Innovation Team

As the ANA Vice President of Nursing Innovation, I work across the ANA Enterprise (American Nurses Association, American Nurses Credentialing Center, and the American Nurses Foundation) to support the development of nurses and healthcare innovation. This starts with unlocking the exclusivity of the innovation process. My goal is to support nurses to build and lead innovation initiatives across every aspect of the health care ecosystem.

We need to ensure that all nurses are able to participate in the process of innovation – no matter their location or resources. Innovation, design education, and expanded partnerships will create opportunities for nurses to drive new ways to deliver care and care models, which includes new revenue streams, and business models. Building nurse led innovation, and using innovation as a fulcrum to shift values, beliefs, and to improve practice, care delivery, and organizational cultures – was the focus of my scholarly work. I designed the inaugural Planting Seeds of Innovation conference in 2015, which became an annual event. I’ve worked with health care systems and health care executives from across the country.

The ANA Enterprise organizations have created a bedrock for nursing practice across our country. Our profession has a rich history of inventing solutions for patient needs. We need to acknowledge best practices and recognize how our profession's past could inform our future trajectory. Redefining and reimagining the future role of nursing, begins with the work we lead today.

We can translate the anxiety and frustration across our industry, workforce, and profession - into urgent optimism. Nurses have unique abilities, and skill sets, which allow them to think and work across systems. Nursing and nursing innovation can no longer be invisible. The complexity of our world requires nurses to be expansive in their thinking, and with their actions.

I am a seasoned project manager with a demonstrated history of working with guests worldwide in healthcare, patient safety, quality improvement, and continuing education. I joined ANA as a Program Manager II for Special Projects relating to Healthy Nurse, Healthy Nation™. I worked closely with our corporate supporters on creative and transformational work that supported the health and wellbeing of nurses. With a focus on changing behavior, one 60-day nutrition pilot resulted in nurses tripling their daily consumption of fruits and vegetables.

Prior to ANA, I was a senior project administrator at The Armstrong Institute for Patient Safety and Quality. I supported 12 clinical communities, comprised of transdisciplinary teams that included patients and family members, across the Johns Hopkins Medicine (JHM) health system to identify and solve critical quality and patient safety issues. The focus was on standardizing processes and procedures, implementing best practices, and creating, developing, and piloting innovative ideas for change management initiatives, systems redesign, and integration and solutions development. I acted as a liaison between patient and family advisory councils and clinical staff to coordinate projects that improved and upheld the patient experience.

I am excited to be part of the ANA Innovation Department. My passion for nurturing and maintaining relationships, imaginatively solving problems, building programs, and connecting resources to help individuals, communities and organizations reach their highest potential will be put to good use.

I began my nursing journey as a Peace Corps health services volunteer in Guinea, West Africa. My experiences in Africa initiated a deep appreciation for innovation practice and provided an opportunity to learn how to maximize, reuse and reinvent resources at hand. Over the past twenty-five years, I have worked in neurosurgical, emergency, and nursing professional practice departments and participated in the inaugural cohort of the Johnson and Johnson nurse innovation fellowship program. As a nurse scientist I continue to celebrate and role model nurses who question the status quo, adopt divergent thinking strategies, leverage evidence-based research, and explore innovative solutions to address existing disparities. For all nurses to thrive in the healthcare ecosystem I fully embrace liberatory design strategies that create conditions for self-awareness, equity, creative courage, and collective liberation.

I am thrilled to join the ANA innovation team as the Innovation Design Strategist. This innovative role will help drive the development, implementation, and evaluation of innovation initiatives through collaborative partnerships with the ANA enterprise, nurses, industry experts, and national organizations. My goal in this role is to widely disseminate the contributions of nurse innovators, encourage nurses to recognize and embrace their innovative capabilities and provide metrics to highlight the value of nurse-led innovative endeavors.

Daniel J. Pesut is an nurse educator, academic, researcher, consultant, and coach. He is an Emeritus Professor at the University of Minnesota School of Nursing and past Director of the Katharine J. Densford International Center for Nursing Leadership.  Pesut's research is focused on nursing education. He has worked on creativity and clinical reasoning, creative-teaching learning methods, self-regulation of health status, and foresight leadership development in the health professions. Dr. Pesut is known for his ability to inspire and support people as they develop creative ideas and design innovative practices with a desired futures in mind.

Dr. Pesut earned a PhD in Nursing from the University of Michigan, a master’s degree in Psychiatric Mental Health Nursing from the University of Texas Health Science Center in San Antonio, TX and BS degree in Nursing from Northern Illinois University, DeKalb, IL. He has completed Certificates in Management Development from Harvard Institute for Higher Education, Core Mediation Skills Training from the International Association of Dispute Resolution (IARD) and Integral Studies from Fielding Graduate University. He is past President (2003-2005) of the Honor Society of Nursing, Sigma Theta Tau International. He served on the Board of Trustees of the Plexus Institute – an organization with the mission to foster the health of individuals, families and communities, organizations, and our natural environment by helping people use concepts emerging from the new science of complexity. He is a Fellow in the American Academy of Nursing.  He is a certified Hudson Institute of Santa Barbara coach, and a retired board - certified clinical nurse specialist in adult psychiatric mental health nursing. He is the recipient of many awards including an Army Commendation Award while on active duty (1975-1978) in the US Army Nurse Corps; the Honor Society of Nursing, Sigma Theta Tau International Edith Moore Copeland Founder’s Award for Creativity; The American Association for Men In Nursing Luther Christman Award; Distinguished Alumni Awards from Northern Illinois University School of Nursing-College of Health and Human Services and  a Visionary Leadership Award from the University of Texas Health Science at San Antonio School. He is an Honorary Member of the Global Academy of Holistic Nursing. Sigma Theta Tau International Honor Society of Nursing established the Daniel J. Pesut Spirit of Renewal Award in 2005 to honor his contributions to the field.

Karen’s specific interests are focused on the intersection of clinical needs and medical technology use, development, and innovation. Throughout her career, Karen has focused on clinical outcomes research and new product development and innovation. While at Philips Healthcare, Karen spent 12 years in various global roles, working with patient monitoring systems and clinical outcomes research. As a result of her work in new product development at Philips, Karen was the global winner (2011) in the R&D category for new product innovation. In 2012, Karen received the professional achievement award for innovative product development from the Association for the Advancement of Medical Instrumentation. In 2016, Karen completed a postdoctoral research fellowship at Yale University, where she collaborated across the schools of nursing, engineering and business while working on improving the safety and usability of IV smart infusion pumps.

Karen’s work has been widely disseminated with over 80 publications in more than 20 different journals. Karen is a frequent national and international presenter at professional healthcare conferences, with specific interests focused on the intersection of clinical needs and medical technology use, development, and innovation.

The central focus of Karen’s work is to improve patient outcomes through innovation in health care delivery practices and products. Specific areas of interest include improving medication administration safety using IV smart pumps, and the reduction of non-ventilator hospital-acquired pneumonia.

Lauran is a consultant in system redesign and inter professional complex care delivery for health systems, communities, government agencies and payers. She co-designed and implemented models for complex care delivery and build of ecosystems for complex patients. Lauran is responsible for field building partnerships to advance complex care. She is a member of the Faculty for National Center for Complex Health and Social Needs and responsible for interprofessional content development in the emerging field of complex care. Her special interests include the impact of trauma and loss on high frequency healthcare access. She also specializes in the economic potential of stabilizing complex patients through retaining and redesigning existing interprofessional resources in the healthcare system.

Lauran is a member of an interprofessional team advancing field development. Some of her clients include: Regional One Health Memphis, Adventist Health system, Providence St Joseph Health System, State of Delaware, Excellus Blue Cross/Blue Shield, St. Louis Behavioral Health Network, Center for the Advancement of Palliative Care, National Association of ACOs.

Dr. Kenny is the Associate Dean of Academic Affairs at Arizona State University College of Nursing and Health Innovation where she holds the rank of Clinical Professor. She is also a Board-Certified Adult Nurse Practitioner. She joined the faculty at CONHI in 2004, previously serving as the DNP Program Director. Past leadership positions include Chief of Advanced Practice Nursing, Director of Medicine Services, and Director of Nurses, and CVICU Manager at St. Joseph’s Hospital and Medical Center in Phoenix, Arizona.

Dr. Kenny’s clinical specialties include critical care, cardiology, neurosciences, pain management, palliative care, and pre-operative preparation. Her research interests include patient education, leadership, integrative therapies, palliative care, pain management, inter-professional practice with a specific interest in mentoring relationships, and innovative approaches to healthcare delivery. She is published in peer-reviewed journals, book chapters, and is an invited presenter at regional, national, and international conferences. She serves on a number of Boards. She was inducted as a Fellow of the American Association of Nurse Practitioners in 2013 and as a Fellow of the American Academy of Nursing in 2015.

Marion Leary is the Director of Innovation and an Instructor at the University of Pennsylvania's School of Nursing. Ms. Leary has established herself as a nursing leader in the field of resuscitation science, as well as nursing innovation. As the incoming Director of Innovation at Penn Nursing she creates curriculums focused on nursing innovation and the foundation of design thinking.

Ms. Leary's research focuses on cardiac arrest and CPR quality with the current goal of developing innovative strategies to improve bystander response and CPR training. Ms. Leary is an international Fellow of the American Heart Association (FAHA) and has participated in the 2010 and 2015 resuscitation guidelines. She also coordinates the social media campaign for the American Heart Association (AHA)’s Resuscitation Science Symposium. Ms. Leary is on the program committee for the Citizen CPR Foundation’s Emergency Cardiovascular Care Updates conference focusing on innovation, social media outreach, and engagement.

Ms. Leary is a Senior Fellow at the Center for Public Health Initiatives at Penn. Ms. Leary completed her master's degree in nursing at Penn, in health leadership and a master's degree in public health at Penn. Ms. Leary began a doctoral program at the University of Pennsylvania in 2018.

Previously, Ms. Leary was an Instructor in the Penn Master of Public Health program where she taught methods implementation and public health communication.

Ms. Leary founded the Penn UPstart companies ImmERge, LLC and Resuscor, LLC. Immerge Labs focused on using virtual reality and augmented reality to reimagine how the world prepares for emergencies. Resuscor, LLC focused on using digital strategies to improve post-cardiac arrest training and education.

Chris McCarthy is the VP of Strategy & Design at Hopelab and the Executive Director and Founder of the Innovation Learning Network. At Hopelab his main focus is at the intersection of design and science in the service of young people's health. Currently he is guiding work with young cancer survivors, teen moms, and emotional well-being of young people. In his previous role at Kaiser Permanente’s Innovation Consultancy, he tackled safer medication administration for patients, more robust shift changes for nurses, exploring the social space of elders, and the care experience of transgender people.

His work has been featured with CNN (Dec 2017), Harvard Business Review (Sept 2010), Bisognano's "Pursuing the Triple Aim" (2012), FastCompany, the New York Times and many more. As an author, he collaborated with Lyle Berkowitz, MD on "Innovation with Information Technologies in Healthcare" (2012). You can find his quirky design blog at McCarthyChris.com.

He was named the 2015 H.I.T. Innovator and the 2011 Ellerbe Beckett Lecturer. And is an international speaker on innovation and design.

Chris has a master's in business administration from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute/Copenhagen Business School, and a master’s in public health in Health Policy from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. In his spare time, he obsesses about fitness, movies and home remodels.

Ahrin Mishan is the executive director of the Rita and Alex Hillman Foundation, one of the nation’s leading philanthropies focused on Nursing and the role it plays in improving the health of patients, families and communities. He oversees the Foundation's grant-making efforts which focus primarily on the education of nurse innovators and on the advancement of leading edge, nursing-driven models of care that target the needs of vulnerable populations.

Ahrin serves on the Board of Directors of the American Nurse Foundation; was a member of the steering committee of the National Nurse Funder’s Collaborative; and served as co-lead of the New York Future of Nursing Action Coalition. He holds a Master’s degree in Visual Anthropology from the University of Southern California, as well as a Masters degree in Nonprofit Management from New York University/Wagner.

Dr. Potter is deeply committed to climate change education including co-founding Health Professionals for a Healthy Climate, membership in the Alliance of Nurses for Healthy Environments, and membership on the American Academy of Nursing Environment and Public Health Expert Panel. She is a member of the Coordinating Committee of Columbia University’s Global Consortium on Climate and Health Education and a Fellow in the Institute on the Environment at the University of Minnesota. She chairs Clinicians for Planetary Health (C4PH) and is a member of the Steering Committee of the Planetary Health Alliance at Harvard. Dr. Potter has expertise in partnerships and collaboration, cultural transformation, planetary health and climate change, leadership and innovation, diversity and inclusivity, systems thinking, design thinking.

Dr. Tim Raderstorf is thrilled to be the Talent Partner for AndHealth, a healthcare startup focused on helping people reclaim their lives from chronic illness. He holds volunteer positions as the Head of Academic Entrepreneurship at the Erdős Institute, the Chief Operating Officer of the non-profit NursesEverywhere, and is a member of the American Nurses Association’s Innovation Advisory Board. In his previous role, Tim was the Chief Innovation Officer at The Ohio State University College of Nursing. From TED talks to textbooks, Tim uses every platform he can find to empower those at the frontlines to change healthcare.

As the first nurse to hold the Chief Innovation Officer title in academia, he takes pride in educating the world on the role of the nurse as an innovator. He is the founder of the Innovation Studio, a makerspace that democratizes innovation, providing every interprofessional team that pitches their innovation with the funding, tools, and mentorship needed to turn ideas into actions.

Throughout his career, Tim has founded multiple businesses and has been the first employee for a profitable healthcare startup. His new textbook co-authored with Bern Melnyk, Evidence-Based Leadership, Innovation and Entrepreneurship in Nursing and Healthcare: A Practical Guide for Success, was a #1 new release on Amazon and the American Journal of Nursing’s Management & Leadership Book of the Year. Some of Tim’s recognitions include the Early Career Innovator of the Year and Distinguished Recent Alumni at the Ohio State University, the Innovation Studio being named Non-Profit of the year by Columbus Business First in 2019, and he was most recently inducted into the 2020 Class of 40 under 40 by Columbus Business First and as a 2021 Fellow at the American Academy of Nursing.

Executive innovation leader and investment advisor on strategy, startup, inclusion and partnerships that grow new capabilities, develop new business opportunities, and position companies at the forefront. Developer of innovation strategic partnerships, innovation centers, innovation funds and ecosystems that drive transformation initiatives in healthcare, technology, and financial services.  Goal-driven collaborator and advisor with success leading strategy, investments and innovation for large, global corporations, building from her experience at  Kaiser Permanente headquarters in Oakland, Blue Shield of California, AIG, Charles Schwab, and Deloitte Consulting.

• Exploring and investing in digital wellness and behavioral health startups with support of the Executive Office of Melinda Gates, Pivotal Ventures
• Advising companies and organizations on innovation, inclusion and impact
• Launched the AIG Global Innovation Center and managing the advanced technology team
• Managed the Kaiser Permanente Innovation Lab and Fund for Technology
• Assessed thousands of innovations, piloted hundreds and scaled new products and services such as care anywhere apps, robotic couriers, blockchain smart contracts, artificial intelligence for self-service, wearables for workers safety, mobile apps for safe driving.

Faye is currently Managing Director at Vinaj Ventures, investing in digital health startups with Telosity.co Fund and consulting in innovation and venture investments with corporations. She has served on the Board of Directors: Ayogo Health, Ascend Leadership, Berger Research, Claremont McKenna Alumni and Advisor to: UCSF Catalyst, Samsung Emerging Tech, Somnology MD, Autonomous.ID, Food System 6, Exponential Talent, Plug and Play Accelerator Advisor, Asian Foundation Lotus Circle, AI and Healthcare Publication, and Innovation Executive Forum.

Rae Walker, PhD, RN, FAAN, is a nurse inventor, activist, and Assistant Professor in the University of Massachusetts-Amherst College of Nursing whose scholarship is grounded in her experiences as a rural emergency medical and disaster relief worker, U.S. Peace Corps Volunteer, and oncology nurse. She is the first nurse to be named an AAAS-Lemelson Invention Ambassador.

Dr. Walker is currently a Susan G. Komen Foundation for Breast Cancer Research CCR Scholar and an Associate Director for the UMASS Institute for Applied Life Science’s Center for Personalized Health Monitoring. She completed her doctorate at Johns Hopkins School of Nursing and a Postdoctoral Fellowship in the Johns Hopkins Center for Innovative Care in Aging. Her team focuses on person-directed and participatory approaches to promoting dignity, capability, and health equity over the life course.

Dr. Walker works collaboratively with patient advocates and community leaders, clinicians, industry partners, and scholars from a wide variety of disciplines to develop technology, models of care, and other innovations that support symptom self-management and patients’ ability to engage in the roles and activities that are most important to them and their families. Most recently, her team’s proposal for a self-contained portable system to generate critical IV fluids during disasters earned runner-up in the 2018 $200K M2D2 Medical Device challenge.

Dr. Dan Weberg is an expert in nursing, healthcare innovation and human-centered patient design with extensive clinical experience in emergency departments, acute in-patient hospital settings and academia. He currently serves as the Vice President for Transformation Services at Ascension, supporting 60,000 nurses and 140+ facilities in modernizing nursing technology, developing new care models, and measuring innovation outcomes.

Previously he was Head of Clinical Innovation for Trusted Health, the staffing platform for the healthcare industry, where he helps drive product strategy and works to change the conversation around innovation in the healthcare workforce.

Prior to joining Ascension, Dan spent seven years at Kaiser Permanente, where he held executive roles in nursing innovation, research, and technology strategy across eight regions, 38 hospitals, 60,000 nurses. He was also part of the founding faculty for the new Kaiser Permanente School of Medicine.

Dan is on the faculty at The Ohio State University College of Nursing and multiple innovation fellowship programs. He previously taught on nursing innovation and leadership at Arizona State University. He is on the editorial board for Nursing Administration Quarterly and has authored two dozen peer-reviewed articles and two textbooks, including Evidence Based Innovation Leadership for Health Professions and Leadership in Nursing Practice.

Dan earned his Bachelors in Nursing, and was in the first cohort to graduate from the Masters in Healthcare Innovation program at ASU, as well as the first-ever graduate of the PhD in Healthcare Innovation Leadership program at ASU. Dan serves on several advisory boards, including the American Nurses Association Innovation Advisory Board. His clinical background is in Emergency and Trauma nursing at level 1 trauma centers in California and Arizona.

Dr. Tami Wyatt is the Associate Dean of Research and Torchbearer Professorship of Nursing at the University of Tennessee, College of Nursing. Dr. Wyatt is a Co-Director of the Health Innovation Technology & Simulation Lab along with her research partner. Dr. Wyatt has served as a district President for the Virginia Nurses Association and President of Gamma Chi, a chapter of Sigma Theta Tau. She is currently a co-owner and President of Academic Technology Innovations.

Dr. Wyatt has received grants from the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation and from private corporations for her work related to innovative technology to improve consumer and professional health education. She is a Fellow in the American Academy of Nursing, the Academy of Nursing Education, the Robert Wood Johnson Executive Nurse Program, a Scholar of the Harvard Macy Institute and a Scholar of the Mobile Health Training Institutes of the National Institutes of Health. She is an active member in several professional simulation and healthcare informatics organizations. Dr. Wyatt also serves as a reviewer for several peer reviewed journals in her area of expertise and serves as a grant reviewer for the National League for Nursing.

Dr. Christi Zuber  is internationally recognized for her trail-blazing work in the field of innovation and human centered design. She recently transitioned from the 14 year position of Founder and Director of the Innovation and Design practice at Kaiser Permanente’s corporate office in Oakland, CA to found and lead Aspen Labs consulting practice in Denver, CO.  She also serves on faculty at Northwestern University teaching students about service design and innovation.

She has connected others like her across industries through founding and leading a global Design Thinking Exchange (DTX) network that gathers leaders across over 15 organizations and 10 academic institutions.  Zuber has over 20 years of leading teams, observing users, creatively generating ideas and conducting field experiments to develop solutions that work. The work of Zuber and her teams has been touted by the likes of the Harvard Business Review, Fast Company, and the New York Times.   

In her dissertation research, she focused on the secret sauce for change agents who have been successful in bringing Human Centered Design into large complex organizations which may not be so keen to change.  Christi loves to write, research, teach and help organizations on the topics of design, innovation, creativity and individual empowerment to make a positive difference in the world.

Coni Dennis serves as a Director within the Clinical Product organization focused on developing clinical products to improve the health outcomes for patients with heart failure. As a registered nurse with over 20 years of clinical experience, Coni knows how to deeply understand the clinical, human, and business problems to solve for, and has the ability to identify effective evidence-based guidelines and quality interventions to drive improved health and financial outcomes.

Coni has extensive experience with Humana’s operations and process development. She has designed multiple pilot programs to improve the health of patients with cardio-metabolic disease. Early career consisted of working in Humana’s personal nurse and Humana at Home programs, clinical quality and strategy, Visiting Nurse Association telehealth program, and prior to that, Norton Hospital.

Coni has completed several collaborative studies within the realm of cardiovascular conditions, including the impact of cardiac rehabilitation on new diagnosis of major depression, impacts of cognitive behavioral therapy on self-care heart failure index scores, and patient, caregiver, and provider perspectives on heart failure care.

Coni is a graduate of Indiana Wesleyan and Bellarmine Universities where she received her Bachelor and Master of Science degrees in nursing, respectively. She is pursuing her Doctorate in Nursing Practice with focus on cardiovascular health. Coni also serves on the HUM-AMG Collaboration Joint Steering Committee.