Tara A Cortes

Prof. Cortes is recognized for her distinguished career spanning executive leadership, nursing education, research, and practice. She has provided significant contributions to advance the health of people, particularly older vulnerable adults. Importantly, she has developed interprofessional models in traditional as well as nontraditional settings to address the health and health behaviors of older adults and increase the capacity of the workforce to provide age sensitive care

As Executive Director of HIGN, Prof. Cortes has brought her leadership, experience, and wisdom to enhance select respected existing programs in the Institute and to develop new and innovative initiatives.  Her work has contributed to advancing interdisciplinary models across the continuum of care to reduce disparities in access to care, and to ensure healthy aging in place. She has helped change policy and practice in geriatric care and in low-vision and blindness care by developing roles for an interprofessional healthcare team to provide care for those with poor access to resources due to lack of knowledge or functional disabilities.

Prior to joining NYU, Prof. Cortes was president and CEO of Lighthouse International, a leading not-for-profit organization, dedicated to fighting vision loss and helping people prevent vision impairment. She mindfully transformed the organization into a healthcare provider from a social charity and was recognized worldwide for her leadership in helping to move the field of vision loss to healthcare from that of disability. Prof. Cortes spent the initial phase of her career in nursing education at Hunter College, and then as the Director of Nursing Research and Information Systems at Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center. She was the chief nursing officer at Rockefeller University Hospital and continued her career in nursing and hospital administration at Mount Sinai Medical Center and at Bridgeport Hospital, before assuming the senior leadership role at Lighthouse International.

Prof. Cortes was appointed as a 2013-2015 American Political Science Association Congressional Fellow and serves as a senior advisor at CMS in the Office of Medicare and Medicaid Coordination Office. She was also appointed by Community Catalyst as a geriatric consultant to the Medicare Rights Center to work with New York State on the implementation of the Fully Integrated Duals Advantage (FIDA) program, a CMS demonstration project. Prof. Cortes has been appointed by the Secretary of Health and Human Services to the Advisory Committee on Training in Primary Care Medicine and Dentistry for the 2016-2019 term. She is a fellow of the American Academy of Nursing and a fellow of the New York Academy of Medicine. She is a past fellow of the prestigious Robert Wood Johnson Executive Nurse Fellows Program. She serves on several boards including Archcare: the Catholic Healthcare System of NY, Isabella Geriatric Center, and Pacific College of Health and Science.

Among her many honors, Prof. Cortes was named one of the New York Women’s Agenda 2011 STARS for exemplifying the qualities embodied in NYWA’s mission to advocate and collaborate for the interests of New York women in public policy decisions. In 2011 she was awarded the Medallion for Outstanding Contributions to the Profession from the Villanova University College of Nursing. Prof. Cortes received the Distinguished Alumni Award from New York University, where she completed her PhD and Master's degrees. Her BSN is from Villanova University, where she served on the Board of Trustees for ten years.