As a girl in Nigeria, Rita Adeniran, MSN, RN, CMAC, CNAA,BC, considered nurses stunning, sparkling and smart. Wanting to be all of those things, she went against her parent's advice and enrolled in nursing school. To her chagrin, she discovered the profession offered her little of the opportunity she thought it would - at least in Africa.

"I was frustrated," said Adeniran.

Trying out the States

When her fiancée moved to the United States to study aeronautical engineering, Adeniran jumped at the opportunity to visit him and eventually stayed. She realized, in America, nursing offered much more.

"I didn't have to be the doctor's handmaid. I was free to think. The longer I stayed in America, the more I loved nursing," said Adeniran, who married in 1991 and later convinced her husband to leave engineering and become a nurse, too.

Now as global nurse ambassador at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing, Philadelphia, Adeniran introduces visiting nurses from around the world to the reality of practice in the U.S. As chairwoman of the nursing department's cultural competence committee, Adeniran is called in to help navigate the situation when a cultural issue arises between a nurse and patient.

"I empower nurses to think flexibly," she said, "and reach out and give a voice to the vulnerable."

Guiding Adeniran through her days, which she said are often unstructured and unpredictable, are four philosophical pillars: freedom (I am an American, and I have a voice), justice (As an American, no one can outright oppress me), courage (I must muster the courage to express freedom and justice, even when I feel vulnerable and oppressed) and resilience (I must come up with the energy for tomorrow).

Learning to Speak Up

Philosophy in action: When a professor in her MSN program dismissed a comment she made and then went on to praise the same comment from a white classmate, Adeniran questioned the teacher then and there. The professor admitted she hadn't understood what she said, and Adeniran encouraged her to ask the comment be repeated instead of ignoring it.

"I'm sorry I embarrassed her, but having an accent doesn't equate to stupidity, and I don't want to be put down for it," said Adeniran, who is working toward her DrNP degree at Drexel University, Philadelphia.

"If I said that to professors back in my country, I would have been dead. America gave me that freedom, that courage. I'm one of the proudest Americans there is."

- Jolynn Tumolo