Dr. Regina Cunningham is Chief Executive Officer of the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania and currently serves as Adjunct Professor and Assistant Dean for Clinical Practice at the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing.  She is an accomplished nurse executive, scientist and educator who has made impactful contributions to advancing nursing practice and clinical care.

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Dr. Cunningham previously served as Chief Nursing Executive and Senior Vice President of the University of Pennsylvania Health System and Chief Nursing Executive and Associate Executive Director at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. She has extensive experience in the organization and delivery of nursing service across the care continuum, with particular expertise in the utilization of nursing resources in care delivery systems. In her capacity as Chief Nursing Executive, she had responsibility for a broad array of strategic and operational functions, including the development of professional practice standards, oversight of quality, and strengthening the integration of scholarship within the practice of nursing for the health system. Her research interests include the effect of nursing on outcomes, clinical trials and innovative models of care delivery.

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Funded on numerous research initiatives, she recently served as Principal Investigator on a $1.7 million award from the National Cancer Institute focused on developing strategies to improve accrual to clinical trials. She was selected as a Robert Wood Johnson Executive Nurse Fellow in 2006 and was inducted as a Fellow of the American Academy of Nursing in 2014. She served as a member of the National Academy of Medicine Committee that developed the recent report The Future of Nursing 2020-2030 Charting a Path to Achieve Health Equity. Dr. Cunningham received a baccalaureate degree from The College of Mount St. Vincent, a Master of Arts in Delivery of Nursing Service from New York University and a Doctor of Philosophy from the University of Pennsylvania. She completed a post-doctoral fellowship at Yale University.