Announcing the Slate of Candidates for the 2025 AWHONN Board of Directors

Your voice is important! The AWHONN Board of Directors has approved the slate of candidates, presented by the Nominating Committee, for the 2025 Board of Directors. AWHONN members will elect a President-Elect and two Directors.

Elections will open on June 10, 2024, at the 2024 AWHONN Convention and close on June 26, 2024. Newly elected Board members officially take office on January 1, 2025. Members who wish to vote in the Election will need to upgrade their membership to Full Member no later than June 1 to be eligible for to vote.For questions or comments, please email leadership@awhonn.org.

Get to Know the Candidates

  • Meet the Board Candidate Slate Virtually – Wednesday, May 29 – 8-9:30 pm EDT – Reserve Your Spot Now.
  • Meet the Board Candidates at the 2024 AWHONN Convention. Date, time, and location will be shared in the coming weeks.

AWHONN Bylaws Question

As an AWHONN voting member, you have the vital right to vote on governance updates. Please participate in this crucial process. In 2024, there’s a proposed change to Article VI, Committees, Section 2. National Nominating Committee, of the AWHONN Bylaws on the ballot. You’ll be asked to approve, oppose, or abstain from voting on the article. You can review the full listing of the proposed change here.  

Receiving Your Ballot

AWHONN has partnered with Survey & Ballot Systems (SBS) to administer the election. For AWHONN voting members to ensure your election-specific broadcast email arrives safely in your inbox on June 10, 2024, simply add the following email address as an approved sender: noreply@directvote.net

President-Elect Candidates

Elizabeth A. McIntire, MSN, WHNP-BC, C-EFM (Indiana)

Beth McIntire, MSN, WHNP-BC, C-EFM is currently the WCSL Leader for IU Health Ball Memorial Hospital. With more than 200 team members, Beth and her team have transformed care by onboarding an OB hospitalist team, opening an OBED, integrating CNM’s, and increasing the number of deliveries by nearly eight percent. Her team has improved patient satisfaction, safety, and team retention. Additionally, she was the state-wide Perinatal Services Director for Ascension St Vincent Health.

Beth serves as the Indiana Perinatal Quality Improvement Collaborative Perinatal Transport Taskforce co-chair and helped author the Indiana Levels of perinatal levels of care and standards for maternal fetal and neonatal transport in Indiana.

Beth has been a member of AWHONN for 30 years, has served as Indy Chapter coordinator, Section Chair, District V SAC Leader, and is currently serving on the AWHONN Board. She is a noted expert in intrapartum fetal monitoring, maternal fetal interfacility transport, and perinatal quality and safety. Beth has participated in two Sigma Theta Tau Perinatal Nurse Leader Academies, once as a fellow and then as a mentor.

Beth earned her undergraduate degree at DePauw University in Greencastle Indiana and her master’s degree as a Women’s’ Health Nurse Practitioner at Indiana University.

Read Elizabeth’s CV
Nancy J. Travis, MS, BSN, RN, PED-BC, CPN, CBC, C-ONQS, FAWHONN (Florida)

Nancy Travis works as a Nurse Coach for the Florida Perinatal Quality Collaborative. She has over 40 years of maternal child nursing leadership experience in high and low-risk environments. Nancy is certified in Pediatrics, Breastfeeding Counselor, and Obstetric Neonatal Quality and Safety. She was inducted into the inaugural group of AWHONN Fellows. She has received recognition as a Mother-Friendly Nurse from the Coalition for Improving Maternity Services and a Golden Baby Shoe from Healthy Start of SW Florida.

Nancy has worked extensively with nursing staff in developing and implementing evidence-based practices. She has presented at various organizations on Family Centered Care in obstetrics at the local, state, and national levels.

Nancy holds a graduate degree in Health Care Administration from Independence University and a BSN from the University of Texas at Arlington.

Nancy has been a member of the Association of Women’s Health Obstetric and Neonatal Nurses for 25 years and is the immediate past AWHONN Florida Section Chair. She serves as the AWHONN Florida representative to the Florida Perinatal Quality Collaborative Nancy is the co-lead for Florida for the AWHONN Alliance for Innovation in Maternal Health (AIM) Nurse Leaders and Legislative Coordinator. She currently serves as the AWHONN Public Policy Committee chairperson and the AWHONN Fellows Committee chairperson for 2024.

Read Nancy’s CV

Director Candidates

Adriane Burgess, PhD, RNC-OB, CCE, C-ONQS, CPHQ, C-LSSGB, FAWHONN (Pennsylvania)

For over 25 years, Dr. Burgess has devoted her nursing career to serving birthing people and their families. She has certifications in inpatient obstetrics, clinical quality and safety, and in childbirth education. Adriane is passionate about advocating for improvements in the care provided to birthing people and their babies.

As a nurse leader, she has led numerous large-scale initiatives to promote the adoption of evidence-based practices and to highlight the expectation of equitable care for all women and birthing people. Critical to these efforts is her interest in building multidisciplinary teams, engaging stakeholders across hospitals and healthcare systems, expanding skill sets, and motivating teams toward change. In her current role with the Maryland Patient Safety Center, she leads the statewide implementation of B.I.R.T.H Equity Maryland, a program aimed at training non-obstetric providers on disparities in maternal health, the impact of implicit bias, and identifying urgent obstetric warning signs and Count the Kicks an evidenced-based stillbirth prevention program. Dr. Burgess has earned several national awards including the AWHONN Outstanding Innovative Program Award, as well as awards through Safe Healthcare for Every Women and the Department of Health and Human Services for quality improvement projects focused on outcomes in obstetric and gynecologic care. As a dedicated member of AWHONN, she served as the Pennsylvania State Section Chair, national committees, and as a writer and reviewer for AWHONN products. In 2023 she was honored to receive the AWHONN Leadership Award and be inducted as a Fellow.

Read Adriane’s CV
Matthew W. Medina, MSN, CNM, RNC-OBEFM, FAWHONN (Massachusetts)

Matt is a master’s prepared Registered Nurse and Nurse Midwife in Massachusetts. He is also certified in Inpatient OB and electronic fetal monitoring. Matt has been an RN since 2010 and finally landed a dream job in L&D in 2011. He has been an AWHONN member since becoming a brand-new L&D RN. Matt continues to work at the bedside in both nursing and midwife roles. He works at Brigham & Women’s Hospital as both a Midwife and Labor Nurse.

Additionally, Matt is a Midwife at Boston Medical Center. Matt holds a special place in his heart for the Night shift and only works after 7 PM. The most memorable births happen after the sun goes down! Matt became involved with the Massachusetts section in 2012 and was hooked! He was lucky enough to be chosen to be an Emerging Leader in the Class of 2017 and hasn’t looked back from there as a national volunteer leader. He found a passion for EWEB when he was selected to participate with the Development Committee that same year he became an ELP. He’s participated on several committees with AWHONN but his tenure on the Development Committee was the most rewarding, having enjoyed the responsibility of helping to disperse the funds raised with EWEB back to our membership. He’s also served on the Convention Planning Committee, Nominating Committee, and now the Ethics & Compliance Committee. In 2023, Matt was proud and honored to have been inducted into the inaugural group of AWHONN Fellows.

Read Matt’s CV
Vannesia D. Morgan-Smith, PhD, MSN, RN NE-BC (Maryland)

Vannesia Morgan-Smith, PhD., is the Senior Director of Women, Infants, and Infusion Services, for the University of Maryland Capital Region Medical Center. She has been a Perinatal Nurse and Nurse Leader for most of her 44-year career.

Vannesia has served on various committees that promote women’s health and prevention of maternal health disparities. These committees include:

• The University of Maryland System’s OB Operations and Quality Leadership Council

• The University of Maryland Race for Health Equity committee (Maternal Morbidity)

• Previously she was a member of the Maryland State Commission on Infant Mortality Prevention

She is currently a member of the University of Maryland School of Nursing Alumni Board. In addition, she was an international co-presenter for the Sigma Theta Tau conference and a content expert for ANCC. Was previously a member of the AAACN national nominating committee and co-publisher for “Scope & Standards of Practice for Professional Ambulatory Care Nursing, chapter 7, 8th edition, 2010” published by the AAACN. She also served as an AONL Peer Reviewer and member of the National Education Committee.

Morga-Smith earned a PhD in Management from Walden University, an MSN from JHU, and a BSN from the University of Maryland, Baltimore. She was accepted into the Maryland Patients Safety Center’s Perinatal/Neonatal Quality and Safety Fellowship.

Read Vannesia’s CV
Nichole Rekowski, BSN (Michigan)

Nichole is an L&D nurse with 19 years of experience working with the perinatal population. Nichole has played many different roles throughout her 19-year nursing career. She spent the early years of her career as a travel nurse, traveling around to various L&D’s across the U.S. After 4 years of traveling Nichole landed back in Michigan as a clinical coordinator in the birthing center at Henry Ford West Bloomfield Hospital.

Three years later she went on to Henry Ford Detroit’s High-Risk L&D and Antepartum unit, where she would serve as the nurse manager. Before returning to the bedside as a staff nurse, Nichole also spent time working as a nurse lead in the Women’s Health clinic. Today, she currently works as a bedside nurse at Henry Ford West Bloomfield in the birthing center as well as the nurse navigator for Henry Ford Health’s perinatal mental health program. Concurrently, she is in pursuit of becoming a Psychiatric Mental Health Nurse Practitioner. Nichole is a former AWHONN Emerging Leader, Secretary-Treasurer for Michigan, and currently serves as Michigan’s Section Chair. She is passionate about maternal child health and maternal mental health and wellness.

Read Nichole’s CV
Carla Rider, DNP, MBA, RNC-LRN (Missouri)

Carla Rider, DNP, MBA, RNC-LRN, is the Chief Nursing Officer for Poplar Bluff Regional Medical Center. She is a nurse leader who is fervent about advocating for and improving maternal-child health outcomes. Her second AWHONN membership has been for 14+ years and is currently with the St. Louis Chapter.

Dr. Rider served as lead faculty for the Sigma Maternal-Child Health Nurse Leadership Academy. As the leader, she collaborated with other faculty to oversee more than 50 quality improvement team projects. She currently serves on the Executive Advisory Board of the Institute for Perinatal Quality Improvement. Importantly, she has worked with state legislators for expert input on senate and house bills for CCHD, 39-week EED, and maternal-neonatal levels of care. In her previous role, she was instrumental in developing and implementing the first verification survey process for neonatal and maternal designation in Texas. Nominated by her teams, she was the recipient of the AWHONN Award of Excellence in Practice, the NANN Leadership Award, and the Patriotic Employer Award, Department of Defense.

Read Carla’s CV