Anita Rich, DNP, RN, CHFN, CDCES, CGNC, FAAN, Senior Clinical Instructor, graduated with her BSN from the Nell Hodgson Woodruff School of Nursing and was on staff at the Emory University Hospital on the Medical Cardiology Unit, 4G, for most of her 40+ year nursing career. Her specialty is cardiology, specifically heart failure, as well as diabetes. For the last part of her clinical career, she was the Heart Failure Coordinator and Certified Diabetes Care and Education Specialist at Emory Johns Creek Hospital.  

Her passion is encouraging and equipping nursing students and nurses here at home and in low/middle income and post-conflict countries to be the most knowledgeable and prepared nurses and to elevate the professional self-perception of nurses through education. In 2010 she founded and serves as the CEO of the international nursing non-profit Nurses Heart to Heart (NHTH) to provide education for nurses as well as scholarships for men and women attending nursing schools in Iraq and Uganda. She also works to support the medical clinic at the refugee/internally displaced people (IDP) camp in Iraq serving 8,000 survivors of the Yazidi genocide.  NHTH also provides medications, CPR and labor and delivery manikins, fetal dopplers and other equipment during these trips to nursing schools, hospitals, clinics, and the camp. Dr. Rich is a Certified Global Nurse Consultant (CGNC) through the International Council of Nurses (ICN).

She has taught nursing in every province of Mongolia, in Tanzania, Uganda, and Iraq. Dr. Rich completed her DNP project on the Professional Self Perception of Nurses in Mongolia which was published in 2024 in the Journal of Clinical Nursing.  She is on the Board of Directors for the Nursing and Midwifery Development Centre in Erbil, Iraq. Dr. Rich is an International Speaker most recently on nursing policy in Iraq at the International Council of Nurses Congress in Helsinki, Finland in June. 

Dr. Rich is the recipient of the 2022 Emory Nursing Distinguished Alumni Service Award, the 2023 March of Dimes “Heroes in Action” Distinguished Nurse of the Year Award, the 2024 Magnet Nurse of the Year Award for Transformational Leadership and was inducted as a Fellow of the American Academy of Nurses in October 2025. 

Rich, A.O., & Anderson, R.K. (2024).  Educational Training and Nursing Professional Self-Perception in Mongolia:  A Prospective Observational Pre-Post Design Study.  Journal of Clinical Nursing. https://doi.org/10.1111/jocn.17211

2025 Fellow of the American Academy of Nursing

ANCC Magnet Nurse of the Year Transformational Leadership 2024

Preventive Cardiovascular Nurses Association Heart Failure Nurse of the Year Award 2023

March of Dimes "Heroes in Action" Distinguished Nurse of the Year Award 2022

Emory Nursing Distinguished Alumni Service Award 2022