Michele Crespo-Fierro

Michele Crespo-Fierro (she/ella), PhD, MPH, RN, AACRN, CNE, FNYAM, FAAN, is a clinical associate professor and the director of the LEAD Honors Program at NYU Rory Meyers College of Nursing. She is an expert educator focused on diversifying nursing to deliver culturally congruent, linguistically appropriate patient-centered care. Her work and publications emphasize the need for nurses to engage in leadership practices and build trust with individuals and communities to achieve health equity. She works with undergraduate students to advance their leadership practices and nursing careers through mentoring and capstone project development in research, practice, education, and service.

Crespo-Fierro’s dissertation explored the culture care needs of Puerto Rican women receiving HIV care from nurse practitioners in New York City, with the intention of bridging culturally congruent caring and patient engagement practices. She collaborates with research teams at NYU Meyers to incorporate culturally inclusive practices that honor Latin communities. She works on NLN committees to advance diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives. She is an Advanced AIDS Certified Registered Nurse and a Certified Nurse Educator.

Prior to joining the faculty at NYU Meyers, Crespo-Fierro worked at VNS Health for the AIDS Project. There she trained all levels of nursing staff in HIV/AIDS care and designed complex care plans for people living with HIV/AIDS at home. She co-authored publications on nursing care management for this population which introduced person-centered caring practices focused on culture and intended to foster adherence to care plans before the introduction of life-saving anti-retroviral regimens.

Crespo-Fierro is a Fellow of the Mercy University Health Equity Influencer Program, and the AACN Diversity Leadership Institute. She has been inducted as a Fellow into the New York Academy of Medicine and the American Academy of Nursing. She was named the NAHN Nurse of the Year in 2019 and the NAHN-NY Nurse of the Year in 2018. She received the JANAC’s Outstanding Clinical Article of the Year Award in 1998.