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BSN 2006 & MSN 2010
Nurse Practitioner Hospitalist
University of New Mexico
University Hospitals
Krystle D. Apodaca is a Nurse Practitioner Hospitalist at the University of New Mexico (UNM) Hospital, where she is also an Assistant Professor of Medicine. She has been integral in the development of UNM’s Advanced Practice Provider (APP) program and APP Hospital Medicine Fellowship, which she helped co-found. She is a published author and an invited speaker to medical conferences where she shares her passion for harm reduction, including medication-assisted therapy. She serves on the leadership board of the New Mexico Society of Hospital Medicine (SHM) as Treasurer and was previously President-Elect and President. She was also the recipient of the 2020 SHM Clinical Leadership for Nurse Practitioners and Physician Assistants Award of Excellence. She is currently appointed to the New Mexico Public Health and Safety Advisory Committee, which assists the Department of Health in monitoring emerging scientific and medical information relevant to the health effects associated with the use of cannabis products.
PhD 2013
Professor
North Dakota State University
College of Health and Human Sciences
School of Nursing
Kelly Buettner-Schmidt is a Professor in the School of Nursing at North Dakota State University. She was the first to graduate with a health policy concentration from the UNM College of Nursing PhD program. Since 1991, her career has focused on tobacco control. Initially, she led efforts to pass the first smoke-free ordinance in North Dakota (ND) and conducted a follow-up study analyzing restaurants’ gross receipts tax information, finding no negative impact on revenue. She consulted for the ND Department of Health to pass similar ordinances in other areas. She provided leadership for two successful ND ballot initiatives. She co-led the 2008 initiative requiring ND to use tobacco settlement dollars to be allocated for tobacco control at CDC recommended levels and contributed to the 2012 initiative requiring all workplaces and public places to be smoke-free. Currently, she is leading a multi-disciplinary, multi-university research team studying the liquids used in e-cigarettes to assist product regulation.
DNP 2016
Dean
Central New Mexico Community College
School of Nursing & Patient Support
Diane Evans-Prior is the Dean of the School of Nursing and Patient Support at Central New Mexico Community College, where she previously taught prelicensure nursing for twenty years. During her teaching career, she helped the program transition to the conceptually-based New Mexico Nursing Education Consortium (NMNEC) statewide curriculum. In addition, she has made the program more accessible, more affordable, and more ethnically diverse for the student population it serves. Currently, she also serves on the NMNEC Leadership Council, the New Mexico Center for Nursing Excellence, and volunteers with the Accreditation Commission for Education in Nursing in roles ranging from peer evaluator to Chairman of the Board of Commissioners. She presents regularly at both national and local conferences and has authored many publications. In her off-hours, she enjoys spending time with her husband of nearly thirty-five years and her two children.
BSN 2004
Quality of Care Advisor
Doctors Without Borders
Anna Freeman is a nurse and quality improvement specialist with Médecins Sans Frontières / Doctors Without Borders. She began working in humanitarian aid in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in 2008 and has since worked in twelve different countries experiencing humanitarian crises. She has worked in Haiti after the 2010 earthquake, managing the nursing staff in a make-shift trauma hospital, the Central African Republic during a coup d’état/ start of a civil war, Liberia and Guinea in response to the West African Ebola outbreak, in Greece coordinating support for refugees and in Iraqi Kurdistan managing care for Syrian refugees, among other locations. With the aim to improve equal access to safe health care, her work now focuses on quality improvement in crisis settings. Prior to working in humanitarian aid, she was a pediatric intensive care nurse.
MSN 2007 & PMC 2019
Director of Advance Practice Specialty Providers and Psychiatric APPs
University of New Mexico
University Hospitals
For the past 24 years, Aisha Jones has accomplished a great deal in her nursing career including empowering her patients to understand and to actively participate in the improvement and maintenance of their health. She is a native New Mexican and graduated high school as a Licensed Practical Nurse. She then went on to get her bachelor's degree in nursing from New Mexico State University and her master’s degree as a Nurse Practitioner from the University of New Mexico (UNM). Her Doctor of Nursing Practice degree is from the University of Alabama and she also has a postmaster certificate as a Psychiatric Mental Health Nurse Practitioner. She is a devoted practitioner, mother, and considered a friend.
BSN 2003
Executive Director of Behavioral Health
Christus Health Southern New Mexico
Forrest Blue Summers is deeply committed to positively impacting the world of health care. He hails from southeastern New Mexico and west Texas. After graduating with his BSN, he worked for 15 years in the Dallas-Fort Worth area focusing on nursing and health care administration. During this time, he completed his Masters in Healthcare Administration at Texas Tech University. He worked hard to become Chief Nursing Officer, allowing him to shape health care strategies that put patients first and help set new standards for leadership. In 2016, he felt the call to return to his home state of New Mexico and begin a new chapter as the Executive Director of Behavioral Health for Christus Health Systems.
Director of Alumni Relations
Marlena Bermel, MBA
College of Nursing
1650 University Blvd, Office 3603
1 University of New Mexico