In May 2025, Frontier Nursing University announced that Marcus Osborne had been selected to serve as the Chair of FNU’s Board of Directors. Osborne, who has served on the Board since 2017, filled the position that was held by Dr. Michael Carter for 23 years until he stepped down from the role in Spring 2025.
“The singular word I would use is extraordinary,” Osborne said in reference to Dr. Carter’s leadership. “You think about the leadership he brought during times of tremendous change — the COVID pandemic, political shifts that touched both education and healthcare. The debt of gratitude that is owed to him is immense.”
Born in Ashland, Kentucky, Osborne graduated from Transylvania University in 1997 with a degree in political science. He then took an internship role in the White House, participating in a study forecasting the impact of the internet and digital economy.
After working several years as a management consultant in Boston, Massachusetts, he served as the Chief Financial Officer for the Clinton Foundation’s Health Access Initiative. During Osborne’s time with the Health Access Initiative, the focus was specifically on how to address the HIV crisis globally, particularly the massive gap in treatment and care faced by underserved populations around the world.
“The work wasn’t pushing a specific care delivery model, but helping people get fundamental access,” Osborne said. “As an example, at that time, in South Africa they had millions of people who were HIV positive and less than 10,000 were under treatment. We were focused on what needed to happen strategically to lower the cost of these drugs, and not just by a little. The meds were being produced very inefficiently, which massively drove up the cost. What we found was partnering directly with manufacturers, providing help around supply chain and purchasing, enabled us to access much lower prices which supported the expansion of treatment globally.”
Osborne left the Clinton Foundation and earned his master’s in business administration degree with honors from the Harvard Business School. For 15 years, Osborne worked at Walmart in various roles, including the Senior Vice President of Health Transformation. He then served as CEO of RightMove, a digital musculoskeletal care solution created with the Hospital for Special Surgery. Currently Osborne is Vice President of Consumer Journey Management at Kaiser Permanente.
Though Osborne doesn’t come from a clinical background, his unique experience and perspective make him the ideal leader to help guide Frontier in the years ahead.
“We are incredibly fortunate to have someone as innovative and collaborative as Marcus,” said FNU President Dr. Brooke A. Flinders. “His profound professional experience and unique expertise have made him a valuable member of the Board. He is uniquely equipped to lead Frontier into the next chapter.”
Gathering opinions and insights from all angles, the Board and FNU leadership developed the 2030 strategic plan. In doing so, they evaluated many aspects of the current and future state of healthcare in the United States. What changes, if any, did FNU need to make?
“I tend to think of the world and the problems we face through a supply chain mentality,” Osborne said. “The supply chain in healthcare is healthcare providers. Understanding how healthcare providers get created and understanding the trends and where everything is moving. What are the innovative and creative ways we can come up with to try to create more providers of care? FNU is producing care providers who are trained and equipped to deliver advanced care to other humans.”
“We need to transform healthcare and improve care for people and improve outcomes. We talk about provider and healthcare professional burnout, the aging population of some of those professionals, and we think about the undersupply of providers and health professionals.”
While the 2030 Strategic Plan is focused on the next few years, it is just the tip of the iceberg as the university focuses on its long-term future. Osborne points to the impact that AI and big data will have on how healthcare is delivered.
“There are really interesting forces that are going to profoundly change healthcare over the next 10 to 20 years,” Osborne said. “Machine learning and big data enable enriched personalization at the individual level — to know sooner what is going on with someone’s health. There is also a massive revolution occurring in innovation in diagnostics, testing and assessments and imaging and labs and our ability to better understand health issues sooner.”
“The obvious result is it changes fundamentally the role of providers and health professionals. It has the profound potential to massively improve human health. What it also means is you must rethink the role and training of healthcare providers. If you don’t stay ahead, you’re behind.”
Frontier will be celebrating Osborne’s leadership as Board Chair on Friday, September 18th at 5:30 PM on campus.
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).