Conversations with Leaders : Frank Talk from Nurses (and Others) on the Frontlines of Leadership

This book presents 22 conversations with leaders who generously shared their personal and professional experiences. In clear and frank fashion, each of these leaders offers the unique wisdom earned by the sweat equity that is behind all achievement.

Susan Sherman, RN, MA, has served as president and CEO of the Independence Foundation since 1996. Susan is a member of the Board of Directors of the Philadelphia Zoological Society, the Greater Philadelphia Cultural Alliance, the Greater Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce, the Philadelphia Health Management Corporation, the Advisory Committees of the Metropolitan Aids Neighborhood Nutrition Alliance Inc., Commonwealth of PA Cost Containment of Health Care and Health Care Insurance Advisory Panel, and the Mayor s Children s Commission. She is a Fellow of The College of Physicians of Philadelphia. Susan previously served as a member of the National Advisory Committee of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation s Colleagues in Caring Project, chairperson of the Council of Associate Degree Nursing Programs, and a board member of The National League for Nursing.

Vernice Ferguson, RN, MA, FAAN, FRCN, was a senior fellow in the School of Nursing at the University of Pennsylvania holding the Fagin Family Chair in Cultural Diversity. For more than 20 years, she served as a top nurse executive in federal service and was the chief nurse at two VA medical centers affiliated with academic health science centers in Madison, Wisconsin, and Chicago, Illinois. For 12 years, she was the nurse leader for the Department of Veterans Affairs, the largest organized nursing service in the world with more than 60,000 nursing personnel. Prior to the VA assignment, she served as chief of the Nursing Department of the Clinical Center, the National Institutes of Health. Ferguson is an honorary fellow of the Royal College of Nursing of the United Kingdom, the second American nurse so honored, following the late Virginia Henderson, and is a fellow and past president of the American Academy of Nursing. She is a past president of Sigma Theta Tau International, nursing s international honor society, and served as the chair of the Friends of the Virginia Henderson Library Advisory Committee. She is a past president of the International Society of Nurses in Cancer Care. Her awards and honors are numerous, including eight honorary doctorates.