Jerelyn Weiss was the Executive Director of Nurses Educational Funds, Inc. from 2015 to 2026. Early in her tenure, Ms. Weiss carried out the NEF transition from “bricks and mortar” to a "virtual office," contributing to significant and ongoing cost savings, flexibility, and operational efficiency for NEF. As the only NEF employee working part-time, she deftly managed all aspects of the virtual office, establishing remote systems and work processes that continue to be used today. She provided ongoing collaboration and crucial support to NEF committees to: bring about the annual NEF Galas and many other fundraising events; encouraged the transition from paper to virtual correspondence for board meetings and fundraising events to significantly cut printing costs; regularly collaborated with the IT Manager and board members to create a user-friendly, online NEF scholarship application process and NEF website redesign.
She became the face of NEF to countless scholars, deans of nursing programs, and NEF supporters. Working with the scholars, she shepherded them through their scholarship application process. Annually, she produced the virtual NEF Scholar Celebration to showcase that year's NEF scholars from across the country. She provided support for the development of numerous new scholarships and regularly communicated with the NEF Scholarship Benefactors. Throughout Ms. Weiss' years as Executive Director, NEF scholarship applications, new permanent scholarships, and NEF Gala sponsorships increased significantly.
Before becoming Executive Director of NEF, Ms. Weiss served as an NEF Board Member from 2011 through 2015 and as the NEF Web and Social Media Committee Co-Chair from 2012 through 2015. Her nursing career began as a public health nurse, then a family nurse practitioner in California as one of a team of five health care providers who founded, developed, and provided primary family care in two migrant farm worker Family Health Centers in the San Joaquin Valley. In 1990, after moving to New York City, she became the director of the Columbia University School of Nursing - Family Nurse Practitioner Program. She then became the first Director of Advanced Practice Nursing at Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. She went on to practice law as a medical malpractice defense attorney for McAloon and Friedman, PC, in Manhattan.
Ms. Weiss has served as the Clinical Vice President of Executive Health Exams, Intl. in New York City, a national for-profit comprehensive diagnostic screening service, where she was responsible for day-to-day clinical operations in the New York City Center, as well as the oversight of physicians, nurses, and support staff in the five health centers located in five different states. While in this position, her risk management responsibilities included serving as the privacy officer and conducting in-service classes for the physicians, support staff, and the EHE Board of Directors. She was an administrative director, then in-house consultant for the NLNAC accreditation at the Cochran School of Nursing in Yonkers, New York. As a consultant, she created a health care consulting business and was the Project Health Care Consultant for the nonprofit American Italian Cancer Foundation (AICF) in New York, where she produced a systems analysis of AICF's New York City, five-borough multiple mobile mammography services.
Her teaching experience includes classroom, national seminars, and distance learning related to women's health care; starting a health care business; quality assurance; and health care-related legal issues. She has published numerous articles and written the chapter entitled “Preparation for Leadership – Legal and Regulatory Considerations for Safe Patient Care” in Today's Nursing Leader – Managing, Succeeding, and Excelling; and edited several legal books for nurses and nurse practitioners.
Ms. Weiss has a Juris Doctorate degree from Santa Clara University School of Law in Santa Clara, California; is a retired member of the California and New York State Bars; has a Master of Science in the Science of Family Health Care from the University of California's Family Nurse Practitioner Program, Davis, California; and a Bachelor of Science in Nursing, with public health and school nursing lifetime certifications from the University of California School of Nursing in San Francisco, California.