About Joanna

Joanna worked in kidney transplantation for over a decade at #1-ranked institutions in New York and New Jersey. First as a nurse coordinator and later as a nurse informaticist where she implemented Epic electronic medical records and led quality improvement. Exposed to design thinking through a master’s series at Stanford’s d.school, she taught the first course in design thinking at New York University Rory Meyers College of Nursing to graduate nurse informatics students starting in 2017. She went on to become a design thinking lead in 2018-2019 for an Alex and Rita Hillman grant to integrate the course into an accelerated undergraduate nursing curriculum, which has so far reached over 400 undergraduate students. Her work has been presented at the National League of Nursing Education Summit and was published in Innovative Strategies for Teaching Nursing and The Rebel Nurse Handbook. Joanna is also a founding member of the Society of Nurse Scientists, Innovators, Entrepreneurs, and Leaders (SONSIEL). In summer 2022, Joanna will graduate with her Doctor of Education in organizational change and will complete her dissertation that overlaps with her action-learning project.

Joanna’s J&J Nurse Innovation Fellow Journey

Joanna credits the J&J Nursing Innovation Fellowship with helping her think bigger and the experience gave her the confidence to know she can execute her big ideas. For her action-learning project, Joanna wanted to explore a more complex, nuanced history of nursing that—until recently—was often ignored by the broader profession. She established the Nurses You Should Know project, an online micro-learning campaign that invites nurses and allies to engage with storytelling and help narrow the representation gap of nurses of color. So far, Joanna has profiled over 100 past and present-day nurses, drove over 75k impressions on social media, and her project was featured in two articles, two podcasts, and one conference.

Joanna feels the Fellowship offered her a broad and diverse insight into what is happening in the nursing profession beyond academia and the clinical bedside—a vastly different experience than if she were to just go to work at the same hospital every day. She believes it challenged her to embrace complex situations such as racism and health equity. Overall, giving her the confidence to "reclaim the nursing narrative” head on, bringing to light the crucial contributions of nurses, both past and present, that are often overlooked or unknown.