Marion Leary, MSN MPH RN FAHA

Marion Leary is the Director of Innovation and an Instructor at the University of Pennsylvania's School of Nursing. Ms. Leary has focused her research and education over the past twelve years on cardiac arrest and CPR quality with the current goal of developing innovative strategies to improve bystander response and CPR training. Ms. Leary has established herself as a nursing leader in the field of resuscitation science, as well as nursing innovation.

As the Director of Innovation at Penn Nursing she creates curriculums focused on nursing innovation and the foundation of design thinking. Ms. Leary is also a member of the American Nurses Association’s Innovation Advisory Committee and a Founding member of the Society of Nurse Scientists, Innovators, Entrepreneurs and Leaders (SONSIEL).

Ms. Leary is an international Fellow of the American Heart Association (FAHA) and has participated in the 2010, 2015 and 2020 resuscitation guidelines. . Ms. Leary is on the program committee for the Citizen CPR Foundation’s Emergency Cardiovascular Care Updates conference focusing on social media outreach and engagement.

Ms. Leary is a Senior Fellow at the Center for Public Health Initiatives at Penn. Ms. Leary completed a master's degree in nursing at Penn, in health leadership and a master's degree in public health at Penn. Ms. Leary began a doctoral program at the University of Pennsylvania in 2018.

Previously, Ms. Leary was a contributor to the Huffington Post and was the host of STEAMrollrs, a segment of the STEM Everyday Podcast featuring women who are paving the way in science, technology, engineering, art and math (STEAM). Additionally, Ms. Leary was an organizer for the 2017 and 2018 March for Science Philadelphia.

Ms. Leary founded the Penn UPstart companies ImmERge, LLC and Resuscor, LLC. Immerge Labs focused on using virtual reality and augmented reality to reimagine how the world prepares for emergencies. Resuscor, LLC focused on using digital strategies to improve post-cardiac arrest training and education. Ms. Leary was also the founder of Sink or Swim Philadelphia (2011-2015), a 501c3 non-profit organization whose mission was to assist people who were uninsured or underinsured raise funds to pay for medical expenses using social media and medical crowdfunding.

In 2017 Ms. Leary was named Philadelphia’s Geek of the Year and in 2019 she was named a Philadelphia Inquirer Health care influencer in Innovation.

Sub-specialties: Innovation, Nursing, Design Thinking, Resuscitation Science, and CPR.