The Future of Nursing 2020-2030: Global Applications to Advance Health Equity (PDF)

Carolina, with her husband and co-founder of Sulu Coaching, and close to her extraordinary grandchildren.
Ashley Darcy-Mahoney, PhD, NNP, FAAN, is a professor and chair at the George Washington School of Nursing. She is a neonatal nurse practitioner and researcher, and has worked throughout her career to advance nursing research, education and practice, with a focus on neonatology, infant health and developmental pediatrics. Her research has led to the creation of programs that improve health and developmental outcomes for at-risk and preterm infants. As a professor of nursing and the director of infant research at George Washington University's Autism and Neurodevelopmental Disorders Institute, Dr. Darcy-Mahoney advances the body of research in infant health and developmental outcomes in high-risk infants with a focus on understanding the early brain and development trajectories in this population. This includes working closely with parents, teachers, nurses, other clinical colleagues, and government officials to bring both sound science and the reality of family lives in the development of new models, which ultimately influence health policy. Dr. Darcy-Mahoney was a lead member of the team that conceptualized and launched the "Talk with me Baby" and Háblame Bebé program that uses nurses as a workforce to teach parents about how early language exposure is an important predictor of future academic achievement beyond a variety of socioeconomic indicators such as parental income, level of parental education, or ethnicity. This program has proven how science can inform both policy and system-level changes to reduce health disparities in young children. She has been funded by the NIH, HRSA, and multiple foundations. Dr. Darcy-Mahoney is a Robert WoodJohnson Foundation (RWJF) Nurse Faculty Scholar Alumna and most recently spent a year at the National Academy of Medicine as the Nurse Scholar in Residence. She is a fellow of the American Academy of Nurses, a 2017 Josiah Macy Scholar, and has earned numerous awards, including the 2014 March of Dimes Nurse of the Year, and the Lillian Sholtis Brunner Award for Innovation from her alma mater, the University of Pennsylvania.
Kenya V. Beard, EdD, AGACNP-BC, CNE, ANEF, FAAN, is the Associate Provost for Social Mission and Academic Excellence at Chamberlain University. She is a 2012 Macy Faculty Scholar and nurse leader whose research has improved learning environments and strengthened the graduation of racially and ethnically diverse providers. In her former role as Senior Fellow at the Center for Health Policy and Media Engagement at George Washington University School of Nursing, she wrote blogs and co-produced health care disparity segments for HealthCetera, on WBAI-FM for an audience of over 400,000 diverse listeners.
Dr. Beard has consulted with numerous schools across the country on ways to design a multicultural curriculum that advances health equity. She led the New York State Action Coalition in constructing the state's 2014 Workforce Diversity Toolkit and contributed to the National League for Nursing's (NLN) 2016 Diversity Vision Statement. She co-created the Josiah Macy Foundation's 2018 ground-breaking document, Improving the Environment for Learning in the Health Professions. She provided the NLN's inaugural webinar, Leading Conversations that Center on Racism and her workshop, "Leading in a Race-Conscious Society," was supported by the Harvard Macy Institute's Program for Educators in the Health Professions. Her efforts have strengthened racial diversity in nursing.Dr. Beard is a fellow of the New York Academy of Medicine, American Academy of Nursing, and Academy of Nursing Education. She served as an advisor for the New York Academy of Medicine's National Health Equity Scholars Network and was recently appointed by the National League for Nursing to the American Nurses Association's National Commission to Address Racism in Nursing. She is Chair of the American Academy of Nursing's Diversity and Inclusivity Committee and the New York State Board for Nursing. She also serves as an editorial board member for the American Journal of Nursing.