Employee Biographies
Amanda L. Nickerson, RN, MSN, MPH - President and Chief Consultant
Ms. Nickerson is a Registered Nurse holding dual Masters' Degrees in Nursing Science and Public Health from Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. Ms. Nickerson obtained a Bachelor’s Degree in Nursing Science from the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth in 2002. While pursuing her graduate work at Emory University between 2002 and 2006, Ms. Nickerson worked as a staff nurse in the cardiology department of Emory University Hospital. During her time as a student in the Lillian Carter Center for International Nursing, Ms. Nickerson’s concentration was in international nursing leadership, with a focus on nursing development in the Newly Independent States. In 2004, Ms. Nickerson served as a nurse consultant to the Atlanta-Tbilisi Healthcare Partnership. Her work in Tbilisi, Georgia included an assessment of nursing competencies among nurses working at the Gudushauri National Medical Center and the Iashvili Central Children’s Hospital. These data were used for the completion of her Master’s Thesis entitled, Building Nursing Capacity in the former Soviet Republic of Georgia. Upon completing her graduate education, Ms. Nickerson was selected by the Association of Schools of Public Health to serve as a Public Health Fellow in the Division of Nursing, Health Resources and Services Administration in Rockville, Maryland. Ms. Nickerson is now the President and Chief Consultant of ALN Consulting, Inc. where she manages public health nursing contracts for several major nursing organizations in the United States. Originally from Massachusetts, Ms. Nickerson has called Georgia, Maryland, and Virginia home and has travelled and studied extensively in Western and Eastern Europe. Her professional interests include domestic nurse retention programs and the ethichal recruitment of foreign educated nurses. Ms. Nickerson is an active member of the American Nurses Association, the American Public Health Association, Sigma Theta Tau International and the Association of State and Territorial Directors of Nursing.
Dr. Jeannine Greenfield, RN, MA, ScD - Senior Consultant
Dr. Jeannine Greenfield is a Registered Nurse holding a doctorate in Maternal-Child Health from The Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health and was certified in Nursing Administration Advanced. Her nursing education was obtained at The Bellevue Schools of Nursing, T.C. Columbia University and New York University. Dr. Greenfield’s professional experience has been diverse and includes positions in academe, the health service arena, and the United States Air Force (USAF) Reserve. She has taught Parent-Child and Community Health Nursing, Health Policy and provided research advisement at the graduate level. At the undergraduate level, she has taught Community Health, Primary Nursing and Leadership. Dr. Greenfield was also the Director for Baccalaureate and Graduate Education at The National League for Nursing. In addition, she has provided both national and international consultation on educational issues. In the service arena, Dr Greenfield was a staff nurse in Pediatrics, a supervisor in Obstetrics, a Public Health Nurse and a Director of Education and Research in two urban medical centers serving underserved populations. In the USAF Reserve, she served as a flight nurse, a clinic nurse and retired after Desert Storm as a Chief of Nursing Service. In her last nursing service position, she also served as a case manager, a patient educator, and was active in Performance Improvement Activities and Healthcare Delivery redesign projects.
Dr Greenfield joined the Federal government in 2002 as a Staff Fellow at the Office on Women’s Health where she worked with the Regional Women’s Health Coordinators. This position permitted her to return to work within her original clinical area of expertise and to see firsthand the programmatic and policy issues which concern women of all ages and backgrounds. While a fellow she was selected for a unique duty as an advisor to Ambassador Nancy Brinker in Hungary where she provided advisement and consultation on health promotion and prevention activities for women and children; collaborated on disease management in a newly created private health maintenance community-based organization; worked with nurse educators and students on health prevention activities; assisted in community based maternal-health projects with a USAID funded project; and advised the American- Hungarian Chamber of Commerce on workplace health activities. A capstone experience upon her return was collaboration on the development of the Afghanistan Family Health Book using the leapfrog approach for illiterate Afghanistan consumers. This book is now the basis for a funded radio program using the novella model of health education.
Most recently Dr Greenfield was an International Health Officer for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) where she served as the focal point within the Office of Asia and the Pacific related to Afghanistan Health activities. In this capacity she developed and supervised grants, cooperative agreements and contracts to implement activities related to modern health care practices in maternal and child health, behavioral health and hospital administration. As the senior advisor for Afghanistan she represented HHS to other agencies of the U.S. Government such as the Department of State and the Department of Defense.
Dr Greenfield is a native New Yorker who now resides in Washington, DC but has called California, Virginia, Texas and Maryland home. She has also lived in Latin America and traveled widely. Formerly active in the field of professional nursing, she served on numerous state professional organizational committees. Her present professional interest is in International Health and she is an active member of The Global Health Council.
Email: jgreenfield@alnconsulting.org
Dr. Hyoun-Kyoung (Grace) Higgerson, RN, BSN, MPH, PhD - Consultant
Dr. Hyoun-Kyoung Higgerson holds a Ph. D degree in Public Health with a concentration in Health Education and Promotion from the University of Alabama at Birmingham. She obtained both a Bachelor’s Degree in Nursing Science in 1987 and a Master’s Degree in Public Health Nursing in 1992 from the Yonsei University in Seoul, Korea. Since 1987 she has worked as a health educator, instructor and researcher in various work settings including high school, nursing colleges and universities. While working as a nursing researcher and manager at the Korean Nurses Association from 1995-1998, Dr. Higgerson developed an electronic self-study licensure-preparation tutorial program for graduating nursing students and an electronic clinical pathway system known as the Nursing Diagnosis System for nurses working in state hospitals. As a honor for her state of the art work in Health Information Systems, Dr. Higgerson was appointed as a member of the International Council of Nurses Bank of Nurse Experts in 1997, where she continues to serve as a member of the International Nursing Research Peer Review Panel.
During her 18-year career, Dr. Higgerson has obtained extensive teaching and research experience, including the development of survey designs and data collection; conducting data analysis with SAS/SPSS; developing project implementation strategies; designing interventions; and conducting project evaluations. While studying at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, Dr. Higgerson successfully conducted several program evaluations on behavioral health youth issues such as smoking cessation programs in adolescents; increasing school performance in seventh grade students; and adolescent violence prevention programs. She also conducted several qualitative and quantitative studies related to breast cancer among African-American females and spiritual health issues of custodial grandparents.
In 2006, Dr. Higgerson was selected by the Association of Schools of Public Health as a Public Health Fellow in the Division of Medicine and Dentistry at the Health Resources and Services Administration of the United States Department of Health and Human Services in Rockville, Maryland. There she served in the Office of Minority Health and Health Disparities for one year and was instrumental in the development of program evaluation tools and performance indicators for Title VII and Title VIII programs and participated in the grant review process. Dr. Higgerson's professional interest and expertise is in the areas of Health Education, Health Information Technology, Program Evaluation and Data Analysis.
Email: ghiggerson@alnconsulting.org
Email: GHiggerson@alnconsulting.org