Dr. Lorna Finnegan Elected to AACN Board of Directors

AACN is pleased to announce that Lorna Finnegan, PhD, RN, FNP, FAAN, dean of the Marcella Niehoff School of Nursing at Loyola University Chicago, has been elected to the AACN Board of Directors. Dr. Finnegan will serve as a Member-at-Large through March 31, 2025. AACN held a special election in September to fill an unexpired term on the Board with votes cast by member deans.

Dr. Finnegan has many years of academic research, teaching, clinical practice, and leadership experience. Prior to coming to Loyola, she served in leadership positions at the University of Illinois Chicago (UIC) College of Nursing as Executive Associate Dean and Department Head. Early in her career, she was Founding Director of the Family Nurse Practitioner Program at Saint Xavier University in Chicago. Most recently, as President of the National Organization of Nurse Practitioner Faculties, she led national efforts to transition nurse practitioner programs to the Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) degree. Dr. Finnegan received her BSN, MS, and PhD degrees from UIC. Through her scholarship, practice, and leadership, she has applied big data analytics, strategic academic-practice partnerships, creative pedagogies, and policy-changing leadership strategies to increase access to primary care and improve health equity in vulnerable and underserved populations. She has received NIH R01 funding for her symptom cluster research in adults with multiple chronic illnesses and awards for teaching, research, and leadership. She has been a visiting scholar at universities in Thailand, South Africa, and South Korea. Dr. Finnegan is a Fellow of the American Academy of Nursing, and she recently completed the AACN's Wharton Executive Leadership Fellowship and the Advancing Academic Leadership for New Deans program.