The American Nurses Association has a new CEO.
The Board of Directors of the American Nurses Association (ANA) takes great pride in announcing that Marla J. Weston, PhD, RN has been named chief executive officer (CEO), effective June 14, 2009. As CEO, Weston will be responsible for providing visionary, strategic, and progressive leadership for the ANA enterprise. In her new role, Weston will also serve as CEO of the American Nurses Foundation (ANF), the research, education, and charitable arm of ANA.
See the press release at:
http://www.nursingworld.org/HomepageCategory/NursingInsider/Weston-Named-CEO-for-ANA.aspx
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Dr. Weston is without doubt an accomplished administrator (I like Marla) however she has her hands full with the ANA and guiding the professional association to a different mindset than what you currently see with ANA.
ANA is an organization for your great-grandmother and if it wants to survive and thrive in today's market, the organization needs to adopt the strategies and operating principles commonly seen in savvy specialty nursing assocations like the Infusion Nurses Society, Oncology Nurses Society, Emergency Nurses Association, National Association of Student Nurses, and of course the American Association of Critical Care Nurses.
The problem being that the majority of ANA's dues paying members are members of collective bargaining who belong to the assocation because of where they work (the facility has a collective bargaining agreement) not because the members voluntary joined and sought out to join and belong to the ANA.
Dr. Weston does have ties to the ANA and State Nurses Associations as a former Executive Director for Arizona; in my opinion this is good and bad. I hope this doesn't prevent her from making the hard calls needed to shake things up and the "elbow to the ribs" actions needed to make ANA a relevant organization for America's 2.9 million nurses.
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