Barbara Ley Toffler, Ph.D.


Barbara Ley Toffler, PhD is a co-founder of NECH-CIEH and has a long history of commitment to both health education and social equity. She is retired from the faculty of the Harvard Business School where she taught Organizational Behavior and Management Ethics. As a graduate student at Yale in the 1970s, her focus of study was on the then-emerging new health professions of Nurse Practitioners and Physician Assistants. Barbara and her research colleagues demonstrated that Nurse Practitioners, in particular, had the training and temperament not only to provide advanced clinical care but also to act as healthcare leaders, particularly in underserved areas. Upon retirement, following publication of her book Final Accounting: Ambition, Greed and the Fall of Arthur Andersen, Barbara sought to return to her first love – the role of nurses in underserved environments. Having visited Haiti previously, and fallen in love with the people and the country, she was thrilled when the opportunity to develop and nurture NECH-CIEH came along. She considers the time spent working with the strong nursing leaders of Haiti to be the most exciting and satisfying years of her professional life.