Afaf Meleis
Afaf Ibrahim Meleis (born 1942) is an Egyptian-American nurse-scientist, researcher, and medical sociologist. She is a Professor of Nursing and Sociology and Dean Emerita at the University of Pennsylvania, where she served from 2002 through 2014. This followed her 34-year tenure as a nursing faculty professor at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). Early life and education Meleis was born and raised in Alexandria, Egypt. Her mother was a prominent nurse in Egypt, having been the first nurse to earn MPH and PhD degrees at an Egyptian university. Her mother went on to establish undergraduate and graduate nursing programs at several Egyptian universities (including Alexandria University), numerous post-high school nursing educational programs around the Persian Gulf, and her own clinic as a nurse-midwife. Meleis has recounted that her mother’s work ethic and passion for nursing, as well as listening to the life experiences of the patients at the clinic from a young age, were instrumental in shaping her own career trajectory. Meleis graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Nursing magna cum laude from Alexandria University in 1961. She then came to the US as a Rockefeller Foundation Fellow to advance