Angela Cooper Brathwaite is a past president of the Registered Nurses Association of Ontario (RNAO), past president of the International Nursing Interest Group and co-chair of RNAO’s Anti-Black Racism Task Force, and an adjunct professor and associate graduate faculty member, Ontario Tech University (OTU).
She holds a PhD in Nursing from the University of Toronto (UofT), a Master of Nursing from the University of Manitoba and a Bachelor’s in Nursing from Memorial University, N.L., and is a fellow of the American Academy of Nursing. Angela has national and international nursing experience in leadership, nursing administration, nursing education, policy advocacy, mental health nursing and maternal-child nursing. She has taught undergraduate nursing students and graduate students at UofT and OTU.
As a policy and political advocate, she was influential in the Ontario government’s development and implementation of the Healthy Babies Healthy Children’s Program in 1998. In 2008–2009, she advocated for the provincial government to amend the Highway Traffic Act: Distractive Driving and Passenger Safety (which happened in September 2009) and worked with municipal and provincial governments to amend the Ontario Building Code (which happened in 2006), to include stair design in all new homes.
Angela has received many academic and service awards, such as the Lifetime Achievement Award and Leadership in Student Mentorship (2022), Leadership Awards in Political Action (2013) and Award of Merit (2015) from the RNAO; the UofT Distinguished Alumnus Award (2007); the Ontario Public Health Association Leadership Award (2010); and the Award of Excellence, Regional Municipality of Durham (2006). In 2022, she was appointed to the Order of Ontario and the Order of Canada.
She has published numerous papers in peer-reviewed journals and is a reviewer for several nursing journals. Her areas of research include preventing Type 2 diabetes, culturally tailored interventions and systemic racism in nursing.