Ama Mathewos, MPA, BSN, RN, NEA-BC, is a nurse, certified executive coach, and founder of Evolve Lead Succeed. After nearly two decades in nursing, from med-surg and oncology floors in New York City to six years as a nurse manager that spanned the COVID-19 pandemic, Ama led her team from significant challenges to achieving ANCC Magnet designation. That journey crystallized her belief that emotionally intelligent, well-supported nurse leaders aren't just good for teams, they're essential for patients, communities, and the future of the profession.

Now, through her coaching company and her role at Maimonides Medical Center, she is doing something deceptively simple and urgently necessary: being there for nurse leaders when it's hard. Listen as Ama reflects on what it means to fully see yourself as a nurse, and why that self-recognition might be the most powerful tool in healthcare.

For more information on the podcast bundles, visit ANA's Innovation Website at https://www.nursingworld.org/practice-policy/innovation/education.

Have questions or feedback for the SEE YOU NOW team? Future episode ideas? Contact us at hello@seeyounowpodcast.com.

Robyn Barriffe, DNP, RN, NEA-BC, CCRN-K, didn't set out to become a nurse. A single mother of four, she felt something like a divine nudge and went for it. More than two decades later, having led nursing teams at NorthShore Health System in Chicago, Novant Health in North Carolina, and most recently Atrium Health Pineville, where she guided the hospital to its first-ever ANCC Pathway to Excellence designation, Robyn has just taken on the CNO role at Ascension St. Vincent's Riverside in Jacksonville, Florida. Across every institution, her philosophy has remained the same: the organization is the patient, and quality metrics, teammate engagement, and patient experience are vital signs.

Now, as a Johnson & Johnson Nurse Innovation Fellow, Robyn has discovered a framework she believes the profession has been missing. The fellowship, led by Marion Leary, PhD, MPH, RN, of Penn Nursing, pairs human-centered design methodology with Wharton leadership training and culminates in each team of fellows pitching a solution to a real problem inside their own health system.

For more information on the podcast bundles, visit ANA's Innovation Website at: https://www.nursingworld.org/practice-policy/innovation/education.

Have questions or feedback for the SEE YOU NOW team? Future episode ideas? Contact us at: hello@seeyounowpodcast.com.

Heather Bartlett, BSN, RN, CEN, CNML, is a nurse educator and supervisor in the Emergency Department at MyMichigan Medical Center Midland in Midland, Michigan. She is the person responsible for orienting every nurse, ED tech, and unit assistant who joins their team, equipping each one with the confidence, competence, and humanity to show up for patients on their worst days. Her mission is deeply personal. When Heather was 15, her father died of a massive heart attack at age 42. In the immediate aftermath, an emergency department nurse was her rock and her ally. That nurse's compassionate, honest, and unshakeable presence planted the seed for everything that followed.

Heather reflects on what it means to truly see your patients: to hear what they're saying, to notice what they aren't, and to stand with them in the hard spaces as their bridge, their advocate, and their confidant.

For more information on the podcast bundles, visit ANA's Innovation Website at: https://www.nursingworld.org/practice-policy/innovation/education.

Have questions or feedback for the SEE YOU NOW team? Future episode ideas? Contact us at: hello@seeyounowpodcast.com.

Jaden Dennis, RN, is an emergency room nurse and former NCAA Division I track-and-field athlete, who knows exactly what it feels like to place something precious in someone else's hands and trust they'll run with it. After starting college on an athletic scholarship in Brooklyn, Jaden spent the pandemic taking stock. He had been studying economics, a path chosen more for convenience than calling, when a single mentor changed everything. His coach, Dr. Lena Washington, a physical therapist, All-American athlete, and the architect of a relay team that had qualified for Nationals, served as Jaden's possibility model for what it meant to live a good life. In September 2020, Jaden became a Certified Nursing Assistant. By 2022, he had earned his nursing degree.

Now in the ER, Jaden helps to build the synergy that makes high-stakes teamwork possible by lending a hand or an ear and building trust in the quiet moments. Those small handoffs, he explains, are baton passes: each one a vote of trust, each one proof that when the critical moment comes, nobody runs alone. Listen as Jaden reflects on what sports taught him about nursing, why the best teams are built in the margins, and what it really means to be a nurse who shows up, not just for patients, but for the person running next to you.

For more information on the podcast bundles, visit ANA's Innovation Website at: https://www.nursingworld.org/practice-policy/innovation/education.

Have questions or feedback for the SEE YOU NOW team? Future episode ideas? Contact us at: hello@seeyounowpodcast.com.

Inspired by stories of the nurses who cared for her cousin, who traveled to the US from the Bahamas for open-heart surgery, Marguerite Rowell, MSN, MSM/HM, MBA, ONC, SCRN, NEA-BC, decided in the eighth grade that she wanted to be a nurse. She came to the United States, joined Baptist Health South Florida, and spent nearly 25 years advancing from staff nurse to charge nurse, to manager, to director, to Assistant Vice President of Nursing, where she helped open the Miami Cancer Institute and served as interim Chief Nursing Officer. But throughout every promotion, one problem never left her: healthcare finance. Nurse leaders are handed multi-million-dollar budgets and a binder from a training session, and then immediately sent back to the floor, where the commitment to patients and staff takes center stage.

So, she built NurseMath: a mobile app that puts the financial calculations nurse leaders need, ROI, contribution margin, proforma, staffing ratios, right in their pocket, wherever they are. Marguerite makes the case that nurses are multi-dimensional creators at the helm of the innovations that will transform healthcare.

For more information on the podcast bundles, visit ANA's Innovation Website at: https://www.nursingworld.org/practice-policy/innovation/education.

Have questions or feedback for the SEE YOU NOW team? Future episode ideas? Contact us at: hello@seeyounowpodcast.com.

Rachell Dumas, MSN, RN, is a nurse informaticist, health tech founder, and health advocate whose path into nursing began with a single anatomy class and whose journey into innovation began with nearly losing her life. After a four-year struggle through nine pregnancy losses, she finally welcomed a baby boy. Six months later, she woke up unable to see. When she arrived at the emergency department with acute vision loss and stroke symptoms, she was sent home with an antacid. As a neuro ICU nurse, she knew something was catastrophically wrong. She went to a second ED, got the CT scan, and eventually received a diagnosis: idiopathic intracranial hypertension. It took two brain surgeries to treat it. And in the space between dismissal and diagnosis, HEARD was born.

HEARD is a health technology platform that gives patients the language, tools, and confidence to advocate for themselves in real time: translating medical jargon, documenting incidents, facilitating better conversations with providers, and connecting users to second opinions and legal support when needed. Rachell makes the case that nurses aren't just caregivers, they are uniquely positioned to see the gaps in healthcare and to build the solutions that close them.

For more information on the podcast bundles, visit ANA's Innovation Website at: https://www.nursingworld.org/practice-policy/innovation/education.

Have questions or feedback for the SEE YOU NOW team? Future episode ideas? Contact us at: hello@seeyounowpodcast.com.

Jester Lloyd Bautista, MSN, PhD, RN, grew up in the Philippines as the eldest of seven siblings in an impoverished family and dreamed of becoming a pilot. Instead, the people who funded his education chose nursing. He was 20 when he graduated, and 22 when he found himself standing in front of rooms full of nursing graduates preparing for their licensure exams. That experience unlocked something: the understanding that teaching one nurse to think critically could ripple out to every patient they would ever touch. He earned his MSN and then his PhD in Educational Leadership and Management, all while teaching nursing in the Philippines. Then in 2015, he immigrated to the United States, and he had to start over.

He began again in the US as a caregiver. Then became a dialysis nurse. Then an ICU nurse for five years. When the opportunity to return to education appeared, he took it. Today at Cedars-Sinai in Los Angeles, Jester leads ASPIRE, the Affiliate Students Pathway from Internship to Residency Experience, a program that walks senior nursing students into their first RN role. He describes it plainly: he is building the bridge he wished had existed when he graduated.

All seven of his siblings are now nurses. And the young man who once wanted to fly a plane has decided he did become a pilot after all, just one who navigates families, students, and a profession toward somewhere better. He sees himself as an example of what is possible and shares that if people understood the impact nurses have, the world would be a better place.

For more information on the podcast bundles, visit ANA's Innovation Website at: https://www.nursingworld.org/practice-policy/innovation/education.

Have questions or feedback for the SEE YOU NOW team? Future episode ideas? Contact us at: hello@seeyounowpodcast.com.

Anny Jenkins, MSN, RN, grew up in a small, rural town in West Virginia, the first nurse in her family. Her father, a fireman who everyone in their community knew by name, showed her what it looked like to drop everything and help people. That instinct led her to nursing, though the road was long and nonlinear.

She began as an LPN, earned her associate degree from Blue Ridge Community and Technical College, then returned to school during the height of COVID in 2022 to complete her BSN at Western Governors University, where she was honored as a commencement speaker for her own graduating class. She earned her MSN in 2024 and is now pursuing her doctorate, with a clear purpose: to bring advanced nursing education back to the rural communities that need it most.

She believes that you can't be what you can't see and strives to set an example for nurses to achieve more than they might think they can. This hit home for her when, on the verge of leaving nursing altogether, Anny attended a Washington, D.C. conference hosted by the Black Nurse Collaborative and found herself in a room with 250 Black nurses and advanced-degree holders. It was the first time she had ever experienced that and it was a lightbulb moment. Today, she serves as Executive Secretary of the Black Nurse Collaborative, chairs the WV Nurses Association Membership Committee, and travels the Eastern Panhandle recruiting the next generation of nurses.

Her message is simple and urgent: get involved, use your voice, and remember that you are more than your title.

For more information on the podcast bundles, visit ANA's Innovation Website at: https://www.nursingworld.org/practice-policy/innovation/education.

Have questions or feedback for the SEE YOU NOW team? Future episode ideas? Contact us at: hello@seeyounowpodcast.com.