Dr. Roberta Waite, dean of Georgetown University's School of Nursing, is a highly regarded nurse leader whose career fuses education, practice, research, and community through innovative and transformative strategies. She has committed the last 35 years of her nursing career to dismantling health care inequities with special emphasis on community-centered work. Having served on the Governor’s Think Tank to develop guidelines for Trauma-Informed Care in Pennsylvania, as content expert for the American Nurses’ Association (ANA) National Commission to Address Racism in Nursing, as the ANA representative on the National Quality Forum Measure Applications Partnership Health Equity Advisory Group, and on Trinity Health’s corporate health system board, she has continuously aligned her efforts with racial and social justice. In 2022, her commitment was recognized with a Modern Healthcare’s Excellence in Governance award for her work on the corporate health system board with improvements in clinical quality, safety, and health equity, as well as her leadership in the expansion of community health and well-being programs, and leading community outreach programs throughout the pandemic.
She brings a nursing lens and advocacy to her work and her life—centering on social and racial justice, valuing humanity, collective liberation, empathy, interdependence, kindness, having fun, and humor. These efforts are illustrated in her work as member of the board of directors for Family Process Institute, Independence Blue Cross Foundation, MedStar Georgetown University Hospital, as well as her service on Advancing Health Equity’s National Advisory and Policy Development Committee supported by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
Dr. Waite is a staunch advocate for social justice, targeting structural and social mechanisms that promote and detract from health. Prior to joining Georgetown, she was professor and associate dean for Community-Centered Health & Wellness and Academic Integration at Drexel University’s College of Nursing and Health Professions in Philadelphia, Pa. While there, she served as the executive director of the Stephen & Sandra Sheller 11th St. Family Health Services and provided strategic oversight of the College’s four other clinical sites—counseling and family therapy, nutrition, physical therapy, and the wellness center. Her social mission and work in education research led to the development of the Macy Leadership Program which she developed as an inaugural Macy Faculty Scholar. This program focuses on leadership development using a social justice lens and includes students from nursing and other health professions, including behavioral health counseling, nutrition sciences, health administration services, and health sciences. Academically, Dr. Waite has engaged students across programs from undergraduate to post-doctoral students and emphasizes that work with students during critical years of their formation has been a privilege and an honor.
Dr. Waite is an accomplished scholar having published more than 100 peer-reviewed articles, essays, and research studies, invited articles, books, and book chapters, in nursing and across other disciplines. Because of her leadership in nursing, Dr. Waite was invited to serve on the working group established under the auspices of the National Advisory Council for Nursing Research (NACNR), an advisory council to the National Institute of Nursing Research at the National Institutes of Health. As co-author, Dr. Waite and her working group published the “Future Direction in Nursing Science” in 2021 in fulfillment of the charge to provide recommendations to the NACNR to help to identify strengths, limitations, challenges and opportunities in nursing science to inform the development of NINR’s next strategic plan. She is a sought after speaker on topics related to leadership, racism, especially anti-Black racism in nursing, with special focus on pursuing health equity and providing trauma-informed care.
Dr. Waite earned her BSN and EdD in higher education administration leadership from Widener University in Chester, Pa., and her MSN in psychiatric mental health nursing from the University of Pennsylvania. She then completed a post-doctoral research fellowship focused on vulnerable women, children and families at the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing. Dr. Waite has served tirelessly as a mentor and role model for students and aspiring students, colleagues, people of color, and all nurses who are working toward a more open and equitable society, lifting us up to who we need to be, able to live and work to our full potential.