At the heart of Frontier Nursing University is a talented and diverse community of students, alumni, faculty, staff, Couriers and preceptors. Spotlight blogs feature members of our FNU community that are focused on the mission of educating nurse-midwives and nurse practitioners to deliver quality health care to underserved and rural populations.
In 1928, Mary Breckinridge, founder of Frontier Nursing University, established the Courier Program, recruiting young people to come work in the Kentucky Mountains and learn about service to humanity. Couriers escorted guests safely through remote terrain, delivered medical supplies to remote outpost clinics, and helped nurse-midwives during home visits and births. Frontier has benefited tremendously from the tireless work of the over 1,500 Couriers who have served. This tradition and legacy continues to this day.
Please join us in welcoming the 2016 Courier Class!
Anthony Douglas II
Anthony is from South Bend, Indiana, 
where his parents, Anthony and Rachel Douglas, raised him and his sister Paige. He is passionate about servant leadership and excited about working this summer as a Courier. He hopes to gain leadership skills and experience working on a team, and learn from people who are in the career field he intends to pursue.
Anthony is a junior at Wabash College, an all-male institution in Crawfordsville, Indiana. He’s pursuing a degree in psychology with a biology/chemistry double minor. He is actively involved on campus and in intramural sports. Anthony spent the previous two summers taking summer school courses and working at Englishton Park, a camp that serves kids struggling with behavioral disorders. His career goal is to become a doctor.
“FNU offers an amazing opportunity to experience new health care settings and work with healthcare professionals who provide care to underserved populations,” said Anthony. “I wanted an opportunity to develop skills that will help me succeed in medical school and be a better leader and well-rounded person.”
Vaishu Jawahar
Vaishu is a senior at the University of 
North Carolina at Charlotte, majoring in biology and double minoring in public health and political science. In her free time, she enjoys running, keeping up with current events, eating wings, and cheering on the Tar Heels in basketball.
Vaishu was born in Chennai, India, and her interest in combining medicine and public service comes from her heritage. Her grandparents were born in a rural village to a family of poor low-caste farmers. They overcame their obstacles through education and became doctors, lawyers, and civil rights activists and instilled the same duty of service in Vaishu. She has always loved being around hospitals because she grew up in her grandmother’s small private hospital. Her life changed when she saw the horrible conditions of an Indian government hospital. Since then, nothing has driven her more than the belief that every individual deserves access to quality healthcare.
Vaishu wants to observe healthcare from every perspective possible to fully understand the problem. She has volunteered at suburban and urban hospitals and worked in labs in the pathway of drug development at the NIH. Vaishu has volunteered on grassroots campaigns to expand access to healthcare. However, she’s never had the chance to see the most medically underserved areas of the country. She looks forward to spending time in Appalachia to get to know the people and understand their needs. The rich tradition of service that Mary Breckinridge brought to Hyden is what encouraged Vaishu to apply for the Courier Program, knowing she would have much to learn from it. She looks forward to spending her summer in Kentucky and being a part of an important legacy.
Justin Sim
Justin is from San Diego, California. He
is currently a sophomore at Williams College and plans to major in both biology and history with a focus on pre-med. He loves playing sports and is a member of the college football team. In his free time, Justin enjoys reading, listening and playing music, and watching movies.
Justin decided to participate in the Courier Program this summer to immerse himself in an unknown environment and see how health care and life function in a rural part of the U.S. He greatly enjoys getting to know new faces and cultures and believes the Courier Program will help him achieve new perspectives as he progresses through his education and future career.
Elleanna Wiering
Elleanna is an art and literature loving person 
with a passion for science and heart for serving people in health care settings. She grew up in Minneapolis, Minnesota, before moving further north to her family’s hobby farm. Her family raises chickens and a few beef cattle. Elleanna is attending a nearby University in the city.
Elleanna applied to the Courier Program to be immersed in a health care environment where she would learn to make important decisions. She knows that assessing someone’s health is difficult, and she is sometimes afraid to make decisions for fear of doing something wrong. She hopes the Courier Program will help her grow in this area.
Elleanna is also looking forward to learning from others by listening, observing and actively doing what others before her have done. She is fascinated by the history of the Courier Program. Elleanna had learned about Mary Breckinridge some time ago in a class, but did not realize that the Courier Program was one of her legacies. When she made the connection, Elleanna had no doubt that she wanted to be a part of the program.
Read about the new Couriers we featured earlier this summer here.
Carrie Belin is an experienced board-certified Family Nurse Practitioner and a graduate of the Johns Hopkins DNP program, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Georgetown University School of Nursing, and Johns Hopkins School of Nursing. She has also completed fellowships at Georgetown and the University of California Irvine.
Angie has been a full-scope midwife since 2009. She has experience in various birth settings including home, hospital, and birth centers. She is committed to integrating the midwifery model of care in the US. She completed her master’s degree in nurse-midwifery at Frontier Nursing University (FNU) and her Doctorate at Johns Hopkins University. She currently serves as the midwifery clinical faculty at FNU. Angie is motivated by the desire to improve the quality of healthcare and has led quality improvement projects on skin-to-skin implementation, labor induction, and improving transfer of care practices between hospital and community midwives. In 2017, she created a short film on skin-to-skin called 
Justin C. Daily, BSN, RN, has ten years of experience in nursing. At the start of his nursing career, Justin worked as a floor nurse on the oncology floor at St. Francis. He then spent two years as the Director of Nursing in a small rural Kansas hospital before returning to St. Francis and the oncology unit. He has been in his current position as the Chemo Nurse Educator for the past four years. He earned an Associate in Nurse from Hutchinson Community College and a Bachelor of Science in Nursing from Bethel College.
Brandy Jackson serves as the Director of Undergraduate Nursing Programs and Assistant Educator at Wichita State University and Co-Director of Access in Nursing. Brandy is a seasoned educator with over 15 years of experience. Before entering academia, Brandy served in Hospital-based leadership and Critical Care Staff nurse roles. Brandy is passionate about equity in nursing education with a focus on individuals with disabilities. Her current research interests include accommodations of nursing students with disabilities in clinical learning environments and breaking down barriers for historically unrepresented individuals to enter the nursing profession. Brandy is also actively engaged in Interprofessional Education development, creating IPE opportunities for faculty and students at Wichita State. Brandy is an active member of Wichita Women for Good and Soroptimist, with the goal to empower women and girls. Brandy is a TeamSTEPPS master trainer. She received the DASIY Award for Extraordinary Nursing Faculty in 2019 at Wichita State University. 
Dr. Sabrina Ali Jamal-Eddine is an Arab-disabled queer woman of color with a PhD in Nursing and an interdisciplinary certificate in Disability Ethics from the University of Illinois Chicago (UIC). Dr. Jamal-Eddine’s doctoral research explored spoken word poetry as a form of critical narrative pedagogy to educate nursing students about disability, ableism, and disability justice. Dr. Jamal-Eddine now serves as a Postdoctoral Research Associate in UIC’s Department of Disability and Human Development and serves on the Board of Directors of the National Organization of Nurses with Disabilities (NOND). During her doctoral program, Sabrina served as a Summer Fellow at a residential National Endowment of the Humanities (NEH) Summer Institute at Arizona State University (2023), a summer fellow at Andrew W. Mellon’s National Humanities Without Walls program at University of Michigan (2022), a Summer Research Fellow at UC Berkeley’s Othering & Belonging Institute (2021), and an Illinois Leadership Education in Neurodevelopmental and related Disabilities (LEND) trainee (2019-2020).
Vanessa Cameron works for Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nursing Education & Professional Development. She is also attending George Washington University and progressing towards a PhD in Nursing with an emphasis on ableism in nursing. After becoming disabled in April 2021, Vanessa’s worldview and perspective changed, and a recognition of the ableism present within healthcare and within the culture of nursing was apparent. She has been working since that time to provide educational foundations for nurses about disability and ableism, provide support for fellow disabled nursing colleagues, and advocate for the disabled community within healthcare settings to reduce disparities.
Dr. Lucinda Canty is a certified nurse-midwife, Associate Professor of Nursing, and Director of the Seedworks Health Equity in Nursing Program at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She earned a bachelor’s degree in nursing from Columbia University, a master’s degree from Yale University, specializing in nurse-midwifery, and a PhD from the University of Connecticut. Dr. Canty has provided reproductive health care for over 29 years. Her research interests include the prevention of maternal mortality and severe maternal morbidity, reducing racial and ethnic health disparities in reproductive health, promoting diversity in nursing, and eliminating racism in nursing and midwifery.
Dr. Lisa Meeks is a distinguished scholar and leader whose unwavering commitment to inclusivity and excellence has significantly influenced the landscape of health professions education and accessibility. She is the founder and executive director of the DocsWithDisabilities Initiative and holds appointments as an Associate Professor in the Departments of Learning Health Sciences and Family Medicine at the University of Michigan.
Dr. Nikia Grayson, DNP, MSN, MPH, MA, CNM, FNP-C, FACNM (she/her) is a trailblazing force in reproductive justice, blending her expertise as a public health activist, anthropologist, and family nurse-midwife to champion the rights and health of underserved communities. Graduating with distinction from Howard University, Nikia holds a bachelor’s degree in communications and a master’s degree in public health. Her academic journey also led her to the University of Memphis, where she earned a master’s in medical anthropology, and the University of Tennessee, where she achieved both a master’s in nursing and a doctorate in nursing practice. Complementing her extensive education, she completed a post-master’s certificate in midwifery at Frontier Nursing University.
Dr. Tia Brown McNair is the Vice President in the Office of Diversity, Equity, and Student Success and Executive Director for the Truth, Racial Healing, and Transformation (TRHT) Campus Centers at the American Association of Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) in Washington, DC. She oversees both funded projects and AAC&U’s continuing programs on equity, inclusive excellence, high-impact practices, and student success. McNair directs AAC&U’s Summer Institutes on High-Impact Practices and Student Success, and TRHT Campus Centers and serves as the project director for several AAC&U initiatives, including the development of a TRHT-focused campus climate toolkit. She is the lead author of From Equity Talk to Equity Walk: Expanding Practitioner Knowledge for Racial Justice in Higher Education (January 2020) and Becoming a Student-Ready College: A New Culture of Leadership for Student Success (July 2016 and August 2022 Second edition).