Brenda Nevidjon, RN, MSN, FAAN is the president of the Oncology Nursing Society (ONS).  She is a clinical professor and chair of the master’s program at Duke University School of Nursing in Durham, NC.  Her education at Duke Univerity and her graduate work at the University of North Carolina provided her foundation in nursing.

With her masters degree in psychiatric nursing, she planned to be a therapist for terminally ill patients and eventually become a clinical psychologist. However, a move to Basel, Switzerland changed those plans, and she became a nurse at the university hospital on the cancer unit where she cared for bone marrow transplant patients at one of only three transplant sites in Europe.

Upon returning to North Carolina, she became the head nurse of the cancer research unit at the Duke Comprehensive Cancer Center and a member of ONS.  She spent over twenty years in various clinical and administrative positions within the oncology specialty including ten years on the west coast in Vancouver, BC, and in Seattle.  Her return to North Carolina gave her the opportunity to take on broader leadership positions culminating with being the first nurse and woman to be COO of Duke University Hospital. 

Throughout her career, she has been active not only in ONS but in other nursing and non-profit organizations. One of her most valued experiences has been to edit the two books of ONS members’ stories, Voices of Oncolgy Nurses and Continuing the Legacy: More Voices of Oncology Nurses. She served as editor of the ONS News for ten years.