On January 9, 2012, J Taylor Harden PhD, RN, FAAN, former Assistant to the Director for Special Populations at the National Institute on Aging, assumed the position of the Building Academic Geriatric Nursing Capacity (BAGNC) Program Administrator at the coordinating center housed at the American Academy of Nursing.

She follows in the footsteps of the most recent BAGNC Director, Patricia G. Archbold, DNSc, RN, FAAN, who grew the program to include 142 Patricia G. Archbold pre-doctoral scholars and 93 Claire M. Fagin post-doctoral fellows in geriatric nursing. These BAGNC champions, in turn, have taught close to 33,000 nursing students, received over $74 million in new funding, and published more than 1,300 articles on the care of older adults. (See the BAGNC Evaluation Report and the 2010 Hartford Annual Report.)

Taylor shares our enthusiasm for BAGNC. “BAGNC is an awesome opportunity to join a leading national nursing initiative and give back to a field that I cherish,” she says. “I am very excited to join with the leaders of the John A. Hartford Centers of Geriatric Nursing Excellence and BAGNC Alumni in changing systems of care for older adults.”

On her first weekend, January 13-15, Taylor rolled up her sleeves and got to work as the BAGNC Program Administrator. She spent the MLK weekend at a retreat with the nine directors of our Hartford Centers of Geriatric Nursing Excellence. They were working to build a collaborative center drawing upon their collective strengths and best practices.

I doubt Taylor’s dream was to spend her first weekend working in a Wifi-challenged Chicago airport hotel on a snowy January holiday; however, the collaborative spirit and creative, strategic initiative demonstrated by all at the table was certainly the stuff dreams are made of.

Taylor is the perfect nurse leader to oversee this collaborative evolution in the centers and BAGNC scholarship program (indeed, she is “Taylor Made” for this role). Since a young age, she says, “I had an affinity for older adults and loved spending time in their presence. I was very happy to meld my love for older adults with my passion for nursing.”

Her leadership track record is impressive, evidenced by extensive research activities, grant awards, numerous distinguished presentations, and publications. Taylor joined the National Institutes of Health in 1994 as a Health Scientist Administrator, leaving only recently after more than a decade as Assistant to the Director of Special Populations. Prior to this she taught undergraduate and graduate courses at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio. A U.S. Army Nurse Corps and U.S. Air Force flight nurse veteran, early in her career Dr. Harden served at the Veteran’s Administration Hospital in Washington, D.C., Walson Army Hospital at Fort Dix, New Jersey, and numerous Air Force bases.

Taylor is a Fellow in the American Academy of Nursing and an Elected Fellow of the New York Academy of Medicine and the Gerontological Society of America. She earned the NIH Merit Award for Women in Biomedical Research Careers from the NIH and is a Distinguished Alumna of the University of Texas at Austin.

Taylor is no stranger to the Hartford Foundation. For many years, we partnered on a nursing preconference to the well-respected NIA Summer Institute on Aging Research. Taylor has also long served on the Advisory Committee for the BAGNC Initiative, and we have greatly benefited from her wise counsel. She is particularly interested in reducing the devastating effect of dementia on the older population and our health system and sees additional research and improved nursing strategies as potential solutions.

We are elated and honored to have Taylor at the helm of our BAGNC Initiative. We look forward to having her, along with our Hartford Centers and BAGNC team at the American Academy of Nursing, take these programs to the next level, consistent with our internal strategic planning at the Foundation. We are confident Taylor will build on the accomplishments, expertise, and enthusiasm of all involved to “Taylor” our work to improve the health care of older adults.