Laura Rosenthal is a Teaching Professor at the University of Colorado, College of Nursing. She serves as the Senior Assistant Dean of Academic Operations where she oversees the daily functioning of 20 tracks within the BSN, MSN, and DNP programs. She is the immediate past president of the Colorado Nurses Association and the former Colorado State Representative to the American Association of Nurse Practitioners (AANP) where she led efforts resulting in adoption of legislation that supports nurses in providing safe patient care by requiring staffing plans, committees, and mandatory reporting of bed capacity in all hospitals in Colorado. She continues to testify against measures to restrict advanced practice registered nurses (APRN) prescriptive authority, allowing over 4,000 Colorado APRNs to practice at full scope. She pioneered the Adult-Gero Acute Care NP program at the University of Colorado and led an inaugural national fellowship for NPs in Hospital Medicine. Grant funding from AANP was earned to create a partnership with the State University of Haiti to generate family and psychiatric mental health NPs increasing access and care to the citizens of this war-ridden, impoverished country. Dr. Rosenthal received her BSN from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor; MSN from Case Western Reserve University, and DNP from the University of Colorado