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Connie Curran, EdD, RN, FAAN, was founder and chief executive officer of Best on Board, a national organization focused on educating and certifying healthcare trustees. She was the founding executive director of C-Change, a national organization focused on the eradication of cancer. C-Change participants, roughly 150 in all, included the heads of federal and state governmental agencies, for-profit corporations, the motion picture industry, and nonprofit groups whose missions related to cancer. Former President George H. W. Bush and First Lady Barbara Bush served as co-chairs, with Senator Dianne Feinstein as vice chair.
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Curran was the founder, president, and chief executive officer of Curran-Care, LLC from 1995 to 2000. CurranCare was a national management and consulting services organization that delivered dynamic leadership to the healthcare industry. Cardinal Health acquired CurranCare, and Curran served as president of Cardinal Health Consulting Services, providing leadership to approximately 200 consultants. She held a variety of executive positions in academic and healthcare organizations. She was the chief nursing officer of Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx, vice president of the American Hospital Association, and dean at the Medical College of Wisconsin.
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A prolific scholar in the field, Curran has more than 200 publications and several research programs to her credit. She served as the director of two of the most comprehensive national studies on staff recruitment, retention, and labor market participation. More recently, she had co-authored books on hospital-physician integration, hospital redesign, and optimized home care integration. She served as the editor of Nursing Economic$ for 18 years. Her most recent book, Claiming the Corner Office: Executive Leadership Lessons for Nurses, was published in 2013.
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She graduated from the Harvard Business School program for company owners and presidents and served on numerous corporate, privately held, and nonprofit boards, including serving as chair of the board of directors of Silver Cross Hospital. Until her untimely death in 2014, she served as chair of the board of DeVry, Inc., and served as director for the boards for Hospira, Inc., DePaul University, Chicago Lurie Children's Hospital, and the University of Wisconsin Foundation.