Pinnacle Lecture Series

Each semester, the Connell School brings to Boston College an inspiring leader who speaks on an issue at the forefront of health care. Pinnacle lectures are open to all Boston College students, staff, faculty, alumni, and preceptors as well as practitioners and scholars unaffiliated with Boston College. View archived videos of past Pinnacle lectures.

SPRING 2024

Advancing the Health Sciences through Scientific Storytelling

Wednesday, March 27, 2024

Yawkey Center, Murray Room


4 p.m. Screening of “The Black Angels: A Nurse’s Story” (optional)

5 p.m. Pinnacle Lecture


Navy Veteran, former United States Naval Nurse Corps Officer, and Filmmaker

Denetra Hampton

M.H.A., Health Care Administration; B.S., Nursing

Founder, For Nurses By Nurses Productions

Denetra Hampton is the spring 2024 Dr. Maureen P. McCausland Pinnacle Keynote Speaker.

About the speaker

Denetra Hampton is the founder of For Nurses By Nurses Productions, a media platform that includes a leadership initiative, digital nursing and health science library, and film production company. Her work is focused on bridging gaps in health inequities through scientific storytelling. 

A nurse, 22-year Navy veteran, and a former United States Naval Nurse Corps Officer, Hampton studied public health and diversity outside the U.S., including in Chile and Argentina. In 2018, she released The Black Angels: A Nurse’s Story, about Black nurses in the 1940s who risked their lives to care for patients with tuberculosis—an incurable disease at that point—after white nurses refused to do so. 

Her most recent work, The First Four, honors the inaugural African American nurses to graduate from Chicago's Provident Hospital and Training School for Nurses. She also produced Year of the Nurse and Midwife: A Film Project, Racism in Nursing: The African American Nursing Experience, and The Dixie 3: A Story on Civil Rights in Nursing.

Biographical information condensed and edited from ForNursesByNurses.org

Continuing Education Contact Hours

This nursing continuing professional development activity is designated for contact hour(s) provided by Boston College Connell School of Nursing Professional Development and Continuing Education. 

Boston Connell School of Nursing Professional Development and Continuing Education is approved as a provider of nursing continuing professional development by The American Nurses Association Massachusetts, an accredited approver by the American Nurses Credentialing Center’s Commission on Accreditation. 

Past Pinnacle Lecture Speakers


Click on the links below to view past lectures

Vanessa Kerry
Director, Program in Global Public Policy and Social Change, Harvard Medical School
CEO, Seed Global Health
Director-General Special Envoy, Climate Change and Health, World Health Organization
Fall 2023

Jennie Chin Hansen
Past CEO, American Geriatrics Society; Former President, AARP
Spring 2023

Angelleen Peters-Lewis
Chief Operating Officer and Chief Nurse Executive, Barnes-Jewish Hospital
Fall 2022

Rear Admiral Aisha K. Mix
Chief Nurse Officer, U. S. Public Health Service
Spring 2022

Katherine E. Gregory
Dean, Connell School of Nursing, Boston College
Fall 2021

Susan Gennaro
Dean, Connell School of Nursing, Boston College
Spring 2021

Patricia Davidson
Dean, School of Nursing, Johns Hopkins University
Fall 2020

Gennaro Rocco
Director, Steering Committee, Scientific Research Center Centro di Eccellenza per la Cultura e la Ricerca Infermieristica

Alessandro Stievano
Research Fellow in Nursing, Centre of Excellence for Nursing Scholarship OPI, Rome
Fall 2019

Sheila Davis
Chief of Clinical Operations and Chief Nursing Officer, Partners in Health
Spring 2019

Lorna Finnegan
President, National Organization of Nurse Practitioner Faculties
Executive Associate Dean, University of Illinois at Chicago College of Nursing
Fall 2018

Susan Orsega
Chief Nurse Officer, United States Public Health Service
Spring 2018

Marla Weston
Chief Executive Officer, American Nurses Association Enterprise
Fall 2017

Patricia Flatley Brennan
Director, National Library of Medicine
Spring 2017

Loretta Sweet Jemmott
Vice President for Health and Health Equity and
Professor, College of Nursing and Health Professions, Drexel University
Fall 2016

Kathleen Rice Simpson
Perinatal Clinical Nurse Specialist
Editor in Chief, MCN: The American Journal of Maternal Child Nursing
Spring 2016

Margaret Grey
Annie W. Goodrich Professor, Yale School of Nursing
Fall 2015

Antonia M. Villarruel
Margaret Bond Simon Dean of Nursing, University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing
Spring 2015

Maureen E. Gormley ’85
Chief Operating Officer, National Institutes of Health Clinical Center
Fall 2014

Courtney H. Lyder
Dean and Professor, UCLA School of Nursing
Assistant Director, UCLA Health System
Executive Director, UCLA Health System Patient Safety Institute
Spring 2014

Maureen P. McCausland ’72, M.S. ’77
Senior Vice President and System Chief Nursing Officer, MedStar Health
Fall 2013

Lee Woodruff
Best-selling author, CBS This Morning show contributor
Co-founder, Bob Woodruff Foundation
Spring 2013

Angela Barron McBride
Distinguished Professor and University Dean Emerita, Indiana University School of Nursing
Fall 2012

Karen Daley, M.S. ’04, Ph.D. ’10
President, American Nurses Association
Spring 2012

Karen H. Morin
President of the Honor Society of Nursing, Sigma Theta Tau International
Fall 2011

Linda Burnes Bolton
Vice President and Chief Nursing Officer, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center
Spring 2011

Terry Fulmer, M.S. ’77, Ph.D. ’83 
Dean, New York University College of Nursing
Fall 2010