Amy Nordness, PhD, has been named the associate director of the Munroe-Meyer Institute.
Nordness, who joined MMI in 2015 as the director of the MMI Department of Speech-Language Pathology, replaces Wayne Stuberg, PhD, who retired at the end of 2020.
Colleagues call Dr. Nordness a visionary, hands-on leader respected by her MMI peers and the disability community.
"Amy is the hardest worker I know," said MMI Director Karoly Mirnics, MD, PhD. "She is smart, dedicated, caring and a consensus builder who works tirelessly to advance our mission. I am very impressed both with her professional and human qualities, and she is an amazing partner in building the best institute in the world."
Dr. Norness takes the new role at an exciting time.
"This is the right time to look to the future, to explore possibilities," Dr. Nordness said. "We’ve moved into a new building, we have some new leaders. It’s a good time not only to look at ourselves, but to talk to our community and find out what they need from us.
"The new building gives us the opportunity to expand and offer new services to families in our community," she said. "We are building new community partnerships — for example, we are in close proximity to the University of Nebraska at Omaha now, so more partnerships with UNO have become possible. Also, we have space to bring our community partners into our building – the UNMC College of Dentistry and the Truhlsen Eye Institute, for example. Allowing them to come in and work with us to help our families is a really exciting step toward becoming a ‘one-stop shop’ for the intellectual and developmental disability community."
Dr. Nordness also has been pleased to see how the new building has encouraged collaboration.
"The way we work with each other, the way our spaces align, it all encourages collaboration and interaction, providing a lot of new opportunities to engage in new ideas and projects together."
As the associate director, one of her key duties will be to support Dr. Mirnics in all institute initiatives. After years of working together, Dr. Nordness is familiar with Dr. Mirnics’ style of leadership, which she called inspiring.
"Karoly cares so deeply about our patients, our partnerships and our community," she said. "He really wants to work with others to serve our patients and collaborate to reach new possibilities.
"As a leader, he pushes us to action, he likes to move forward," she said, "He can get work done, and he expects his team to do the same, and I think that has helped us accomplish exciting new things and will continue to help us do even more."
Dr. Nordness – who had already assumed the role of the clinical director of the institute in 2020 – will be leaving her post as the director of speech-language pathology as she transitions to her new duties, a step she admitted was hard.
"The speech-language pathology department has gotten 100% of my investment for the past six years," she said. "We’ve more than doubled the size of the department and established new services, but I did still have unfinished goals there, projects that I would love to see through.
"But there is great leadership in the department."
She also had a message for the MMI community.
"I want people to open up to us," she said. "We want to hear what you have to say. We want to do better. We’re listening – tell us how."
Congratulations Dr. Nordness!
Congratulations, you will be great in your new role!