Terry Fulmer, PhD, RN, FAAN
President and CEO
John A. Hartford Foundation
Terry Fulmer, PhD, RN, FAAN, is the President of The John A. Hartford Foundation in New York City, a foundation dedicated to improving the care of older adults. Established in 1929, the Foundation has a current endowment of more than half a billion dollars. She serves as the chief strategist for the Foundation and was recently recognized for her leadership as one of the top 50 Influencers in Aging by PBS’s Next Avenue, the premier digital publication dedicated to covering issues for older Americans. Dr. Fulmer is an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine. She previously served as Distinguished Professor and Dean of Health Sciences at Northeastern University. Prior to that, she served as the Erline Perkins McGriff Professor and Dean of the New York University College of Nursing. She received her bachelor's degree from Skidmore College, her master's and doctoral degrees from Boston College and her Geriatric Nurse Practitioner Post-Master’s Certificate from NYU. She completed a Brookdale National Fellowship and she was the first nurse to serve on the board of the American Geriatrics Society and was the first nurse to serve as President of the Gerontological Society of America.
Dr. Fulmer is nationally and internationally recognized as a leading expert in geriatrics and is best known for conceptualization and development of the national NICHE program and research on the topic of elder abuse and neglect, work that has been funded by the National Institute on Aging and the National Institute of Nursing Research. She is a Trustee for the Josiah Macy Jr. Foundation, Springer Publishing Company, the Bassett Healthcare System, and is co-chair of the National Academy of Medicine’s Forum on Aging, Disability, and Independence. She previously served as the Chair of the National Advisory Committee for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Executive Nurse Fellows Program, and held board positions at Skidmore College, the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, the Geriatrics and Gerontology Advisory Committee for the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, and the Advisory Board for Hong Kong Polytechnic University School of Nursing. She is the recipient of prestigious awards, including the 2017 American Society on Aging Rosalie S. Wolf Award for her body of work on elder abuse. In 2016, she received the 2016 Award for Exceptional Service to The New York Academy of Medicine for her distinguished service on the Academy’s Board of Trustees, including as vice-chair and for her active engagement in the policy work of the Academy, especially its Age-friendly NYC initiative. She has been honored with invitations for named lectureships from noted universities. She has held faculty appointments at Columbia University, where she was the Anna C. Maxwell Chair in Nursing, and she has also held appointments at Boston College, Yale University, and the Harvard Division on Aging at Harvard Medical School. She has served as a visiting professor of nursing at the University of Pennsylvania and Case Western Reserve University.
She is a Distinguished Practitioner of the National Academies of Practice and currently an attending nurse and senior nurse in the Yvonne L. Munn Center for Nursing Research at the Massachusetts General Hospital and an attending nurse at Mount Sinai Medical Center in NYC. Her clinical appointments have included the Beth Israel Hospital in Boston, the Massachusetts General Hospital, and the NYU Langone Medical Center. She is a Fellow of the American Academy of Nursing, the Gerontological Society of America, and the New York Academy of Medicine where she served as vice-chair. She has authored over 150 peer-reviewed papers and edited 10 books.
Before joining NHCOA, she served as executive director and chief operating officer of the Hispanic-Serving Health Professions Schools (HSHPS) in Washington. She joined HSHPS after serving as director of the Institute for Hispanic Health at the National Council of La Raza (NCLR) where she led numerous public health programs to improve the health status of Latinos nationwide.
Dr. Cruz received her Bachelor of Science in Biology and holds a Master’s degree in Public Health and a Doctorate in Public Health with a specialty in global health from The George Washington University School of Public Health and Health Services. Her primary focus is to provide a Hispanic perspective on public health and older adult issues, to increase policy-maker and public understanding of the needs impacting Hispanics and disenfranchised sectors of our society, and to encourage the adoption of programs and policies that equitably serve everyone.
