Meet our new faculty
We’re pleased to welcome our new faculty for the 2020-21 academic year.
JONATHAN AULD
My program of research focuses on the interaction between heart failure symptom biology, patient behaviors, and patient outcomes. A central aim of my research is to elucidate how symptom biology and the patient response to symptoms in people with heart failure differ in order to develop more targeted and effective interventions to improve the lives of patients and their caregivers. Before pursuing my doctoral degree from Oregon Health & Science University, I practiced as a ventricular assist device coordinator, a specialized nursing role caring for patients with implanted heart pumps and their family members. In addition, I have a master’s degree in teaching and taught elementary school prior to becoming a nurse. My experiences as a nurse researcher, clinician, and educator provide a strong foundation to promote critical thinking in nursing practice and to develop an innovative and impactful program of cardiovascular biobehavioral nursing research.
JENNA van DRAANEN
The aim for my research is to improve science and address health disparities through the rigorous evaluation of interventions and their methods of implementation. My research agenda advances scientific understanding of the social forces influencing mental health and substance use disorders, and I do this through a focus on the harms of socioeconomic marginalization and childhood adversity and in a way that includes the perspectives of people with lived experience. I approach my research with a life course perspective that ensures phenomena like childhood adversity are properly contextualized and situated with an understanding of the way adversities build over time and across generations, through the concept of linked lives. While my primary appointment is in the School of Nursing, I am an interdisciplinary researcher at heart, coming to the UW from a postdoctoral fellowship in Sociology at the University of British Columbia (in Vancouver, Canada), and holding a PhD in Community Health Sciences from UCLA.
JAMES DYKES
I have worked in Psychiatry for over 20 years; Inpatient, Partial Hospitalization, Community Mental Health, and Private practice. I have utilized most treatment modalities in individual and group psychotherapy. My favorite framework involves communication style and psychological needs.
I have 10 years experience in Clinical Education, primarily in the Swedish Medical system as well as Adjunct Faculty at Seattle University. I am currently a member of the Ethics Committee at Swedish Edmonds.
I enjoy playing sports, working on art, and time with my family. I look forward to our collaborative process!
JONIKA HASH
My research interest includes sleep health and sleep health equity in families with young children. My dissertation examined early childhood sleep problems, social emotional development, and the impact of a strengths-based, infant mental health program on early childhood sleep problems within the context of adversity. My postdoctoral research examined sleep health knowledge, attitudes, beliefs, and practices in mothers with young children, to inform tailored sleep health care. Key findings from my postdoctoral research identified contextual factors linked to sleep health inequities. My research has used a variety of qualitative and quantitative data analysis methods including inductive content analysis, path modeling, and latent growth curve modeling. I have a clinical background in emergency room nursing.
WENDY IMBERG
Greetings! My name is Wendy Imberg PhD ARNP and I have been certified in family practice and in women’s health for more than 20 years. I think it is accurate to say that I began my nursing type career as a Peace Corps volunteer in Ecuador, SA. I had an extended career with my own panel in primary care with Providence Health and Services in Snohomish county. My panel included many monolingual Spanish patients. I’m currently working with Molina as a Care Connections field nurse practitioner in King County. I was certified in women’s health before I earned my family nurse practitioner certification. I owe much of my knowledge to the UW SON and am excited to be able to share with student nurse practitioners. I live in Duvall, WA with my husband and pets.
BRENDAN MCDONALD
My name is Brendan McDonald and I will be one of the clinical faculty for NCLIN 418. I have been working in the mental health field for over a decade, beginning as a behavioral technician at a drug and alcohol rehabilitation center in Tucson before moving to Boston to obtain my BSN at Massachusetts General Hospital Institute of Health Professions. Following this I moved to Texas where I worked as a nurse on a renal transplant and general medical step down unit for two years before applying for the DNP at the UW. While pursuing my doctorate I was the charge nurse on the behavioral Health unit at SWEDISH Ballard. Since becoming an ARNP I have worked at the VA and currently work at the Community Health Center of Snohomish County. In my free time I love to read (I have previous degrees in English and Creative Writing) but most of my time these days is spent with my 1-year-old son.
JESSIE MARKS
After graduating with my Doctor of Nursing Practice degree, I worked as a Pediatric Hospitalist in Eastern, Washington. This employment opportunity allowed me to gain experience in newborn management, with both late-preterm and term newborns. As well as experience with managing and coordinating a pediatric specialty infusion clinic, where I coordinated care between numerous specialties and sought to meet the needs of a diverse patient population with interprofessional collaboration (i.e. social work support, child life, etc…).
After 3 years of experience, I moved back to Western Washington, where I worked in a pediatric primary care practice as a rotating provider. As a rotator, I had the opportunity to work in 8 clinic locations throughout the greater Bellevue area. I was able to build upon my clinical skills and manage numerous well-child visits and same day access visits. I also had the opportunity to work evenings and weekends where I gained more urgent care skills (i.e. splinting, burn care). I worked in this clinical practice for 2 years. Due to COVID-19, I switched to another pediatric primary care practice.
I have taught within the Graduate Pediatric Track for 3 years, where I have taught in clinical lab and seminar courses as well as pediatric specific didactic courses. I have re-developed NSG 539, newborn management course. I have taught across all years of the DNP program (1st, 2nd and 3rd year) and have taught midwifery, family NP and pediatric NP students. I have also coordinated clinical placements for the Pediatric primary and acute care students during this time.
ANN MOORE
Ann Moore is currently the Director of Resilience and Connections at Seattle Children’s Hospital. Before this role, she was the Director of the Psychiatry and Behavioral Medicine Unit. She has been at Seattle Children’s for the past 28 years all on the Psychiatric unit until her most recent role. During her time in psychiatry, the unit grew from 12 beds to 41 and had 5 dedicated medical beds within the unit. She participated in the creation of the Emergency Department Mental Health program, restructured the hospital response to behavioral emergencies to a model aligned with a code blue response and implemented a behavior support team for the hospital. She is a graduate of the University of Washington with a bachelor’s in Social Work in 1989. She then received her AA in nursing from Shoreline and then completed her BSN/MSN from WGU. Excited to be back her alma mater and teaching nursing students about the exciting field of psychiatric nursing!
RYAN SAECHAO
I found my passion in nursing when I was a freshman in high school. I did running start to complete my prerequisites and nursing assistant training. I worked as a CNA for about 4 years in long-term care and acute care. I went to Shoreline CC and obtained my ADN, which I was very excited to finally accomplish my dream of becoming a nurse. I started my BSN at UWB after graduating. I am currently working at Harborview Medical Center and have been there for over 7 years. My area of practice is in medicine and Telemetry.
What I enjoy the most in nursing is the teaching aspect, so I decided to pursue my MSN in nursing education. I am very excited to part of the UW school of nursing team and hope to inspire students to reach their fullest potential.
ELIZABETH (BETH) TINKER
My doctoral studies were focused on better understanding the drivers for poor outcomes in all the domains we care about for children – physical and
mental health, behavior, learning and establishing and sustaining responsive and loving relationships. I studied the biologic impacts of toxic stress, the inter-generational transmission of risk and adversity, resilience and protective factors and dual-generation approaches to treating these complex disruptions in body systems and biologic circuitry. My dissertation research was on behavioral sleep problems in young children and a family-centered, home-delivered and personalized intervention to treat these sleep problems and prevent common associated problems at both the family and child level. I was honored to have been chosen as a Robert Wood Johnson Future of Nursing Scholar for my doctoral studies.
Before returning to graduate school at the University of Washington for my PhD, I worked at Seattle King County Public Health for over 20 years in a variety of roles. As a public health nurse I worked both in a clinical setting and in the community providing home visits to high risk pregnant women and families with young children. I was also a manager for public health for about 9 years where I was responsible for overseeing a large team of inter-disciplinary professionals working in a host of programs to support families in King County by reducing risk, addressing health disparities and increasing capacity for achieving better health. My years of working in public health enabled me to have a deep understanding of issues and barriers facing many families and communities, a keen recognition for the need to address them on multiple socioecological levels, an appreciation for the workforce issues and concerns that must be considered, and a desire to build a more cohesive, collaborative and family-centered system for health care delivery.
EMILY WINN
When I first began a career in nursing, I found I was passionate about children and family health. I have since found my clinical fit as a pediatric primary care nurse practitioner, and I have added and extra emphasis on pediatric mental health by obtaining a PMHS certification. I have worked since 2016 in full-time clinical care and I am passionate about increasing behavioral, developmental and mental health access in primary care to our communities. I love to precept UW DNP students in my clinic and I enjoy being a part of the faculty in educating and empowering our nurses to go forth into our communities and improve them with their care.
XIANG (STELLA) ZENG
I completed both my BSN and MSN education at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. After graduating with my BSN in 2014, I worked on the university hospital’s acute care floor, Stroke and Generalized Rehab, for almost 4 years. This job was very rewarding as it allowed me to watch patients recover and become more independent. After a year of acute care, I decided to go back to school for my masters, this was challenging as I was also working full time.
I completed my MSN (Adult and Gerontology Primary Care Nurse Practitioner) in 2017. I accepted a position at HMC Sleep Medicine Clinic. I have an interest in sleep medicine because of my past experiences working night shift and dealing with sleep deprivation as well as its impact on health. I have always held a passion for teaching. I am grateful for this wonderful opportunity to become a clinical instructor at UW SON. I am very excited to start on this new journey.
We’d also like to welcome Alexis Koutlas and Gladys Romasanta