I have spent my career at the intersection of science, practice, education, and policy, working to improve the health of children and strengthen the workforce that cares for them.
Nurses are the backbone of healthcare — and we need a seat at every table where healthcare decisions are being made.
— Jennifer Sonney
They deserve a healthcare system, and a research enterprise, built around their needs, their voices, and their futures. That conviction has driven every career decision I've made, from the asthma clinic to testifying before the FDA and CDC.
I didn't set out to build mobile apps or design virtual reality environments for children and teens. I followed clinical problems and co-designed solutions alongside the children, families, and clinicians living them, work that continually pointed toward technology as a tool in that pursuit.
It is a privilege to prepare the next generation of nurse scientists and practitioners to advance child health, nursing science, and the health of communities. What I find most meaningful is when my students become colleagues, and colleagues become leaders.
I live in the Seattle area with my husband, our adolescent twins, and Charlie, our dog, who has strong opinions about walk schedules. Raising teenagers while researching child health keeps me professionally informed and personally humbled.
I began as a nursing assistant at Seattle Children's Hospital while in college, became a primary care PNP after my MN in 2006, and directed a pediatric asthma program for four years before pursuing my PhD at the University of Arizona. That clinical work became the foundation for my program of research: giving children a voice in their own care and co-designing solutions alongside them to address their real-world challenges.
Started as a nursing assistant on the medical unit while in college. Stayed through nursing school, became an RN, and completed my MN in pediatric primary care before leaving to practice as a PNP.
Practiced as a primary care PNP in community-based clinics, then founded and directed a pediatric asthma program for families who could not easily reach subspecialty care. Parents and children described the same asthma differently, and children knew things about their own symptoms that no one was asking them. I built the program around both of them, inside the primary care clinic families already trusted.
I came to UW in 2011 as a lecturer and track lead, and led the pediatric advanced practice tracks for the next ten years while teaching and building my research. Ours was the only PNP program serving Washington, Wyoming, Alaska, Montana, and Idaho, and it depended on clinical partners dedicated to training our students. I spent those years in conversation with them, and when they told us the region had no pathway for acute care pediatric practice, we built one together. Our overall PNP graduating cohort tripled.
Almost everything the field knew about how children manage asthma came from asking their parents. My dissertation at the University of Arizona, Parent-Child Asthma Illness Representations, asked both, and compared what they said. I wanted to give the child a voice in their own care, clinically and in research.
A research program grounded in one commitment: the children, families, and clinicians who will use a solution belong in its design, not at the end of it.
Five consecutive years of elected national office at NAPNAP, the first national professional society for nurse practitioners, representing 8,000 pediatric APRNs. I was elected Secretary, and during that term the organization faced an executive transition and a fiscal crisis. I chaired the search for the permanent CEO and ran for president because I wanted to see our professional home through it. As President I led the organization's 50th anniversary, launched a national mental and behavioral health training initiative for the pediatric workforce that has since passed 10,000 course completions, directed our federal advocacy, and co-led strategic planning with 52 chapters and 18 special interest groups.
The School was preparing to rewrite its DNP curriculum, and I had the curricular expertise and the national standards work to lead it. I directed a comprehensive crosswalk of our current and proposed curriculum, including an introduced, reinforced, and competent framework, to support our adoption of competency-based education.
Appointed to the permanent role in February 2024.
Lead the School's educational mission across strategy and operations, roughly $11.4M annually in operating budget, student scholarships, and federal training grants, for 800 students in five degree programs. When I took the role, academic services, simulation, learning technologies, and clinical placement were four separate teams, each with its own reporting line. Bringing them together into one office has been the central work of my time in the role. I also lead accreditation and regulatory compliance in Seattle and coordinate it across our Bothell and Tacoma campuses, serve as acting dean in the Executive Dean's absence, and lead two of the School's eight 2025–2030 strategic plan initiatives, Academic Accessibility and Innovation and Holistic Student Success Ecosystem Integration. I also serve on the University's Academic Associate Deans of Health Sciences committee spanning the academic health center, which I chaired in 2025–2026.
Recognized with the 2026 Loretta C. Ford Distinguished Nurse Practitioner Award, named for the founder of the NP movement and awarded by NAPNAP, and with the NAPNAP President's Award in 2021 and 2026.
More than two decades ago I was a nursing assistant on a medical unit at Seattle Children's, learning what nurses actually do. Today I collaborate with Seattle Children's investigators on multisite national trials, and I prepare the nurse leaders who will practice on those same units and generate the evidence that changes what happens there.