Tiffany Lea Carta, 2026 Board of Directors Student Representative
Lea Carta is a registered nurse, Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner (SANE), U.S. Navy veteran, and graduate student in Nurse-Midwifery at Frontier Nursing University. She holds a B.A. in Human Services and Management from Trevecca Nazarene University, a BSN from Lindsey Wilson University, completed graduate studies at the Nashville School of Law, and pursued professional studies in Human Resources, Personnel Development, and Employment Law through Cornell University.
Lea currently serves with the Indian Health Service alongside the Blackfeet Nation in Browning, Montana. Her career has been dedicated to improving access to high-quality, evidence-based care in rural communities and healthcare deserts through clinical service, workforce development, mentorship, and interdisciplinary collaboration. Her professional interests include trauma-informed care, rapid and disaster response nursing, provider wellness, mental health, and strengthening the rural healthcare workforce.
A U.S. Navy veteran, Lea was one of only two women selected to serve in a combat training support role for a Joint Special Operations deployment supporting SEAL Team 5, the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) and foreign allies during a deployment in the Persian Gulf. Her nursing background includes trauma and emergency nursing, forensic nursing, interventional cardiac catheterization, rapid response, disaster management, telehealth, public health and rural healthcare. During the COVID-19 pandemic, she served as a frontline clinician, quality assurance leader, and subject matter expert, helping develop and implement telehealth triage services, clinical workflows, quality standards, and staff training that expanded access to care for active-duty service members, their families, veterans and Department of Defense beneficiaries around the world.
Lea credits her grandmother, a World War II flight nurse; Dr. Kathryn M. Edwards, whose leadership and pioneering vaccine research at Vanderbilt shaped her early career; and the many aunts and cousins who serve as nurses in civilian and military healthcare as inspirations for her own nursing practice. Their example of service, clinical excellence, compassion, and lifelong learning helped define her nursing philosophy and still steers her career today. Her nursing philosophy is guided by evidence-based practice, compassion, and holistic care – caring for people, not just conditions, while serving and strengthening individuals, families, and communities.
“Non Solum Aegrotum, Sed Hominem” — Not only the patient, but the person.
Lea is committed to advancing equitable maternal and family healthcare while connecting students and new graduates with opportunities to serve in rural, tribal, and other high-need communities.
Lea and her husband, Jamie, a retired U.S. Army officer with 27 years of service, have seven children and six grandchildren who are her absolute delight. They divide their time between Montana and their family farm in Kentucky. Outside of work, Lea cultivates roses, rescues and trains dogs, cheers for the Kentucky Wildcats and the Indiana Fever, homesteads and spends as much time as possible with her family and friends. When she is not working, farming or studying, you can find her spinning yarns, cutting up, bouncing a grandbaby on her knee or playing Bluegrass music beneath her favorite shade tree.
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).