Believing In Nursing Board Leadership: Kate Judge

Kate Judge, BA, FAAN, has devoted her career to elevating nursing and expanding the influence of nurse leaders in shaping healthier communities. Through her long tenure at the American Nurses Foundation, she helped spark national momentum for nurse representation in governance, ultimately becoming a founding member of the Nurses on Boards Coalition. Her work reflects a deep belief in nurses’ capacity to drive meaningful change wherever decisions about health and well‑being are made.

I have long believed that nurses are among the most important change agents for better health and healthcare. I learned that early at the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing, where I had the privilege of knowing and working with some of the most brilliant, committed, and dynamic nurses in the world. Over more than thirty years working in and adjacent to nursing, I’ve seen firsthand how healthcare leadership—and the general population—underestimate, seldom recognize, and rarely include nurses in the kinds of decision-making that could lead to the change we all want.

In 2013, the organization I was leading, the American Nurses Foundation, along with our parent organization, the American Nurses Association, and more than twenty other nursing organizations, joined together to form a national collective focused on increasing the number of nurses serving on boards of directors. Before we began this work, I asked myself whether this niche in leadership development and support was truly essential to the profession.

Over my career, I’ve become increasingly aware that nursing and nursing organizations can be spread too thin—assigning resources and time to too many subject areas—and, at times, competitive rather than collaborative.

I sought the advice of a long-time mentor, Claire Fagin, former dean of the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing and interim president of the University. She herself had served on numerous boards. She held the highest ambitions for the profession and believed nurses belonged at every important table.

The answer then, and now, is yes. Nurses can shift community health when they help direct nonprofit and corporate boards. After years of talking with nurses about their leadership service, I know that nurses have helped green their communities, increased access to care for their neighbors, and adopted corporate policies that prioritize health promotion and equity. Whether through sweeping plans or micro-level decisions, these nurses actualized their leadership potential. They made lives better in ways all of us need.

At the same time, research has consistently shown that many nurses do not aspire to “leadership” and often assume they lack the organizational knowledge required to serve as board members. I remember speaking with a hospital CEO—herself a nurse—who began her corporate board journey believing she did not have all the expertise needed when she was first invited to serve.

During my early years as Executive Director of the American Nurses Foundation, the Foundation was selected by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to receive the grant to formally launch the independent Nurses on Boards organization and a national campaign to ensure more than 10,000 nurses served as board members.

In collaboration with the nursing member organizations; the exceptional leadership of co-presidents Marla Weston and Kim Harper; and a stellar program manager, Allison Nordberg Youngblood, we established the first national database of nurse board service; began the official counting of service; hired the founding executive director of the Nurses on Boards Coalition, Laurie Benson; and supported the development of curricula, programming, and national engagement—including an outreach effort that helped the Coalition surpass its goal of 10,000 nurses serving by 2020.

In 2024, I retired from the American Nurses Foundation. For more than thirty years, I have loved the nursing profession and felt fortunate every day to play a small part in helping nurses be their best, healthiest, and most effective selves. The Nurses on Boards Coalition—a long-term effort to encourage nurses to embrace their natural leadership potential in pursuit of a healthier world—is one of the things I am most proud to have helped lead.

Today, there are nearly two million nonprofit organizations in the United States, including hundreds of thousands in healthcare alone. There are thousands of publicly traded companies. All have boards—some small, some large. They need leaders who prioritize strong governance and can solve increasingly complex problems in ways that maximize equity and justice. They need nurses, and they always will.

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg famously answered the question of when there will be enough women on the Supreme Court with “nine”—or 100%. Just imagine if hospital boards had not just one or two nurses, but all their members were nurses. That would be enough for me.

Kate Judge, BA, FAAN