John Nelson, PhD, MS, RN has 33 years of experience in the profession of nursing, including 11 as a critical care bedside nurse and the last 22 years leading a company in data management around the world. He has also formed and/or led several international research organizations. His specialties in research include assessment of the nurse work environment, job satisfaction, caring, outcomes management, and predictive analytics. His master’s degree is in statistics and PhD in Nursing. He has worked in 46 countries, in over 400 organizations. Books he has published include Measuring Caring (2012, Springer Publishing) and Using Predictive Analytics to Improve Healthcare Outcomes (2021, Wiley Publishing). His new book received the 2021 book of the year award within the informatics category by American Journal of Nursing (AJN). He is the Founder and President of both the Caring Science International Collaborative and Healthcare Environment.
Dr. Tricia Thomas is Dean & Professor in the Kirkhof College of Nursing at Grand Valley State University in Grand Rapids, Michigan. For 25 years she has created innovative interprofessional teams and academic-practice partnerships to transform care through consensus and shared purpose to improve workforce, clinical, and financial outcomes. She engages nurses to understand their nursing identity through the lens of caring theory and leadership to embrace professional role enactment for actionable focus.
Dr. Thomas's impact has been recognized by ANA Michigan with the Dorothea Milbrandt Nurse Leader award and by the American Association of Colleges of Nursing with the Nurse Educator Vanguard Award. She has authored recognized textbooks in nursing leadership, quality and safety, implementation science, and project management and has contributed to the profession through presentations, publications, and national and international consultation.
Dr. Thomas holds national board certification in Advanced Nursing Administration, Adult Health, Healthcare Management, and as a Clinical Nurse Leader. She is a Fellow in the American Academy of Nursing and a Distinguished Fellow in the National Academies of Practice. She also serves as an American Nurses Credentialing Center Magnet appraiser, as a Commission on Collegiate Nursing Education visitor, and as the Chair of the National Academies of Practice (NAP) Nursing Academy.
Dr. Palmieri is a healthcare leader, nurse scholar, and translation scientist with 20 years experience in leading domestic and international health care organizations, consulting in insurance operations, conducting translation and implementation science research, and serving as a university professor. He is a Fellow of the American College of Healthcare Executives, the International Society for Quality in Health Care, and the American Academy of Nursing. Dr. Palmieri also maintains board certifications in quality improvement, risk management, patient safety, and health care administration. Dr. Palmieri was recently, appointed the interim Dean of the School of Nursing at the Universidad Norbert Wiener.
Dr. Palmieri is a seasoned international educator with experience at the undergraduate, graduate, and doctoral levels, online and in classroom. His research interests include organizational behavior and management, vertically integrated health systems, evidence-based health care, enterprise risk management, and nursing issues such as education, outcomes, and work environment. Dr. Palmieri has authored numerous publications, including books, book chapters and scientific articles. He frequently presents his work at international conferences.
Dr. Palmieri is dedicated to creating social change in Peru through his service and family philanthropic contributions to education, youth mentoring, and nursing projects.
Works as Assistant Professor at the University of Maribor Faculty of Health Sciences. She has served in a leadership role within CSIC in other international research collaboratives and institutions but has served as a leader in CSIC since forming in 2019. She has helped mentor and support several countries to participate within CSIC. She was a visiting teaching assistant at the Josip Juraj Strossmayer University of Osijek, a visiting PhD Student at Waterford Institute of Technology and a visiting higher education teacher at the University of Rijeka Faculty of Health Studies. She is a member of Sigma Theta Tau International, Honour Society of Nursing, the European Academy of Nursing Science and the International Association of Human Caring. Her research interests include caring, safety and quality in nurse education and practice. In addition to several bilateral projects, she has experience with international projects related to pedagogical approaches in nursing and technology in nursing education. Dominika is an editorial member in the Slovenian Nursing Review and Frontiers in Medicine and an editorial advisory member in the Journal of Public Health Nursing and the International Journal of Human Caring.
Dr. Yvonne Commodore-Mensah is a Professor and Associate Dean for Research at the Johns Hopkins University School of Nursing, where she leads a program of research focused on cardiovascular health equity, hypertension prevention, and nurse-led implementation science across African, immigrant, and underserved populations. She earned her BSN with honors from Fairleigh Dickinson University, her PhD in Nursing from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and her MHS in Health Science from the Johns Hopkins University School of Nursing. She holds joint faculty appointments at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and the University of Health and Allied Sciences in Ghana, and has held visiting professorships at Mahidol University in Thailand.
Dr. Commodore-Mensah is the Principal Investigator of the ADHINCRA Study, a $2.3 million NHLBI-funded multi-country trial evaluating nurse-led and mobile-health interventions to improve hypertension control in Ghana and Nigeria. She also serves as Co-Principal Investigator on American Heart Association-funded studies examining personalized cardiovascular interventions and social determinants of hypertension among women. Her research integrates epidemiology, implementation science, digital health, and community engagement to generate evidence that is both globally rigorous and locally actionable — with particular focus on ensuring African co-investigators hold substantive leadership roles in the science they help produce.
With over 200 peer-reviewed publications, contributions to American Heart Association scientific statements, and research informing hypertension management policy internationally, Dr. Commodore-Mensah is among the most prominent nurse scientists working at the intersection of cardiovascular health and global health equity. She co-founded the Ghanaian-Diaspora Nursing Alliance, a transnational network of more than 4,500 members connecting diaspora expertise with African institutional capacity, and has mentored more than thirty predoctoral and postdoctoral researchers across the United States, Ghana, and Nigeria.
As a CSIC leader, Dr. Commodore-Mensah brings unparalleled reach and credibility to the collaborative's work in Ghana and across the African continent. Her leadership reflects a "glocal" model of knowledge exchange — where local African evidence strengthens global science and global resources support African health systems — that aligns directly with CSIC's commitment to context-sensitive, cross-national research on nursing workforce wellbeing and the conditions that enable nurses to thrive.
Dr. Darijo Bokan is a registered nurse, public health researcher, and clinical trial specialist whose work bridges bedside clinical practice, scientific investigation, and academic teaching across the Western Balkans region. He completed his undergraduate and master's studies in Nursing Science at the Faculty of Medicine, University of Novi Sad, and earned his PhD in Public Health from the same institution. His educational trajectory reflects a sustained commitment to advancing both the science and the practice of nursing in a region with distinctive healthcare system challenges.
Dr. Bokan has accumulated substantial clinical and research experience across more than a decade at the Institute for Pulmonary Diseases of Vojvodina in Sremska Kamenica, Serbia, where he served first as a registered nurse in the Intensive Care Unit and subsequently as a Clinical Trial Coordinator. In that role he has contributed to more than forty projects and more than twenty Phase II and III clinical trials in the fields of lung cancer, COPD, palliative care, and public health. He currently serves as a Teaching Assistant in the Department of Nursing at the Faculty of Medicine, University of Novi Sad, where he contributes to the preparation of the next generation of nursing professionals.
His scholarly contributions span peer-reviewed publications in internationally indexed journals including the Journal of Thoracic Oncology, Respiration, JMIR Medical Informatics, and the European Respiratory Journal, with co-authored work on topics including lung cancer epidemiology, burnout among healthcare professionals, COPD management, smoking cessation, and FAIR data science. He has also participated in European Horizon-funded research projects, including FAIR4HEALTH and the ongoing MULTIPULM project, demonstrating experience in multinational collaborative research design.
As a CSIC regional leader, Dr. Bokan brings a grounded perspective on nursing workforce wellbeing in the Western Balkans — a context shaped by post-communist institutional legacy, ongoing healthcare system reform, and the particular pressures facing nurses in resource-constrained clinical environments. His combination of frontline clinical experience, research coordination expertise, and academic engagement positions him as a valuable connector between CSIC's international scientific program and the realities of nursing practice in the region.
Professor Sebahat Gözüm is a Professor at the Department of Public Health Nursing, Faculty of Nursing at Akdeniz University, Türkiye. She is the founder and first Dean of Faculty of Nursing at Akdeniz University. Previously, she worked as a professor and manager at the School of Nursing, Atatürk University in Eastern Türkiye. Her research focuses on preventive care, health screenings, randomized controlled research methodology in nursing, integrative nursing, elderly population care, and family caregivers care. She is an active member of several projects of European Cooperation in Science and Technology with international and multidisciplinary related emphasis for disadvantaged groups in the community. Sebahat is Chief Editor in Türkiye for the Journal of Public Health Nursing.
Professor Gözüm has provided important leadership in Caring Science International Collaborative (CSIC) since 2019 as well as within the international collaborative that preceeded CSIC called the Caring International Collaborative (CIRC) back to the year 2008. She led the annual international scientific meeting for CSIC in 2019 at Akdeniz University. She has published several articles of research conducted within CIRC and more recently CSIS in both English and Turkish language.
Professor Gozum’s individual website that reviews her publications, citations, and H-Index can be found at: https://avesis.akdeniz.edu.tr/sgozum
Dr. Indrit Bimi is a lecturer of Medical Sciences, researcher, and healthcare management specialist whose work bridges nursing education, healthcare administration, and international academic collaboration across the Southern Balkans and surrounding region. He completed his undergraduate studies in Nursing at the University of Shkodra, pursued postgraduate studies at the University of Tirana and the Medical University of Tirana, and earned his PhD in Healthcare Marketing from the University of National and World Economy in Sofia, Bulgaria.
With more than fifteen years of academic teaching experience, Dr. Bimi has contributed to nursing and health sciences education across multiple institutions in Albania and the broader Balkan region, including the University of Durres "Aleksander Moisiu," the Medical University of Tirana, the European University of Tirana, and UBT College. He currently serves as a full-time lecturer in the Department of Medical Sciences at the University of Durres "Aleksander Moisiu." In this role, he brings both clinical grounding and scholarly depth to the preparation of the next generation of healthcare professionals.
Dr. Bimi's scholarly contributions include authored and co-authored academic textbooks and peer-reviewed publications spanning nursing management, healthcare leadership, pediatric nursing, oncology nursing, and healthcare management. His research interests include healthcare marketing, public health, nursing education, healthcare innovation, and the internationalization of higher education. He has also served as Coordinator of the CEEPUS Network in collaboration with the Medical University of Graz, promoting international academic mobility and interdisciplinary cooperation across the region.
As a CSIC regional leader, Dr. Bimi brings an important perspective shaped by the distinctive post-communist healthcare and educational context of Albania and the Southern Balkans — a context that CSIC's research has consistently shown to produce unique workforce wellbeing dynamics. His leadership strengthens CSIC's capacity to understand and address the
Professor Michal Itzhaki is an Associate Professor at the Department of Nursing, School
of Health Professions, Faculty of Medicine at Tel Aviv University, Israel.
She is the first registered nurse in Israel to have completed a direct Ph.D. track,
which she obtained at the Department of Nursing Department at Tel Aviv University.
Previously, she worked as a registered nurse and clinical instructor at
the Sheba Medical Center Department of Surgery and as a teacher at the Sheba Academic
School of Nursing. She completed her post-doctoral training at the Department of Sociology
and Anthropology at Bar-Ilan University. Her research focuses on the emotion management
of patients and caregivers in complex, challenging, and demanding health and illness situations.
She explores the gaps between experienced versus expected emotions in diverse stressful care
situations: emergencies and disasters, violence in the health care system, life-threatening
situations, multicultural dilemmas, and mental, terminal, and chronic illnesses (such as
fibromyalgia). Examining emotion management includes strengthening the personal
and team-group resilience of patients, their families, and the healthcare staff.
https://english.tau.ac.il/profile/itzhakim
Dr. Schwartz is the CEO of Healthcare Environment and brings her passionate expertise in professional healthcare practice and healthy work environments to her role as the CEO. Her mission is to aid each care provider to be their best and each healthcare organization to be the best place in which care is received. Over her 30 years of practice, she has actively collaborated and partnered with a 300+ hospital consortium across the U.S. and Canada to improve interdisciplinary practice and care environments through shared governance, clinical ladders, and clinical documentation systems as well as quality improvement, communication, and implementation of scientific methods.
She has served in the roles of clinician, nurse educator, clinical nurse specialist, adjunct faculty, administrator, research associate, CNO, as well as SVP at Elsevier. She is a Helene Fuld Fund Fellow in Partnerships for Leadership in Nursing Education and Practice.
Dr. Schwartz’s research areas include model and instrument construction, professional nurse role, value of nursing work, nursing classification systems, data mining of electronic health records, intervention effectiveness, and use of Latent Class Analysis methods. She was selected as a University of Iowa’s Dare to Discover 2021 distinguished researcher. Dr. Schwartz volunteers her time to serve on the national Context of Care and Nursing Value Workgroup sponsored by the Nursing Knowledge Big Data Science Initiative and as the President of the Gamma Chapter of Sigma Theta Tau International.