Dr. Karen A. Grimley brings an unusually broad perspective to nursing leadership—one shaped by bedside practice, executive leadership, business, research, and a career-long willingness to look at problems differently. Today, she serves as Chief Nursing Executive for UCLA Health, nursing officer for Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center, and Assistant Dean in the UCLA School of Nursing. She holds a doctorate in nursing and an MBA and is a Fellow of both the American Academy of Nursing and the American College of Healthcare Executives.
Dr. Grimley began her career as a BSN-prepared nurse in an intensive care unit in central Massachusetts. Over approximately nine years of frontline practice, she worked in intensive care, rehabilitation and detoxification, emergency nursing, charge, supervisory, and education roles. Her first management position coincided with earning her MBA—an experience she describes as a “game changer” because it helped her connect nursing practice with finance, operations, and organizational decision-making.
Her career subsequently took her into service-line and executive roles in North Carolina and Florida, followed by national and international consulting in resource utilization and organizational redesign. She later returned to doctoral study at Florida Atlantic University and completed her dissertation while working full-time as a nursing officer at UC Irvine. Five years later, a colleague who was retiring from UCLA encouraged her—repeatedly—to consider the position she holds today.
For Dr. Grimley, leadership is fundamentally about service. She describes it as “being a servant to your community” and emphasizes that leaders must “hang your ego up at the door.” Her role, as she sees it, is to create the conditions in which nurses can succeed: providing resources, removing barriers, strengthening the work environment, and helping unify nursing’s voice on behalf of patients.
That philosophy is evident in initiatives she has helped launch at UCLA Health. The nurse-led, interprofessional Wellness Bundle brings focused attention to sleep, nutrition, activity, hygiene, and comfort. A separate “Safer You” initiative consolidated workplace-safety efforts, expanded safety resources and peer support, strengthened crisis-prevention training, and contributed to reductions in workplace violence and improved perceptions of safety.
Outside her professional roles, Dr. Grimley is also the mother of four children and grandmother of three.
Dr. Grimley’s connection to ALSN reaches back to 2013, when she presented preliminary doctoral findings at CGEAN, Council on Graduate Education for Administration in Nursing, the organization that later became ALSN. She has watched ALSN grow into what she calls a “notable authority” in nursing leadership.
As the opening keynote speaker at the 2026 ALSN International Conference in Los Angeles, Dr. Grimley hopes to remind nurses of the value of their knowledge, creativity, and practical insight—and the importance of being courageous enough to “take it out for a spin.” Innovation, she emphasizes, is rarely a solo endeavor. Good ideas require preparation, trusted relationships, and people willing to help move them forward. In her words, “It’s always better to go together.”
If you would like to connect with nurse leaders like Dr. Grimley and be part of this community, learn more about ALSN membership at: ALSN.info/Membership
