Penn Nursing dean Antonia M. Villarruel was recently honored with a 2024 Above & Beyond: Women Award from City & State: Pennsylvania. The award celebrates influential women in Pennsylvania who demonstrate exemplary leadership in their respective fields, making significant contributions to society in business, public service, media, nonprofit, and organized labor. 

Dean Villarruel was honored with this designation because she has had a career of firsts. She was the first Latina dean at an Ivy League nursing school, Penn Nursing, which she has led for nearly a decade. Dean Villarruel was also the first (and to date, the only) Latina nurse inducted into the National Academy of Medicine. She was in the first generation of her Detroit Mexican American family to go to college. Now she is part of the first generation of American nurses to earn a PhD, reaching the top echelon of academia with her groundbreaking research on sexual health.

At Penn Nursing, Dean Villarruel was the first dean to secure her own National Institutes of Health research funding. Her cross-cultural investigations of sexual health, which she began as a graduate student at Penn, led to an intervention program used as a national model.

“I’m proud of being able not only to do that research, but also disseminate it in vulnerable communities,” said Dean Villarruel, who directs the WHO Collaborating Center for Nursing and Midwifery Leadership. She received her award in late March at the annual City & State Pennsylvania Above & Beyond Awards Gala at the Fitler Club in Center City, Philadelphia.