I am an Advanced Practice Registered Nurse and an Adult Health Clinical Nurse Specialist. Currently I am not working for anyone. My past career has included owning my own business, working as an Occupational Health Nurse Specialist, faculty member of a community college, and cardiology Clinical Nurse Specialist in the acute care setting: all requiring excellent strong leadership skills. I co-chair the Policy and Government Affairs committee for ACNA. I assumed the role of chair unofficially last Spring and stepped into the role fully in August (in November I officially welcomed Mary Hoff as my co-chair). During my time as the leader of this committee, we completed our position paper on Workplace Drug Testing of Nurses, presented at the annual conference, had a Legislative Toolkit and Advocacy page published for general membership on the ACNA website and created a workflow for creating position papers and policies in a timely and structured manner.

Advocacy for nurses and patients has grown exponentially as legalization spreads across the majority of the States. The impact on individual State legislation impacts the practice of nurses and the care of the patients they serve. We have the opportunity before us to solidify our position as the voice of professional expertise for nurses based on solid information and research. This requires multiple successful actions.

We need to be recognized by the American Nurses Association along with obtaining nationally accepted and recognized certification through the American Nurse Credentialing Center. We need to expand our reach through increasing traffic to our website, increasing membership involvement, and brand awareness both within the nursing community and general population. We also need to consider re-surveying our general membership. Much has changed since we completed our last survey in 2019 including:

• The impact of COVID
• Growing evidence of cannabis efficacy and concerns
• Ongoing legalization of varying degrees in individual states
• Potentially massive change at the Federal level if either the MORE Act of 2021 or Senate action broadly legalizes cannabis through descheduling and decriminalization.
• I believe we have been making steady progress in these areas but much more work needs to be done to accomplish our goals as identified in our current Strategic Plan.

I currently am not working due to being disabled by a critical illness 2 years ago that left me with multiple neurological challenges. I have the passion, flexibility, time, and energy to invest in the leadership role and involvement required of a board member. I bring to the Board skills in applied research, process improvement strategies, planning/overseeing, and nursing education. These skills would complement both similar and different skills already present among the Board’s members. Regardless of the outcome of elections, I will continue to be an active and enthused member of ACNA.