Ann Wolbert Burgess, DNSc, APRN, FAAN, is Professor of Psychiatric Mental Health Nursing at Boston College Connell School of Nursing and Professor Emerita at the University of Pennsylvania. She received her bachelor’s and doctoral degree from Boston University and her master’s degree from the University of Maryland. She has a Doctor of Humane Letters (Hon) from the University of San Diego. 

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She, with Lynda Lytle Holmstrom (Boston College), co-founded one of the first hospital-based crisis intervention programs for rape victims at Boston City Hospital. She is licensed as an advanced practice nurse in Pennsylvania and Massachusetts, where she also maintains prescriptive authority. She is a Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner and has testified as an expert witness in 31 states. She has received grants and pub¬lished articles on the topics of rape trauma, child sexual abuse, child por¬nography, serial offenders, crime classification, post-traumatic stress, elder abuse, criminal profiling and mental disorders. 

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Ann served as chair of the first Advisory Council to the National Center for the Prevention and Control of Rape of the NIMH, was a member of the 1984 U.S. Attorney General's Task Force on Family Violence, and was on the planning committee for the 1985 Surgeon General's Symposium on Violence. She was elected to the National Academy of Medicine in October 1994 and chaired the 1996 National Research Council's Task Force on Violence Against Women. She was elected to the American Academy of Nursing in 1997 and elected as a Living Legend in 2016.