Bill Klaproth (host): This is Today in Nursing Leadership, a podcast from the American Organization for Nursing Leadership. I'm Bill Klaproth. And with me is Cole Edmonson, Chief Executive Officer, Nurses on Boards Coalition, and Pam Rudisill, Vice President Nursing Excellence at ECU Health System, as we discuss Nurses on Boards Coalition and discussing how NOBC, Nurses on Boards Coalition, can make a difference for you. Cole and Pam, welcome.

Cole Edmonson: Thank you, Bill. We are really thrilled to be here. It's such an honor.

Pamela Rudisill: I agree with Cole. What a great opportunity to be here this afternoon.

Host: Well, thank you so much for that. And we are interested to learn more at the AONL Conference in Chicago, which I know you'll both be speaking at. And Cole, you'll give us some details on that coming up. But Cole, let me just start with you. So, can you tell us who is NOBC, Nurses on Boards Coalition, and what is the mission of the organization?

Cole Edmonson: Thanks, Bill. You know, the Nurses on Boards Coalition was founded as a result of the Institute of Medicine's The Future of Nursing Leading Change and Advancing Health Report in 2010. There were eight recommendations in that report. And we fall under recommendation number seven, which was prepare and enable nurses to lead, change, and to advance health and under the recommendation of public and private and governmental healthcare decision makers at every level should include representation from nursing on boards, on executive management teams, and in other key leadership positions.

And the reason this is so important is because 17 nursing organizations came together to work directly on this recommendation, and each organization made a commitment to be able to work together to actually achieve getting nurses on boards. And the original goal of the coalition was to get 10,000 nurses on boards by 2020, which was accomplished, which is very exciting. As well, the organization's mission is to improve the health of communities through the service of nurses on boards and other entities. And as that was developed as a coalition and a board, we became a 501(c)(3) nonprofit.

We established our board, our board committees, our national work groups, and a strategic plan to really be able to help accelerate nurses being placed on boards. So, what was in the very beginning, the opportunity to understand the board seats that nurses were in very quickly became about how do we prepare and support nurses who are board-aspiring or board-serving.

And from there, we wanted to understand the value of nurses on boards and did an inaugural survey to understand the value that nurses added on different types of boards. From that point, we launched into having a placement assistance group that would help nurses to be able to find their dream board and to also help organizations find their dream nurse board member. So, we've been around now for almost 12 years, and we are really excited about the next decade of impact that we have.

Host: So, Cole, let me stay with you for a quick second. Why is it so important we have nurses on boards? Obviously, there's value in this. When we don't have nurses on boards, that sounds like we're missing out on their valuable experience. But can you articulate why it's so important that we have more nurses on boards?

Cole Edmonson: Bill, our core belief is that all boards benefit from the unique perspective of nurses to be able to achieve the goals of improved health and efficiency and effective healthcare systems at a local, state, national, and even international level. We know that nurses bring a very special set of skills and experience that other board members may not. So, they bring leadership quality and process improvement, communications, human resources, strategic planning, finance and business acumen. Teamwork research systems thinking health outcomes, really the perspective of holistic care. So, we do believe that every board can benefit from having a nurse on their board.

Host: Absolutely. That's very well said. Pam, let me ask you, can you explain then the NOBC competency model?

Pamela Rudisill: Absolutely. Our competency model was developed and published and has a comprehensive competency framework that's really designed to what Cole just alluded to, to help nurses assess, develop, and strengthen skills that are required for effective board service. I might add that this was done in collaboration as well with a lot of our other colleagues in the nursing field. But there's diagrams that we have and they're on our website that we'll be going into some detail with, but you can find those.

So, we've got one that's like a circle that a lot of evidence-based practice was put into this and information from other boards and that sort of thing. But at the core is the board work requirements, which includes major topics like strategic direction, fiduciary responsibility, accountability, certainly communication is there. But what's unique here is that along with our readiness model, we have sort of separated it out into categories.

The first of those in terms of performance is self-leadership. And with self-leadership, some of the key items or competencies that would come under that would be emotional intelligence. A person that wants to do lifelong learning has an interest perhaps in the community, has skillset with conflict management, with the theory of systems thinking, and is a reflective person. That's what we try to emphasize through the readiness model is that you really want to do some self-reflection and get feedback from all sorts of different disciplines within your field of communication.

And with that first area, self-leadership with the competencies and then what type—somebody might ask, "Well, what type of board placements would that be?" That could be your advisory boards. A beginning person that really wants to excel, a nurse that wants to excel, perhaps getting on a patient family advisory council or board at the local hospital. We have so many staff that are interested in community work that wants to serve on a local March of Dimes Board or a local YMCA. That would be the example there. And then, going on in then to the next item would be the organizational management and leadership areas of performance. And with that, it goes a little bit further in terms of the competencies into complex deep management. Certainly, a degree of change management would come here. Strategic orientation planning, that beginning filled with how do you relate to that board that you're placed on. And then, other things, certainly the budget, financial savvy and organizational awareness, you would want to. And it goes a little bit further in the self-assessment, but that's some of the main areas that you would want to look at.

And then, in terms of the complexity, we refer to that as organizational governance boards, so you might think of that as moving up to a hospital board. We highly, highly work with AONL and AHA, NOBC does, with how do we get nurses on our hospital board. And the goal would certainly be to get a nurse on every hospital board, but that's some of the areas that we really encourage folks or help mentor, coach, precept, and sponsor to be able to do that.

And then, the next area of performance would be that professional leadership, and that's where we look at board appointments, the corporate governance, boards of professional organizations, nursing organizations, or even other organizations. And that's what Cole was referring to in the beginning, how we've done successful board placement, across the United States regulatory or policy appointments.

But with that, we're really talking about the high level influence. That person that has a lot of innovation, thinking mechanisms in place that could really be beneficial for that board, political awareness and influence. This is really where we look up maybe at state level, at regional levels, national levels of board placement. And really, certainly nursing and healthcare is one that we promote, but really beyond that as well. But we really want to, with all of this readiness assessment, help folks to realize, number one, where are they in that process of development, if it meets their needs. And then, how can we help with all of our tools and information get that person if they want to be at the corporate governance level, which we really encourage, how do we get them there?

Host: Pam, that is wonderful. There's a lot of boards and a lot of areas for nurses to contribute and serve and, quite frankly, grow into. So, that is really wonderful. Cole, let me ask you, Pam talked about the skills required to be on a board. How does an individual assess if they are ready for board service?

Cole Edmonson: Bill and Pam did such a great job describing the competency model and what that looks like. And the idea that we're ready for a board probably starts with the first piece, which is what is a board. So, we typically define a board as any place in an organization where a nurse has influence and impact using their governing skills.

So to Pam's point, it could be a council, it could be a committee, it could be an appointed position, it could be an elected position within an organization. And I also want to pull us back to the idea of shared or professional governance and organization. Many experienced nurses get their start in governance activities, in their professional governance models in their hospitals and health systems.

One of the things that I always love to talk about as well is when we think about board service, I always ask people to do a very reflective exercise because this helps us clarify where we've been, where we are, and where we want to go. So, it's a really simple exercise. Just take out a piece of paper, put a line a third of the way down, put a line two-thirds of the way down so you have three blocks on your paper. That center block is where you are today. So, just write down the kind of boards or committees or councils that you're on, shared governance, so that you can get a picture of kind of where you are today. And that's important because that starts to define your readiness for the next level of board that you're seeking.

But I also ask people to be a little more deeply introspective on this and to go back beyond today and say, "What kind of boards have I been on in the past?" And as I went through my own reflective process, I realized I had been part of my National Student Nurses Association on committees. When I was in high school, I was on committees. When I was in junior high, I was on committees. Even as part of grade school, I was on committees doing student government, having those things and those experiences. So, a lot of our experiences in governance and leadership start way earlier than we give ourselves credit for.

And then, the last part of that exercise is to project yourself into the future. And think about the kind of board you want to be on, and maybe even, you know, the specific board, and write that down in that top section of what my future can look like in board service. Because a dream is a dream until you write it down and then it becomes a goal. And this is such a great reflective process to think about as you're moving forward with this. Know where you came from, know where you are, think about where you're going, And then, you can also build a pathway with that, using the tools that we have on our website that Pam discussed, and also the novice to expert continuum of board service. That really gives you the idea of, as a nurse who is very familiar with a novice to expert model, you can look at the skills and the competencies and the types of boards that you can start on, those you can advance to for moderate and then complex boards, and very advanced boards. And each of those are building on each other as an experience.

And as Pam mentioned as well, we have a readiness assessment on our website. That should be done by experienced board members as they're thinking about going to a different kind of board or someone that's board-aspiring, that's just thinking about getting on their very first board. And it gives you an idea of where your opportunities are, where your strengths are, and then that can help guide you to tools on our resource with our other organizations that help support us like AONL and ANA, and the Governance Institute have a lot of wonderful governance education and training.

We also have a microcredential that you can do that helps to differentiate yourself from other clinicians and other nurses that may also be looking to serve on that same board. So, we're looking for nurses to be able to be well-educated and prepared so that they can feel confident, they can feel comfortable and they can feel competent when they step into that boardroom for the first time or even the last time that they're in the boardroom and they're mentoring others to come up behind them. A colleague of mine always says, if you get a seat, you need to create a seat. So, we need to be thinking about who will follow us as a succession plan as a nurse board member from the time we first get on the board.

Host: If you get a seat, create a seat. I like that. And it certainly seems like there are a lot of different ways an individual can assess where they're at. And I love the third, a third, a third on the back of the paper. That's really a great idea. And as you said, there's assessments on the website and other things as well. So, really good stuff. So Pam, someone might be listening to this thinking, "This is awesome. How do I get involved with the NOBC?"

Pamela Rudisill: Very, very simple. You can go on our website and it has all of the information, the tools, any one of the board members. What is really great about NOBC is that we're so fortunate to be part of a coalition that has, I think, Cole, what, over 20 I know of our national nursing organizations, including our National Student Nurse Association, but there's contacts with each organization. With the organizations, they have a representative, a person that is a board member. So, I would say we all are interested in that piece, but it's real easy to get on our website. That's one really great thing. We do a lot of presentations across the United States. We have a speakers bureau. You can get on to the website with that and see what the people on those that's listed as the speakers that go out. Then, any one of those could get some information about NOBC.

And I'd just add too, there's so many different paths that one can go in. I was reflecting too about my own journey. I was one of those—a little bit, unlike Cole, I didn't start out really with the goal of being on a board. My goal was to just start out as a critical care nurse and be expert at that, and that was the end of the story. But I will tell you as my career grew and people came up to me and said, "Well, why don't you be a member of AACN, the critical care group?" Did that, got involved in that, then eventually got on that board and recognized how important it is to be on either a nursing board or another board type. And then, changing roles going to a nurse executive role, I thought, "Okay, let me see what that's about." And I actually had a colleague in North Carolina that was on the NCONL board, and she said, "Okay, you've changed roles here. You've got to be a member." She mentored me into getting involved in AONL. And I will be forever grateful for that person. So, I think if we don't know a person, we have to reach out. Whether it's NOBC or whether it's somebody that is an accomplished board member, and let that person, precept, mentor, sponsor, coach, do whatever they can to get us successful, because then I think you can go wherever you want to go as you get those competencies and all of that, no matter where you are in that career path, and get where you want to be.

And just interesting to me now is that I'm back in North Carolina after many years of being out. And same thing I was here at ECU Health, and I know this is a personal story, but it has a great ending to it. The very first day I went to nursing leadership council here at ECU Health, a nurse manager came up to me and she said, "Hey, I'm on the board of NCONL. You need to get your membership changed from Tennessee to North Carolina." I did that that day, and I'm not going to get into detail, but coming up in 2027, going to have a significant role in that organization. So, you just have to rely on colleagues. That's what we're here for, is each other.

Host: Absolutely. That's so important. And another great thing about the AONL Conference, It's a great chance to meet new people and start those relationships and networking and mentorships. So, that's really cool, Pam. So Cole, can you tell us what has been the impact of the coalition, and what is the future?

Cole Edmonson: Yes. And Pam, thank you for sharing that story. You know, you always continue to inspire me every day with your leadership journey and your influence and impact. And so, it's one of the things that I love about NOBC is we have so many stories of impact. We have so many stories of nurses who are serving on boards of all different types, as Pam mentioned. You know, these are corporate boards, public boards, community boards, hospital boards, yoga boards, theater boards, architect planning boards, city planning boards. So really, there is a place for every nurse and there is a nurse for every board.

So, I love this because it feeds right into where are we today and our first decade of impact as a coalition. We were able to achieve the goal of 10,000 nurses on boards by 2020. Secondly, we were able to really grow our database in terms of nurses who are signing up and standing up and being counted for their board service tremendously. And today, we have just over 30,000 nurses in our database. We are at almost 12,000 board seats for nurses that are held. And we have another 16,000 nurses that want to serve on boards. So clearly, this is not a supply issue, it's a demand issue. So, we are working at NOBC to make sure that we can create that demand, tell the story, show the value of that, and then help nurses to be educated and prepared and ready for board service, and ultimately mentoring them as well when they are in those board seats.

So, our member organizations, today, we have 28 member organizations across the board, and I just want to say thank you to each and every one of them. Three of them are non-nursing organizations, so we're a very inclusive organization, and we want to hear other voices and other perspectives.

When I look at what we have been able to achieve today on our annual report, we talk a little bit about the opportunities that we've been able to help nurses find. And just in 2025, we helped 35 organizations. And we facilitated over 570 nurses applying for those 35 board positions. And over the last three years, almost 300 nurses have been assisted in their board placements by NOBC. And we know that we're having an impact on health. When we measure the impact on the social determinants of health or the non-medical indicators, we know that we are having an impact on employment, on health literacy, and education and development through our database and the reporting of what types of boards that nurses are serving on.

We just had the opportunity to come together last June in Chicago at the Emergency Nurses Associations Headquarters. And we had the opportunity to be able to create a new strategic plan going forward. We just launched that in January in our newsletter. And our new strategic plan is incredibly exciting and focused and very clear on who we are and what we hope to impact. It's all about connecting, transforming, and impacting, which ultimately means really building meaningful relationships and communities, enhancing nurses effectiveness on boards through education and mentorship, and then being able to drive transformational outcomes for organizations by amplifying the influence of nurses and board governance and research.

And we think about this from the perspective of our national work groups that are working on demand, working on education, working on microcredentials, working really clearly in thought leadership, and we're really excited to be able to carry this work forward in the next decade and to see how we can continue to tell the story of the impact of nurses on the community and on organizations.

Pamela Rudisill: And I would just add to what Cole has said. When we met this past June to come up with the strategic plan, it feels like we're in the healthcare environment for today and the future. It was really great for me as long as I've been involved to really see how we're moving forward with everything going on in the environment, whether it's in healthcare or outside for our overall mission, for the social determinants of health.

And from where I sit, to be able to see the differences at the grassroots, whether it be rural healthcare or other types of healthcare, to see those results is extremely positive. Cole mentioned too pass for our younger folks that are coming in. I mean, it's exciting to think that we're going to be looking and working some with our academic partners of letting folks know more and more or students know more and more, what is it like and what's the significance of serving as you go through that path of a committee, a council within your institution, and then moving up into some of the civic organizations, professional organizations, if that's the path that the individual chooses.

But I think to have had all of this with the NOBC, to have had this back before the Institute of Medicine report came out, wow, it would've been so beneficial to so many people, to really move forward in a maybe more expedient and meaningful role to have all the resources and tools. So Bill, I can't say enough about what all this organization has done to prepare nurses to be on boards.

Host: Absolutely. It sounds like you've made great impact, so thank you for sharing those results. Really impressive and more to come, as Cole was saying. Well, Pam and Cole, I want to thank you so much for this great discussion. I really appreciate this. Before we wrap up, I'd love to get final thoughts from each of you. Pam, let me start with you. From your point of view, wrap it up for us as we finish our discussion about nurses on boards.

Pamela Rudisill: Well, I would just encourage folks that are listening to the podcast to take the information that we have shared this afternoon and to visit our website to look at all the materials. I mean, we talked about the materials on there. We have got so many papers that our board members have written voluntarily on their own that have got so much impact from what we talked about, the competencies on through case examples, the exemplars of where some nurses are today. Also, I didn't mention this, but I'd like to plug a little bit for our own social media. I mean, we have so many case examples out there. Now, some of the folks that started NOBC, like Cole talked about in the very beginning, but what their career and organizational involvement has been, and what they've seen as impacts. I mean, you can just learn so much from that as well. So, it's out there. I would just say take advantage of all the materials.

Host: Absolutely. And you can visit that, it's nursesonboardscoalition.org. It's all put together. nursesonboardscoalition.org. Pam, thank you for that. Cole, how about you? Final thoughts?

Cole Edmonson: I love what Pam said. You know, it's hard really to build on that because it was so amazing and beautiful. But I will add to that, which is now is the time for nurses to serve, not yesterday, not tomorrow, but today. And we have the opportunity to really do something different in healthcare with organizations and to be able to have even a bigger influence and larger impact nationally and now even internationally as we work in the international space now, and really thinking about what boards want from you.

I didn't talk about this earlier, so I'll add it to my closing thought here, which is there are four things boards want from you, and there are four things that you're probably going to get from the board" time, talent, treasure, and ties. And this is really where you have to align, align, align.

And when I say that, I really mean align with your passion and your purpose because you may be spending a small amount of time or a significant amount of time on that board work. They also are really wanting you to be a part of their organization because of your talent. And nurses bring such an incredible talent, wisdom, experience, and knowledge base to any board that they're serving on. And then, treasure. That may mean that you have a personal investment in the organization, meaning you may give or help them to find funds for that organization to support its mission.

And then, lastly, most of us who have been in healthcare for more than 10, 15, 20, 25 years, and I'll stop there, have a very large network of people that we have developed over our careers, and that's called your ties. And your ties are extremely valuable to an organization because it will build new relationships, can bring in new board members, can help find new sources of funding. And it's really a way that we can continue to give back if we think about time, talent, treasure, and ties. And I'll close by saying there's a board for every nurse, and there is a nurse for every board. Let NOBC support you in finding the right board for you.

Host: Very well said. Time, talent, treasure, and ties. I love that, Cole. And I want to mention, you and Pam are going to be speaking in Chicago at the AONL conference. Is that right?

Cole Edmonson: That's correct. We are going to be there. We will be a part of the AONL nominations session. And we are super excited to be able to share more at the nomination session.

Host: Love it. Well, Pam and Cole, thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate this.

Pamela Rudisill: Yes. And I would just add, Bill, one final thing. For folks that are listening the to the podcast, we'd love to meet some of the folks in-person if they are attending the AONL meeting.

Host: Absolutely. I think that would be great. And if you have questions, just find Cole, find Pam, and get those questions answered. And that's how you start those relationships. That's how you start those ties, right, Cole?

Cole Edmonson: That's absolutely correct.

Host: I love it. All right. Pam and Cole, thank you so much again. This has really, really been informative. Once again, that is Cole Edmonson and Pam Rudisill. For more information, you can visit aonl.org. And as Pam was mentioning, you can also visit nursesonboardscoalition.org. And if you found this podcast helpful, please share it on your social channels and you can check out the full podcast library for great topics of interest to you at aonl.org/nursing-leadership-podcast. This is Today in Nursing Leadership. Thanks for listening.