Speakers
Opening Keynote: Moving Toward Higher Ground Through Better Conversation
Thursday, October 16, 2025
Strong collaboration hinges on the ability to speak openly, ask difficult questions, and acknowledge mistakes, which can all be risky endeavors. In this keynote, Dr. Ingrid Nembhard will explore how health care professionals can navigate challenging circumstances and conversations through the lens of psychological safety. Dr. Nembhard will share groundbreaking findings about psychological safety, how to cultivate it, and how it relates to accountability. With applications in health care systems and beyond, Dr. Nembhard’s insights will equip attendees to create productive dialogues and build robust partnerships to improve health and advance evidence-driven policy solutions.
Interactive Panel 1: Building Trust and Effectively Messaging Evidence
Thursday, October 16, 2025
Amidst growing mistrust in science and even a loss of trust among each other, it is crucial to examine both its roots and paths forward. With a focus on leadership opportunities to impact policy development, this panel will examine how to shape partnerships and create strategies that build public trust for a healthier future. Panelists will highlight trends in public perception of science, insights into the role of science in policymaking, and evidence-based tools and strategies to build lasting, trust-based relationships that improve health outcomes and advance policy goals.
Interactive Panel 2: Leveraging Lessons from the Past to Inspire Action Today
Friday, October 17, 2025
For generations, history has offered invaluable lessons in the context of policy challenges of the time. This panel will explore how past efforts to improve health and well-being can inform current approaches to complex problems. By drawing connections between the efforts that paved the way and the work of today’s world, this session will equip attendees to navigate rapidly shifting environments with evidence-informed approaches. Panelists will discuss their experiences with research, policy, and systems change that left lasting impacts on the landscape of health.
Interactive Panel 3:
Financing the Future: Committing to Health for All
Friday, October 17, 2025
Ensuring positive health outcomes requires careful financial planning and investment to support critical services and programs. This panel will focus on how budgetary considerations within various sectors influence access to care and public health outcomes. Panelists will discuss the cost of inconsistent access to health care services, policy development for federal health programs, and approaches to key budgetary and legislative conversations to ensure a public health focus.
Closing Keynote: Voices That Carry: Amplifying Messages for Impact
Saturday, October 18, 2025
It is increasingly important to find ways to connect amidst chaos and adopt innovative strategies to communicate information that ensures progress is made. This keynote will explore how health care professionals can operationalize their unique knowledge and skills to amplify impactful messages that support healthy lives for all people. Dr. Ena Williams, a seasoned and principled health care leader, will share her experience building unity and crafting nimble responses amidst rapidly shifting environments, empowering attendees to lead with purpose and create lasting impact. Her focus on engaging all voices, seeking community feedback, and enhancing cross-sector partnerships will provide attendees with an opportunity to reflect on how to use their voices to take action and promote integrity.
Interactive Breakouts
Saturday, October 18, 2025
These concurrent breakout dialogues will create space for meaningful discussion among attendees around the following topics that have been identified as top priorities by the Academy Fellowship. Attendees will choose from six breakout rooms, each designed to foster connection, peer exchange, and thought leadership. Guided by a facilitator, each breakout room will explore their topic in depth and collaborate to identify three key takeaways.
Breakout Session 1: Sustaining Nursing Science for a New Era
This breakout dialogue will address research funding, the development of the nurse scientist workforce, engagement in new funding sources, and compelling cases for science.
Facilitator
Scott Emory Moore
PhD, MSN, RN, AGPCNP-BC, FAAN
Assistant Professor
Frances Payne Bolton School of Nursing, Case Western Reserve University
Breakout Session 2: Understanding Current Trends in Artificial Intelligence
This breakout dialogue will provide a brief overview of the Academy's work to date on its AI Task Force as well as collaborations with partners such as the National Academy of Medicine and discuss current and future considerations the Academy must examine as a policy organization.
Facilitator
Tim Cunningham
DrPH, MSN, RN, FAAN
Director, Focus Area for Compassion and Ethics
The Task Force for Global Health
Breakout Session 3: Empowering Mission Driven Leadership
This breakout dialogue will address recent changes to how organizations focus on belonging and inclusivity to ensure the organization's mission is upheld and strategies to do so.
Facilitator
Laura J. Wood
DNP, RN, NEA-BC, FAAN
Executive Vice President, Patient Care Operations; System Chief Nurse Executive; Sporing Carpenter Chair for Nursing
Boston Children's Hospital
Breakout Session 4: Evaluating Risk in Decision Making
This breakout dialogue will consider the proliferation and types of risk impacting leaders who must manage issues such as digital threats and the increasing political undercurrent.
Facilitator
Linda Laskowski Jones
MS, APRN, ACNS-BC, CEN, NEA-BC, FAWM, FAEN, FAAN
Editor-in-Chief: Nursing
Wolters Kluwer
Breakout Session 5: Redefining the Public Health Infrastructure
This breakout dialogue will address the vulnerabilities within the public health infrastructure due to current and past funding and policy decisions and discuss opportunities for a new infrastructure.
Facilitator
Katie Huffling
DNP, RN, CNM, FAAN
Executive Director
Alliance of Nurses for Healthy Environments
Breakout Session 6: Preparing Nursing Leadership for Succession Planning
This breakout dialogue will address the need to look cross-generationally to ensure nursing leadership remains strong across all industries and sectors with nurses at the helm.
Facilitator
Kimberly Harper
MS, RN, FAAN
CEO Emeritus
Indiana Center for Nursing