Ildaura Murillo-Rohde

Ildaura Murillo-Rohde was a Panamanian nurse and educator who spent much of her career in the United States and became a leading voice for Hispanic nurses. She came to the United States in 1945, completed a nursing diploma in 1948, specialized in psychiatric nursing, and in 1971 became the first Hispanic nurse to earn a doctorate from New York University. She served as an associate dean at the University of Washington and as the first Hispanic nursing dean at New York University, and she was a World Health Organization consultant to the government of Taiwan. After the American Nurses Association declined her 1974 proposal for a Hispanic nursing caucus, she and a small group of colleagues formed the body that became the National Association of Hispanic Nurses, which she is credited with founding in 1975. The American Academy of Nursing named her a Living Legend in 1994. She died in Panama in 2010.