Wild Iris Medical Education, Inc.
Wild Iris Medical Education is a privately-owned company offering high quality online continuing education since 1998. Now in its tenth year, the company has expanded to provide accredited and state-approved courses for nurses, critical care nurses, occupational therapists, physical therapists, EMTs, paramedics, and other healthcare professionals.
OUR TEAM
Ann Johnson, RN
Chief Executive Officer
Ann Johnson is co-founder and CEO of Wild Iris Medical Education. She is a registered nurse and has worked in many areas of nursing. Ann's last hospital job was as Emergency Department Manager and Director of the Drug-Free Workplace Program at Ukiah Valley Medical Center in Ukiah, California. She was also a nursing instructor for five years at College of the Redwoods in Fort Bragg, California.
Ann began dreaming of becoming a nurse entrepreneur in 1980. In 1997 she co-founded Wild Iris with Lauren Robertson and now enjoys being able to combine her thirty years of hospital nursing with her love of the computer and education.
Ann lives and works from her property in the redwoods of California. She has spent the last twenty-three years as a fire fighter with the Comptche Volunteer Fire Department. Ann and her husband spend their free time walking their dogs on the beach.
Randal Stuart MacDonald, BA, CSDP
Chief Technology Officer, Technical Director
Randy MacDonald has been working with networked computer systems since the mid-1980s and is an expert in software development, including Internet programming, web-database integration, and e-commerce systems. He is conversant with a wide variety of software technology platforms and programming languages. Randy earned a bachelor's degree with honors, summa cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa, from the University of Oregon in 1990. Randy is an IEEE-certified software development professional.
Randy is responsible for the programming and management of all technical systems used by Wild Iris Medical Education. He has custom-designed the Wild Iris content management system, a comprehensive relational database, and a site-wide e-commerce continuing education system for the company. Each is built in accordance with professional software development standards.
Randy, like Ann Johnson, is a volunteer fire fighter in Comptche, California.
Judith Johnstone, BA
Executive Editor
Judy Johnstone has been an editor of college and professional textbooks for many years. She has edited and produced well-known texts (for example, Kozier/Erb Fundamentals of Nursing) for publishers including Addison-Wesley Nursing, Prentice-Hall, and WB Saunders.
Judy seeks out our writers, contracts with them to write courses, works closely with them during the creative process, and finally edits each course before it is posted. She applies the high standards of textbook publishing to Wild Iris courses and has established a two-year revision cycle for them.
Being able to work at home has allowed her to live in such prime locations as Santa Fe and San Francisco. While in Santa Fe she began working with a spiritual foundation. Most of the work is done quietly, a notable exception being the 1995 United Nations Conference on the Status of Women in Beijing. Currently living in the Phoenix area, Judy is looking for ways she can support the environment by going Green.
Nancy Evans, BS
Senior Contributing Editor
Nancy Evans is a health science writer and editor with more than three decades of experience in healthcare publishing. She served as senior editor at Mosby/Times Mirror, senior editor in the health sciences division of Addison-Wesley, and senior medical editor at Appleton & Lange. She is an honorary member of Sigma Theta Tau International Honor Society of Nursing.
A breast cancer survivor since 1991, Nancy served as president of Breast Cancer Action (BCA) and later as a member of the board of directors of Breast Cancer Fund. She currently works with Breast Cancer Fund as health science consultant.
Nancy co-produced (with Allie Light and Irving Saraf) the HBO documentary film Rachel's Daughters: Searching for the Causes of Breast Cancer. She has written and spoken extensively on breast cancer issues in the United States, Canada, Belgium, and New Zealand. She is also the co-producer (with Light-Saraf) of Children and Asthma, a KQED documentary film, and the documentary, Good Food, Bad Food: Obesity in American Children.
Susan Walters Schmid, BA, MA, PhD (candidate)
Contributing Editor
Susan Schmid is a historian and an editor with more than a dozen years' experience gathering and analyzing information for public presentation. Having developed a broad background in business in early adulthood, Susan launched a second career when she discovered her love of editorial work. After a decade of in-house work with a textbook publisher, a small press, and a university, she is now an independent contractor. One of her specialty areas is working with writing of all kinds to make technical and professional topics accessible to all readers.
The love of her life—until recently—was a motorcycle. Susan is now a newlywed enjoying small-town life in the Eastern Sierra, where her new husband is fond of telling all his friends "She came with her own motorcycle!" Her sixteen-year-old cat has adapted well to the new life, although he does not ride a motorcycle.
Persis Mary Hamilton, RN, CNS, MS, EdD
Nurse Planner, Writer
Persis Hamilton works as Wild Iris's nurse planner to ensure compliance with guidelines of the American Nurses Credentialing Center. Persis has a rich background in nursing, nursing education, and writing. She has written fourteen nursing textbooks for two major publishers and several courses for Wild Iris. Her master’s degree focused on community mental health nursing and her doctoral dissertation investigated the relationship of learning to behavioral objectives and visual design in a textbook.
Over the years Persis has worked in most areas of nursing and she taught for more than forty years in vocational, associate, baccalaureate, and graduate nursing programs. She has served as an item writer for the League for Nursing and as principle speaker in numerous continuing education workshops. While serving on the faculty at the University of Guam, Persis conducted research into the high rate of suicide in Micronesia. She now maintains a private practice in psychotherapy and in her "spare time" is publishing a novel about the treatment of psychiatric patients in the 1930s.
Susanna MacDonald, BA
Web Producer
Susanna MacDonald has designed and produced websites since 1996, first as senior partner of a web development company for five years and then as an independent contractor providing services to companies across the United States and Ireland. She specializes in comprehensive website design including site architecture, navigation and usability, and the adaptation of business identity, services, and content to the unique medium of the Internet.
Susanna is responsible for maintaining the Wild Iris Medical Education websites and design, planning and implementation of future website improvements. She also works with each department in Wild Iris to design UIs for internal systems, assist with project management, and provide technical services for a variety of projects and staff.
While away from her computer, Susanna enjoys artistic pursuits in her garden, golf, travel, literature, and drawing. She is continuing her education in the creative arts.
Janis MacDonald, CNA
Director of Marketing
Janis MacDonald, initially a certified nurse assistant, carried her interpersonal skills to the trade show industry where she accumulated thirty years' experience with professional and trade associations. As a consultant, her clients ranged from the American Dental Association to the American Trucking Association. As director of marketing for Wild Iris, Janis manages existing corporate accounts and acquires new ones.
Janis is a native Californian who has recently returned to the West Coast after spending seventeen years in the Washington, D.C. area. She is a community volunteer, currently acting as president of the Comptche Volunteer Fire Department Auxiliary, and is active in supporting the local arts community.
Anja Grimes
Administrative Assistant
Anja Grimes graduated as a nationally examined foreign language correspondent in English and French in her native Germany. After several years as a correspondent, Anja joined an international medical supply company as an Export Sales Manager, selling medical supplies ranging from sundries to hospital equipment. In 1999 she moved to the United States and was employed as an Accounting and Human Resources Manager at a German import/export business in San Francisco for over eight years.
Now, as a Mendocino Coast resident and Wild Iris employee, Anja is able to combine her interest in medicine with her experience in sales and customer satisfaction to provide our customers with excellent customer service.
In her spare time, Anja volunteers to teach German at a local elementary school, enjoys exercising, and loves to travel.
|
