NNBA Nurse Entrepreneur News – 10/21/2018
Nurses from all over the country met in Las Vegas, Nevada this past weekend for the #NNBA2018 Nurse Entrepreneurship & Career Alternatives Conference. Three hundred nurses strong touted our signature event “as the best ever!” LeAnn Thieman kicked things off with her awe-inspiring and motivational story of how she went from being a nurse to a writer and speaker. LeAnn autographed copies of her multiple New York Times best sellers and offered priceless advice to the nurses in the audience that may one day write a book or speak from stage. If you ever have an opportunity to hear LeAnn speak, take it!
From the wonderful in-depth preconferences on Friday, until the grand prize winners and closing remarks on Sunday, the buzz, energy, and enthusiasm were off the charts. Breakout session speakers had their rooms filled with nurses eager for insider knowledge of multiple, specialized business opportunities, and areas to use their nursing knowledge and experience.
All the sessions with nurse business owners and experts were well attended. What nurses appreciated most was the approachability and access that they had to all the speakers with plenty of networking time to meet, mingle and collaborate. With over 30 years of assisting nurses to launch successful businesses, NNBA is evidence based practice!
This year’s Shark Tank Competition could not have been closer in deciding a winner. 7 amazing nurse innovators, inventors, educators, and developers pitched our shark tank panelists. They were: Yordis Morrison, Amy Wenham, Laura Futrell, Gwen Jewell,Sharon Dopak, Lori Forneris and Karen Kearsley. Mega successful nurse business owners, Donna Cardillo, Pat Iyer and Louise Jakubik deliberated and voted Laura Futrell as the #NNBA Shark Tank Winner!
Laura’s hope is to empower women during their cancer journey. The Patient Learning Center brings the most up-to-date, interactive education right to the patients’ home and empowers women to be an advocate of their choices.
Periodically, the NNBA awards the prestigious Vanguard Award in recognition of a nurse entrepreneur exemplar with a proven track record of business success, impact and substantial influence in the nursing profession. This year, we presented the Vanguard Award to Pat Iyer. Congratulations Pat!
In the articles of interest below, The Engine of Nurse Innovation is my perspective on this exciting moment in time for our nursing profession, and our ability to be real change agents. I wanted to help circulate the second article Are You America’s Next EntrepreNURSE, to raise awareness to Johnson & Johnson’s challenge for nurse innovators. Please let me know if you enter the challenge and circulate awareness on your social channels. I expect all of NNBA’s Shark Tank competitors to enter! The deadline is February 1, 2019, and the specifics are in the article. The final article is Nurses in Business Change the World written by NNBA member Alene Nitzky. See why Alene believes nurse-owned businesses are taking the world by storm.
These are only a handful of the many pictures taken at #NNBA2018. In the near future, we will have the professional pictures and video out on www.NNBANow.com and I will post on the NNBAnow Facebook page, Linkedin, and Twitter. Although the pictures are great, being in the room with so many like-minded nurses is hard to capture on film. One must see the dynamics of what really happens at this annual event in person to truly understand. Over a third of our audience filled in the special event offer and will be returning next year! Available conference resources will be placed in the dashboard section of the website in the near future.
The next newsletter will be November 15th so before I sign off here, I want to again thank our sponsors, exhibitors, speakers, staff, conference champions, and our advisory board. Our advisory board members have more than full time careers and significantly contribute to NNBA’s success. Donna Cardillo, Louise Jakubik, Lou Podlesni and a special thanks to Renee Thompson for the wonderful job she did as our conference emcee. We are committed to NNBA’s mission and dedicated to promoting and advancing nurses in business!
