing education. Her state-level policy work entails organizing technical assistance to action coalitions and AARP state offices that are improving funding for nursing education or modernizing the scope of practice laws. Within this role, she places a strong emphasis on building coalitions and engaging stakeholders. She holds a master's in counseling, higher education, and human development from Montclair State University and a PhD in communicati on processes with a focus on health and public policy from Rutgers University School of Communication and Information.

Speaker

Courtney Pitts, DNP, MPH, FNP-BC, FAANP, FAAN

Courtney Pitts, DNP, MPH, FNP-BC, FAANP, FAAN, is a Clinical Professor and Family Nurse Practitioner (FNP) Specialty Director at the Emory University Nell Hodgson Woodruff School of Nursing. She is a nationally certified and actively practicing FNP with a clinical background in primary care and the management of patients living with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). Her experience as a nurse educator includes curricular oversight, clinical training program development and clinical practicum placement. As a former project director of a Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) federally funded advanced nursing education workforce grant, Dr. Pitts focused on establishing and maintaining academic practice partnerships required to support nurse practitioner student success in their clinical learning. In 2021, Dr. Pitts was appointed by the United States Secretary of Health to the National Advisory Council on Nurse Education and Practice (NACNEP). In this role, she serves with a national cadre of colleagues who focus on nursing workforce, practice, and education issues. Other roles of leadership include service or past service within the National League for Nursing (NLN),  the American Association of Nurse Practitioners (AANP), and the National Organization of Nurse Practitioner Faculties (NONPF).
 

Speakers

Gabrielle Flynt, BSN
AGACNP-DNP Student
Winona State University 

Gabrielle Flynt (she/her/hers) is a registered nurse in a rural northeast Iowa critical access emergency department and current Doctor of Nursing Practice Adult-Gerontology Acute Care Nurse Practitioner student at Winona State University, graduating in May 2025. She received her Bachelor of Science in Nursing from Washington State University in 2015. Originally from the inland northwest, employment opportunities for her spouse brought them to the rural Midwest, where they have resided for the last seven years. Passionate about improving healthcare for LGBTQ+ folks, she and her co-presenter Mara Bennett-Deiss co-created a workshop entitled Code Rainbow, designed to enhance allyship among healthcare providers. Initially a school assignment, Code Rainbow has blossomed into a passion project beyond their wildest dre ams. It has taken them to several national nursing conferences to present their data and outcomes, including as a poster at the 2024 Midwest Nursing Research Society conference and as a podium presentation at the 2024 University of Iowa National Evidence-Based Practice conference. In February 2024, Code Rainbow: Addressing LGBTQ+ Allyship Among Rural Healthcare Providers won the best poster award at the AACN Diversity Symposium. Her interests outside of school and work include travel, gardening, playing fetch with her corgi, yoga, and spending time with her family. 

Mara Bennett-Deiss, DNP
Nurse Practitioner Resident
Penobscot Community Health Center 

Mara Bennett-Deiss was recruited to play soccer outside of her Michigan high school and received her BSN as a student athlete in 2016 from Lewis University in the suburbs of Chicago. After 8 years at the bedside in medical surgical, oncology, primary care, and rural settings, Mara at tended Winona State University in Minnesota to complete her DNP and is an AANP board certified family nurse practitioner. Mara characterizes her practice as a heartfelt blend of humor, transparency, and gentleness. With a fierce passion for serving marginalized communities, she prioritizes equity for all patients. Her philosophy centers on acceptance, ensuring that every individual feels acknowledged and respected. Passionate about improving LGBTQ+ healthcare, Mara co-created a workshop: Code Rainbow, with her co-presenter Gabrielle Flynt, to enhance allyship among healthcare providers. As a foster parent and avid volunteer, she strives to make a positive impact on her community. To unwind, Mara finds comfort in spending time with her dogs, game nights with friends, and is an avid sports enthusiast. With her kind nature, humorous disposition, and unwavering curiosity, Mara brings a unique and compassionate approach to her work and personal life. 

Speakers

Rene Love, PhD, DNP, PMHNP-BC, FNAP, FAANP, FAAN 
Associate Dean for Academic Affairs-Graduate Clinical Education 
University of Florida College of Nursing

Dr. Rene Love is the Associate Dean for Academic Affairs for Graduate Clinical Education and a Clinical Professor at the University of Florida. She began her career in higher education in 1998 at Vanderbilt University School of Nursing. She has since held administrative roles in academia as a DNP Director (University of Arizona) and Psych Mental Health Specialty Coordinator (Vanderbilt University).  She is certified as a psychiatric mental health nurse practitioner and specializes in trauma, substance abuse and borderline personality disorders.Dr. Love is an internationally recognized expert in advanced nursing practice education and leader in advancin g Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) programs. Her leadership has influenced psychiatric mental health nursing and DNP education, practice, and policy. She has supported national organizations in developing training to support academic institutions in transitioning from BSN-MSN to BSN-DNP and is currently working on population-based competencies. Her contribution to nursing includes identifying educational inequities, developing innovative programs, and creating innovative resources for faculty to improve the quality of DNP education and healthcare delivery.  Dr. Love is past president of the International Society of Psychiatric Mental Health Nursing and past board member at-large for the National Organization for Nurse Practitioner Faculty.  Dr. Love graduated with her PhD from the University of Arizona (2015), her DNP (2010) and MSN (1998) from Vanderbilt, and her BSN (1985) from Valdosta State University. She is a Fellow in the National Academies of Practice, The American Association of Nurse Practitioners and the American Academy of Nursing.  

Jane M. Carrington, PhD, RN, FAAN, FAMIA 
Associate Professor, Dorothy M. Smith Endowed Chair 
Director Of Florida Blue Center For Healthcare Quality 
University of Florida College of Nursing

Dr. Carrington has taught informatics courses at the master's and PhD levels. Dr. Carrington has also taught Evidence Based Practice for DNP students. The focus of Dr. Carrington’s research is nurse to nurse communication of a clinical event or change in patient condition using the electronic health record. Dr. Carrington uses techniques in qualitative research and natural language processing to analyze nurse-to-nurse communication and decision-making associated with a clinical event. Dr. Carrington has been a long-time active member of the American Medical Informatics Association (AMIA) and Human Factors and Ergonomics Society. She is also a Fellow in the American Academy of Nursing and serves on the Information Technology Expert Panel. She has also served on national committees for issues related to inf ormatics, informatics education and standards. 

Speakers

Rita F. D’AOust, PhD
Associate Professor; Director, DNP/PhD Program
Johns Hopkins University School of Nursing 

Dr. Rita F. D'Aoust is an Associate Professor at the Johns Hopkins University School of Nursing and Director of the dual DNP/PhD program, with a joint appointment in the School of Medicine's Department of General Internal Medicine. As a military spouse and family member, Dr. D'Aoust has experienced military life from the sidelines. As a nurse practitioner, she has cared for veterans in community settings. These experiences have informed her significant contributions to educating nurses in veteran care. Dr. D'Aoust co-authored "Caring for Veterans and Their Families: A Guide for Nurses and Healthcare Professionals." She co-directed the Veterans Affairs Nursing Academy (VANA) and subsequent Veterans Affairs Nursing Academic Partnerships (VANAP) at the J ames A. Haley Veterans Hospital and University of South Florida. She is a member of the American Association of Nursing, Military/Veteran Expert Panel. Her innovative work includes developing the Veteran to Bachelor of Science Program, which recognizes prior learning through American Council of Education (ACE) transcript evaluation for military medics and corpsmen. She also created an online course, "Introduction to Military and Veteran Healthcare." Dr. D'Aoust's research focuses on the impact of military service on veteran health. She has studied novel therapies like Accelerated Resolution Therapy (ART) for treating PTSD in homeless veterans and those with Military Sexual Trauma. She has also researched fibromyalgia symptomology in community-dwelling women veterans. As a mentor, Dr. D'Aoust has guided numerous doctoral students on veteran policy issues, nurse practitioner roles in veteran care, and quality improvement initiatives in VA settings. Her contributions have been recognized with the Jonas Faculty Mentor Award and the Jonas Nursing and Veterans Healthcare Distinguished Faculty Award in 2021. 

Catherine G. Ling, PhD
Associate Professor
Johns Hopkins University School of Nursing 

Dr. Catherine Ling is a nurse scientist, practicing Family Nurse Practitioner (FNP), and certified nurse educator focusing on improving access to quality, primary care.  She works to improve culturally competent care for military families and is actively involved in community focused interventions to improve wellness at a local and global level. She is also creating innovative, engaging strategies to prepare DNP students for advanced practice. She received her BSN from the University of Tennessee Knoxville, her MN from Emory University and her PhD from the Medical University of South Carolina. Dr. Ling is a Fellow in the American Association of Nurse Practitioners and the American Academy of Nursing. She is currently an Associate Professor and inaugural CNO of Service within the COMPASS Center at the Johns Hopkins University School of Nursing. 

Alicia Gill Rossiter, DNP
Associate Professor
University of South Florida

Dr. Alicia Gill Rossiter is an Associate Professor at the University of South Florida College of Nursing and serves as Chief Officer of Military and Veteran Affairs and Director of the V-CARE Veteran to BSN Pathway. She is a Family Nurse Practitioner board certified in Pediatric Primary Care. Dr. Rossiter served in the U.S. Army Nurse Corps on active duty for four years which included two deployments - a combat deployment to Saudi Arabia during Operation Desert Shield/Desert Storm and a humanitarian mission to Honduras, Central America. She transferred into the U.S. Air Force Reserve in 1995 and served as an Individual Mobilization Augmentee until retiring in 2015. Her military experience is the impetus behind her research which includes women veterans and military sexual trauma, effects of parental military service on military-connected children, and transitioning needs of medics and corpsmen into the pro fessional role of nursing. During her doctoral program, she was selected as a Bob Woodruff Jonas Veteran Healthcare Scholar. She was a member of the inaugural cohort of AAN Jonas Policy Scholars with the Military/Veteran Health Expert Panel. She was inducted as a Fellow in the American Association of Nurse Practitioners in 2014 and in the American Academy of Nursing in 2018 where she served as the Co-Chair and Chair of the Military/Veteran Health Expert Panel from 2018-2022. She recently co-authored her first book,?Caring for Veterans and their Families: A Guide for Nurses and other Healthcare Professionals. 

Speaker

Rebecca K. Vortman, DNP, RN, CNOR, NEA-BC
Clinical Associate Professor
Associate Department Head
DNP Health Systems Leadership Co-Program Director 
University of Illinois Chicago College of Nursing

Dr. Vortman is a Clinical Associate Professor, Associate Department Head, and Co-Director of the Health Systems Leadership DNP Program at the University of Illinois Chicago for the Population Health Nursing Science department and serves as a Perioperative Education Consultant, and Associate Editor for the Association of periOperative Registered Nurses (AORN) Novice Nurse Digital Publication, The Stitch.

She has over thirteen years of experience in perioperative nursing, education, and leadership. Dr. Vortman is recognized as an international, national, and regional leader and expert in perioperative nursing and is currently serving a second term as a board m ember for AORN.

Her policy focus is on workplace safety initiatives and surgical smoke evacuation practices. She has disseminated her scholarly work through publications and presentations at the local, regional, national, and international levels. She co-led a state-based grassroots coalition to successfully pass a surgical smoke evacuation law in Illinois.

Dr. Vortman received a Doctor of Nursing Practice degree from the University of Illinois Chicago. She is certified as an operating room nurse (CNOR) through the Competency and Credentialing Institute and holds a nurse executive advanced certification through the American Nurses Credentialing Center.

Speakers & Facilitator

Brigit Carter, PhD, RN, CCRN, FAAN
Chief Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion Officer
American Association of Colleges

Dr. Brigit Carter, Chief Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Officer joined American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN) in February 2023. She is Professor Emerita at the Duke University School of Nursing, where she served as the Associate Dean for Diversity and Inclusion from 2018-2023. From 2015-2018 she served as the Director of the DUSON Accelerated Bachelor of Science in Nursing (ABSN) program. Dr. Carter earned her BSN at North Carolina Central University (NCCU) in 1998, a Master of Science in Nursing Education from University of North Carolina at Greensboro in 2002, and a PhD in Nursing from University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2009. Her current educational research is focused on understanding students' experiences with microaggressions and the development of strategies to mitigate the impact of microaggressions. Dr. Carter also has a focus on strategies intended to increase historically marginalized students in nursing and understand individual-level social determinants that serve as barriers to achieving nursing education. Dr. Carter is a Fellow in the American Academy of Nursing, an Atlantic Fellow for Health Equity, and a Duke Teaching for Equity fellow. 

Allison Lewinski, PhD, MPH, RN
Assistant Professor
Duke University School of Nursing

Dr. Lewinski is a health services researcher with a focus on eHealth interventions and chronic illness self-management. Her work sits at the intersection of precision medicine and population health. Dr. Lewinski’s interest in health services and nursing research, specifically in developi ng and implementing sustainable interventions to improve health outcomes, is an extension of her experiences in public health and nursing. Dr. Lewinski aims to develop meaningful interventions that are relevant, appropriate, and can be implemented in real-world clinical settings with interdisciplinary collaborators. Her use of mixed methods enables her to understand how individuals engage with healthcare teams, how best to support behavior change in diverse populations and with varying disease states, and how to foster stronger engagement with the healthcare system. Additionally, Dr. Lewinski is interested in examining intervention implementation and adaptation as a means to understand how, why, when, and for what populations and settings interventions work. Dr. Lewinski’s career development award examines the association of diabetes distress and related factors using quantitative and qualitative methods in order to develop a novel, nurse-led intervention to improve self-management in Veterans with type 2 diabetes. Dr. Lewinski completed her postdoctoral fellowship in health services research at the Durham Center of Innovation to Accelerate Discovery and Practice Transformation at the Durham VA. She completed her PhD in Nursing at Duke University School of Nursing, a Master of Public Health in Health Behavior and Health Education at University of Michigan, a Bachelor of Science in Zoology at Michigan State University, and a Bachelor of Science in Nursing at Maryville University in St. Louis.

Winifred Quinn, PhD
Director, Nursing Workforce & Policy
AARP Center for Health Equity through Nursing

Dr. Quinn is the director, nursing workforce & policy, at the AARP Center for Health Equity through Nursing within the AARP Public Policy Institute (PPI). She co-leads a national campaign dedicated to improving health care through nursing, the Future of Nursing: Campaign for Action. She oversees a team that supports action coalitions in each state and the District of Columbia that work to implement the Institute of Medicine’s recommendations from its landmark 2011 report, The Future of Nursing: Leading Change, Advancing Health. Dr. Quinn also assists with the Campaign for Action’s diversity work to help ensure a more diverse nursing workforce, faculty, and leadership. Dr. Quinn also works across AARP to help address public policies that intersect with consumer and nursing issues. She focuses on policy issues related to improving funding for nursing education and legal barriers that prevent all levels of registered nurses from practicing to the full extent of their education and expertise. Her federal policy work includes working on nursing education provisions within the 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. She helped to initiate a national-level coalition that successfully moved Medicare to begin supporting graduate-level nursing education. Her state-level policy work entails organizing technical assistance to action coalitions and AARP state offices that are improving funding for nursing education or modernizing the scope of practice laws. Within this role, she places a strong emphasis on building coalitions and engaging stakeholders. She holds a master's in counseling, higher education, and human development from Montclair State University and a PhD in communicati on processes with a focus on health and public policy from Rutgers University School of Communication and Information.

Speaker

Laura A. Taylor, PhD, CN, CNE, ANEF, FAAN
Founder and CEO, GuIDE to Degree

With more than 26 years in the transplant nursing/community, and 34 years in nursing education, Dr. Taylor has earned national and international recognition as a strong leader who shapes practice, policy and education. Dr. Taylor’s scholarship integrates pioneering technology-based innovations, rigorous scientific methods, inter-professional collaboration, and focused orientation on the advancement of global transplant care and education. Dr. Taylor embodies the innovative and evidence-based approach to contemporary nursing education, practice and healthcare delivery meeting the needs of patients in increasingly complex healthcare environments. 

Dr. Taylor established an educational pathway, The Guiding Initiative for Doctoral Education program (GuIDE ™), a program providing advanced practice nurses informational and problem- solving opportunities regarding PhD, EdD, and DNP education. GuIDE™ is preparing nurses to be competitive for admission to doctoral programs with the goal of increasing the diversity of doctorally prepared nurses.

Speakers

Jean Watson, PhD, RN, AHN-BC, FAAN, LL
Founder –Director
Watson Caring Science Institute

Dr. Jean Watson is known around the world for her Theory of Human Caring and advancement of Caring Science as disciplinary context for Nursing’s future. She is the Founder of the Non-profit, Watson Caring Science Institute and Distinguished Professor  Dean Emerita University of Colorado Denver. She is the author, co-author, or editor of over 30 books on Caring Science and Unitary Caring. Her latest book is titled Metaphysics of Unitary Caring Science. A Cosmology of Love, (2025 pub. by Springer).  Her work is used globally, promoting academic and clinical partnerships toward theory-guided caring science curriculum and professional Caritas Practice, Research, and Leadership. Watson is the recipient of numerous national and international awards and honors including 15 Honorary Doctorates; she is designated as a Living Legend by the American Academy of Nursing, its highest honor.  View full bio.

Sara Horton-Deutsch, PhD, RN, FAAN, ANEF, SGAHN
University of San Francisco
Director of USF/Kaiser Permanente Partnership and Faculty Associate
Watson Caring Science Institute

Dr. Horton-Deutsch has led in academic and practice settings for over 30 years as an advanced practice psychiatric/mental health nurse, teacher/practitioner, consultant, program director, caring science endowed chair, coach, and academic/practice partnership director. In 2022, she was inducted into the Global American Holistic Nursing. She has contributed to evidence-informed knowledge development throughout her academic and practice career to ensure compassionate, safe, an d quality care. As a reflective leader, she focuses on inward development to positively influence change. She has co-authored several books on Reflective Practice, Caring Science, and Caritas Coaching. She is a Caritas Coach & Leader, Reiki Practitioner, and Healing Circle Facilitator. Through her journey, she has learned the necessity of connecting to one’s inner sources of wisdom, power, and healing, as well as the arts and humanities that once defined the discipline of nursing. She is passionate about facilitating critical, deep, and authentic connections that support regeneration, renewal, and the profession’s evolution. Her latest books, Visionary Leadership in Healthcare (2022) and Reflective Practice: Reimagining Ourselves, Reimagining Nursing (2024), were published through SIGMA, the former winning an AJN 1st place book of the year award in Leadership. She is currently a champion for the ANCC Essentials within the USF School of Nursing and Health Professions. She is co-director of the Caritas Leadership Program for the Watson Caring Science Institute.

Danny G. Willis, DNS, RN, PMHCNS-BC, FAAN
Dean and Professor
University of Rhode Island College of Nursing

Dr. Danny G. Willis serves as Dean of the University of Rhode Island College of Nursing. He Caritas® Leader Faculty. In his 20-year academic career, he has served as Dean at Saint Louis University Valentine School of Nursing, Associate Dean for Academic Affairs at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Nursing, and Department Chair at Boston College, Connell School of Nursing. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Nursing and has chaired the Expert Panel on Theory-Guided Practice and is a member of the Expert Panel on Violence. His program of research and scholarship primarily focuses on wellbeing and healing in the aftermath of traumatic experiences. His work has been recognized with many awards, including the Eastern Nursing Research Society "Rising Star" Award, American Psychiatric Nurses Association Nancy Valentine "Leadership" Award, and R-level research funding as Principal Investigator from the National Institutes of Health (NIH). He has mentored undergraduate, masters, and PhD students from nursing, social work, child and human development, and counseling psychology. Dr. Willis has published widely in nursing and other health- related journals on qualitative research methods, foundations of the discipline, child maltreatment, the aftermath of hate crime, school children being bullied, child witness to violence, mental health, sleep, and healing. He has served as chair of the American Psychiatric Nursing Association (APNA) Research Council and currently co-chairs the Eastern Nursing Research Society (ENRS) Qualitative Research Interest Group. His publication explicating a central unifying focus for the discipline of nursing ‘facilitating humanization, meaning, choice, quality of life, and healing in living and dying,” published in Advances in Nursing Science, garnered national and international recognition for its relevance to nursing. Dr. Willis enthusiastically shares his work nationally and internationally with invited papers and presentations in the United States, Chile, Colombia, Ireland, England, Portugal, and Japan.